CLEAR’s NEMO program recently partnered with the Connecticut Fund for the Environment‘s Save the Sound program to create a rain garden “how to” website, focused on helping Connecticut and New England homeowners build their own rain garden. The Rain Gardens website is meant to be a companion site to both the CT NEMO website and Save […]
NEMO Monitoring Project Looks at Nitrogen Processing by Bioretention
Last week CLEAR’s NEMO Program broke ground on a new monitoring project focused on the Low Impact Development (LID) practice of bioretention. Bioretention is the practice of reducing the quantity, and increasing the quality, of runoff by directing it to a depression filled with plants. This is the same concept as the more widely recognized rain garden, […]
CLEAR/DEEP Team Wins Award for "CT ECO" Mapping Website
The CLEAR and CT DEEP team responsible for the development and operation of the Connecticut Conditions Online, or CT ECO, website has won the 2012 Public Service Award from the Connecticut Chapter of the American Planning Association. CT ECO is a highly advanced internet mapping site that provides access to the state’s natural resource data. […]
Impacts of Hurricane Sandy to the Connecticut Shoreline
UConn’s Connecticut Sea Grant Program (CTSG) and CLEAR hosted a discussion of Hurricane Sandy impacts to Connecticut’s beaches and dunes on November 20, 2012. Several municipalities and private beach associations attended and provided insights into local shoreline changes. Many areas along the eastern part of the state experienced shoreline erosion with dunes heavily impacted by […]
CLEAR’s Newest Geospatial Technology Course Focuses on Land Trusts
CLEAR’s Geospatial Training Program (GTP) has partnered with the Connecticut Land Conservation Council to develop a new course for land trust staff and volunteers. The first workshop was held on a sunny Friday in September. The one-day course is designed to teach participants how to use a handheld GPS receiver to map property boundaries and […]
NEMO U8 A Tentacular Success
UConn CLEAR, in partnership with the Northland NEMO program, held the 8th NEMO University (a.k.a NEMO U8) conference in Duluth, MN last month. The conference brings together outreach professionals from around the country, primarily from programs modelled after the CT NEMO program, to share innovative approaches and ideas to working with communities on land use and water […]
Climate Change Adaptation Webinar
CLEAR’s last two webinars, Climate Change Adaptation and Community Food Security in Connecticut, are available for viewing on the CLEAR website. For a list of all CLEAR’s online webinars visit the Webinars Library.
Climate Change Adaptation
September 18, 2012 Presented by Bruce Hyde, UConn CLEAR and Juliana Barrett, CT Sea Grant Hurricane Irene showed just how vulnerable we are to damage from storms and tidal inundation. The impact of climate change on coastal municipalities is likely to result in heavier downpours, more vulnerable coastlines, and increases to the amount of land […]
Demonstration of ArcGIS.com
July 18, 2012 Presented by Emily Wilson, UConn CLEAR Interactive web maps are powerful tools for organizing and disseminating information for public consumption. For years, Google has led this revolution in online mapping by making it easy for practically anyone to create a custom web map of their own using Google Maps and Google Earth. […]
Community Food Security in Connecticut
July 10, 2012 Presented by Jiff Martin, UConn Cooperative Extension and Adam Rabinowitz, UConn CANR Most residents in Connecticut have consistent, dependable access to enough food for active, healthy living. Yet each year there are households that experience limited access to food due to a lack of money or other resources. Between 2008 and 2010, […]
The National NEMO Network's 8th NEMO University
NEMO University, or NEMO U, is the national conference of the NEMO Network. The main focus of the conference is on providing opportunities for NEMO program leaders, partners, funders and NEMO friends to network with one another, share successful approaches and learn about new technologies and techniques. Since 2000, there have been 8 NEMO Universities […]
CT Coastline Historical Aerial Photos Online
Historical aerial photos of Connecticut’s coastline are now available online thanks to the UConn Libraries’ Map & Geographic Information Center (MAGIC) and the Office of Long Island Sound Programs of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP). Details were recently published on the UConn Today website. Read the UConn Today Article and watch a short video […]
Rain Garden App Coming Soon!
Several CLEAR programs (o.k., since you asked, it’s the CT NEMO, National NEMO Network, and the Geospatial Training Programs) have teamed up to develop a “rain garden” app for smart phones. A rain garden is a vegetated depression that accepts and infiltrates runoff from a rooftop, driveway of other impervious surface. Unlike many “Low Impact […]
If you're reading this…
…then you’re part of a CLEAR web statistic somewhere — or you soon will be. The latest year for which we have CLEAR web stats is June 2011 through May 2012. For that period we had: 31,060 visits, from 20,478 unique visitors, who stayed an average of 3:05 minutes. These may not be Craig’s List […]
Cool websites
Does anyone actually use the word “cool” anymore (it seems at least to have outlived “groovy”)? Anyway, here are two very cool websites that have very little to do with CLEAR, except that they are focused on the natural world. Give ’em a try. National (real-time) Wind Map The Scale of the Universe 2
Community Food Security in Connecticut Webinar
This webinar is a part of our 2012 webinar series covering a broad range of topics related to land use planning, land cover research, natural resource protection and geospatial technology. Community Food Security in CT Abstract Most residents in Connecticut have consistent, dependable access to enough food for active, healthy living. Yet each year there […]
NEMO’s Rain Garden Demonstration Site
The NEMO team has just completed its second rain garden demonstration site at the Middlesex County Extension Center in Haddam (CLEAR and NEMO’s home-base). Rain gardens are shallow depressions in the landscape that typically include plants and a mulch layer or ground cover. Their purpose is to help retain water runoff during a storm event, allowing […]
ArcGIS.com: A User-Friendly Tool for Creating Maps Online
May 8, 2012 Presented by Cary Chadwick and Emily Wilson, UConn CLEAR Interactive web maps are powerful tools for organizing and disseminating information for public consumption. For years, Google has led this revolution in online mapping by making it easy for practically anyone (even you) to create a custom web map of their own using […]
CLEAR Faculty Receive EPA Award
CT NEMO’s Michael Dietz and Chet Arnold have been given the Environmental Merit Award through EPA Region 1, for their work on New England Rain Garden Trainings. To date, they have presented trainings in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. EPA’s Environmental Merit Award is an annual award that recognizes outstanding environmental advocates who have made significant […]
LID in Connecticut: a Virtual Tour Webinar
CLEAR’s LID in Connecticut: a Virtual Tour of Where It’s Working Webinar held on March 13th is now online. Information and registration for upcoming webinars can be found in our CLEAR 2012 Webinar Series section. Past webinars can be found in the CLEAR Webinar Library.