And there are 24 solar panels on my house soaking it all up! Yesterday the panels collected 37 kWh and the day before was 37.9 kWh. To give you some perspective, the average household in Connecticut uses 731 kWh a month or about 24.4 kWh a day. Of course this varies by season and so does […]
Cool Stuff
Time-Lapse Nature Photography
The UConn Stormwise program recently tweeted a link to a very cool time lapse video of a forest created by filmmaker Samuel Orr. Samuel took 40,000 still images from his front window over a 15-month time period and created a short film that shows how a forest changes throughout the seasons. The video is called […]
This winter will end…right?
“Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When, formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted solely by a few square rods of […]
Touring UConn’s Green Infrastructure – from your Desk!
Anyone who has been to the UConn campus in the last few years has likely noticed a lot of changes. Beautiful new and renovated buildings are remaking the campus. Along with those changes are a lot of more subtle changes that you might not notice – namely the integration of green infrastructure. As discussed in […]
CT ECO: Shedding Some Light on Connecticut’s Lidar
Light Detection and Ranging – sounds fancy and highly technical, right? That’s because it is! In a nutshell, Lidar data shows the elevation of the earth’s surface. But the cool parts are what Lidar looks like, shows, and how people are using it. Why am I blogging about Lidar now? Two reasons – the […]
CLEAR’s Geospatial Training Program Goes Global
When an email from Dr. Yahaya Umar at the Nigerian Defence Academy came across my desk last July indicating interest in CLEAR’s hands-on workshop on Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, I was initially a bit skeptical. Why would anyone from the other side of the world want to travel all the way to UConn to […]
Where in Connecticut?
Connecticut (and the rest of the world for that matter) looks so different from above than from the ground. I spend a good deal of time looking at aerial imagery of Connecticut including different color combinations, times of year (leaves or no leaves) and different years to see change. There are many places that I […]
Green Roofs Blossom in America’s Cities
City parks and stock exchanges are not the only place to find large expanses of green these days. Green roofs are starting to become part of the cityscape in many of the larger cities on both the East and West coasts. The reason? Green roofs provide a host of environmental benefits: they increase energy efficiency, […]
What are the chances Halloween will be ruined again?
“Dad, is Halloween going to be cancelled again this year because of the weather?” It’s not a pleasant thought for kids dreaming of bags full of candy. Well, we are approaching the end of October, and for those of us who have been in Connecticut for the past few years, it seems appropriate to discuss […]
Rain Got You in a Depression? Put it in One!
With historic amounts of rain falling on our state this month, it is easy to get a little down. It puts a damper on beach days, picnics, and hikes. Not to make things worse, but did you also know that as all that rain runs off roofs, parking lots, driveways, and roads and into storm […]
"The Cicadas are Coming! The Cicadas are Coming!"
Word on the street is that Brood II is on the move and heading toward Connecticut. I’m talking Cicadas. You know, those big, swarming monsters bugs with three red eyes, four wings, six legs, a wing span of one to six inches and years of energy stored up after percolating in the ground for almost […]
Goodbye GPS Unit, Hello Smart Phone
Smartphones are the swiss army knife of the digital world. They have replaced countless single-function gadgets from calculators to cameras to pagers to, um, phones! But for mapping geeks, one of the gadgets they have not quite been able to shake is the handheld GPS unit, at least until now. The Geospatial Training Program at […]
Historical Shoreline Change Project Featured on Local News
Recent storms have focused interest on the dynamics of the shoreline. Receiving attention is the question, “What has it done in the past?” In 2010 the USGS released their report on historical shoreline change along the New England and Mid-Atlantic coasts from Virginia to Maine. Connecticut, buried in the Sound, was passed by. With funding […]
A Watershed Moment
Many of us have heard about watershed protection efforts. Perhaps you live in a drinking water supply watershed. Poor Willy Wonka was wrongly accused of poisoning the watershed of his brown river (it turned out to be chocolate). But what is a watershed, really? In physical terms, a watershed is an area of land that […]
Dealing in Imagery
My extra desk has seen a steady stream of boxes – little and big ones, brown and black ones, even an iPad box (no iPad included). One had old maps crumpled up to protect its contents. Some have been dropped off and others have been part of a suspicious looking package trade at meetings across […]
Crackerjack Cartography: Mapping Our National Pastime
The first of April means the start of something magical to many, and I’m not just talking wood frogs and practical jokes. It’s Opening Day, the start of baseball season in America. A day when our nation’s pastime and my personal pastime collide. I love baseball and I love maps. This time of year, I […]
Of Witch Hazel and Wood Frogs
Here at CLEAR I don’t think anyone would claim to be a naturalist, at least of any skill or repute. But that doesn’t prevent our collective and individual enjoyment of the natural world, including the signal events that mark the turning of the seasons. For me (forgive me, crocus fans), there are really three signature […]
Drones for the Common Good
When people hear the word drone most look to the sky with fear and trepidation. Are they the next target for a missile strike? Are the police watching them? Is what they do in their back yard going to show up on the web? Rand Paul spoke for half a day about the evils of drones and the […]
Celebrating World Water Day at Home
Today, Friday March 22, is World Water Day. Most of us have heard quotes like “the next war will be fought over water” (generally attributed to various U.N. diplomats). And, on the other side of the water quotation spectrum, there is the oft-repeated but unsubstantiated quote by comedian W.C. Fields, who supposedly said “Water, I […]
New CLEAR Progress Report Not as Boring as it Sounds!
Every 5.5 years or so (we have only two data points, so this may or may not be a trend) CLEAR issues a Progress Report in an attempt to characterize our rather unconventional blend of research, training, tool development, and outreach. Our second such report is now out, and to be frank—not to mention immodest […]