The medicines that we all take are prescribed with the goal of improving our health in some way. Unfortunately, pharmaceuticals and other chemicals that we use are finding their way into our nation’s waterways, impacting aquatic life, and potentially threatening our health. There are two ways medications are finding their way into our water bodies, […]
Outreach
LID vs Green Infrastructure
If you deal with stormwater issues or land use planning, chances are you have heard the phrase “green infrastructure” mentioned a lot recently. It is rapidly replacing “Low Impact Development” (LID) as the phrase du jour in the stormwater biz. But before we all go willingly adopting this into our lexicon, we must first ask […]
Connecticut Shoreline Resiliency Fund
Last week, on the one year anniversary of SuperStorm Sandy, Governor Malloy announced the creation of the Connecticut Shoreline Resiliency Fund. This fund is for state residents whose homes or businesses are subject to flooding allowing them to obtain low interest loans to elevate homes and flood proof businesses. With no income limits defining eligibility, […]
Teens Master the Art (and fun!) of Mapping at UConn’s NRC Academy
The Natural Resource Conservation Academy (NRCA) is an innovative program in conservation and land use planning for a select group of Connecticut high school students. The Academy starts with a week-long field course at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Throughout the week, students interact with UConn faculty and learn about mapping and geospatial information, […]
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 […]
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 […]
NEMO’s New Rain Garden App Getting the Attention it Deserves
It should come as no surprise how excited we are to show off NEMO’s new Rain Garden App (see past blog posts), not to mention the fact that it’s the first UConn app created for the general public. However, we are equally excited about all the attention it is getting. Most recently, NEMO Director Michael […]
Dietz Gets Sappy About Water
It’s funny sometimes how seemingly unrelated events help to congeal an idea in your head (or in my case remind you of an idea that you had thought about before, and then forgotten…I am 40 after all!). Earlier this week I finally checked out the NPR story that Don Waye from EPA had sent, that […]
Gardening in the Aftermath of Storm Sandy
The amount of daylight we have each day is slowly lengthening, and those gardening catalogs are arriving in the mail. Many coastal communities, as well as some further inland, will be assessing more damage from Storm Sandy as salt spray damage to plants becomes evident. As people think about replanting lost or damaged plants, take […]
We Got Your LID Examples Right Here!
Interested in Low Impact Development (LID), but want a better sense of what it looks like? Well, have we got the tool for you – the National NEMO Network’s National LID Atlas contains nearly 850 examples from 28 states! For the uninitiated, low impact development (LID) practices include rain gardens, pervious pavement, green roofs, rain barrels, […]
What the Heck is the Land Use Academy?
As a local land use commissioner you are faced with making decisions about how your community will grow, reviewing and approving applications for a variety of projects and balancing growth with natural resource protection. Sometimes court decisions change the rules, you receive conflicting advice, the information you have to work with is incomplete or you […]
NEW! Land Cover for the Long Island Sound Watershed
You may have heard of the Connecticut’s Changing Landscape project and website that provides basic land cover information through five directly comparable land cover datasets, from 1985, 1990, 1995, 2002 and 2006, allowing us to look at, and quantify, landscape change in Connecticut. Now, thanks to the support of the Long Island Sound Study, we […]
New Rain Garden "How To" Website for Homeowners
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 […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]