Visit Part 1: The Story of Connecticut’s Changing Landscape and Visit Part 2: Creating the Story Map of Connecticut’s Changing Landscape This is part 3 of a 3-part blog about the Connecticut’s Changing Landscape Story Map. This blog is the most technical and is meant for folks that already have created a story map and […]
Programs
Part 1: The Story of Connecticut’s Changing Landscape
Connecticut’s Changing Landscape CLEAR has been creating and sharing land cover for decades. Our websites and methods for slicing and dicing and displaying the data have evolved along with technology. One thing has remained constant through the versions – the maps (now up to six dates covering 25 years) are a rich set of information with […]
More Than Just a Picture? The Basics of Remotely Sensed Imagery
July 28, 2015 Presented by Dan Civco, Professor, Department of NRE, UConn Director, Center for Land Use Education And Research (CLEAR) and James Hurd, Research Associate, Department of NRE, UConn Director, Laboratory for Earth Resources Information Systems (LERIS) We have all seen remotely sensed imagery, and many of us use imagery as a background layer […]
The Big Picture of Climate Adaptation in Connecticut
June 16, 2015 Presented by Mark Boyer, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor, Political Science, UConn and Melanie Meinzer, Graduate Student, UConn When confronted with the demands of global climate change, why do some towns move the climate adaptation agenda forward in their communities while others seemingly get little accomplished? To answer this question, we look at […]
A House with One Room
A white-eyed vireo perches high on a tree branch scanning the understory below. She’s searching for the perfect place to raise her young. The nesting site must match the shopping list inside her head: lush, impenetrable thickets of young trees and gnarly shrubs. She needs young trees at least three feet high, filled with nooks […]
Land Use Academy wins award from CT Planners
CLEAR’s Land Use Academy has won the 2014 Education Award from the Connecticut Chapter of the American Planning Association. The Academy, created in 2007, provides basic training for municipal land use commissioners on roles and responsibilities, legal requirements and site plan reading, as well as advanced training on emerging topics. As we all know, land […]
A Map in an App: Drainage Class for 25 States
The Rain Garden App In case you haven’t heard, a couple of years ago, NEMO (David Dickson and Mike Dietz) created a cool smartphone app that is all about building rain gardens. It is full of background information including what a rain garden is, how it works, pictures of existing rain gardens and even videos about how […]
Mysteries of the New Lidar Data
October 28, 2014 Presented by Cary Chadwick and Emily Wilson, UConn CLEAR Lidar is a detection system that uses light from a laser on an airplane to collect very accurate and dense elevation values with many different applications (and it looks really cool!). Connecticut is (partially) covered by a patchwork of Lidar datasets captured at […]
Rain Garden 2014 Growing Season Time Lapse
The rain garden demonstration site at the Middlesex County Extension Center in Haddam (CLEAR and NEMO’s home-base) was installed in May 2012. It was originally installed to be featured in two new NEMO projects, a smartphone application and a “how to” rain garden website, both now complete. The two projects focus on helping people easily […]
Geocaching: A High Tech Game of Hide and Seek
CLEAR’s Geospatial Training Program recently held a workshop for the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History on the art (and fun) of geocaching. Have you heard of geocaching? No? Then you fall solidly into the “muggle” category – aka a human who is not in the know about the greatest real-world treasure hunt that’s happening […]
Maplets: Turn Paper Maps into Interactive Mobile Maps
I am getting ready to head out on my annual backpacking trip to the Adirondacks. I love these trips, but one thing I don’t like is having to constantly pull out, unfold, and then re-fold the huge paper map for the park whenever I begin to worry I might be getting lost (which is way […]
Time to Reassess Connecticut’s Landscape
“Now is the time for Connecticut to move swiftly to save our dwindling open spaces and our great heritage of natural resources for the use and enjoyment of future generations.” Thus began a letter from the Governor of Connecticut ordering the preparation of a plan of action for statewide conservation. The Governor was John Dempsey, […]
Bringing Some Green to Our Big Cities
When people think of Hartford and New Haven, “green” may not be the first thing that jumps to mind. However, recent efforts of the UConn Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO) program are helping to make these cities a little bit greener, both figuratively and literally. This past June, NEMO partnered with Neighborhood Housing Services […]
Stormwise: Increasing the Storm Resilience of Trees
July 23, 2014 Presented by Mark Rudnicki, UConn Associate Professor, Forest Ecology, Department of Natural Resources and the Environment Connecticut is a state with magnificent and plentiful forest cover, but we have a continuing problem with trees causing power outages. The STORMWISE initiative, developed at the University of Connecticut, seeks to integrate outreach, education, research […]
Green Infrastructure on the UConn Campus
May 13, 2014 Presented by Michael Dietz & Chet Arnold, UConn CLEAR The main campus of the University of Connecticut is rapidly becoming a showcase for the innovative stormwater practices known as green infrastructure (GI), or low impact development (LID). Green roofs, rain gardens, pervious parking lots and walkways, bioretention cells, and other GI features […]
A Congressman Supports Infiltration: of Stormwater, that is…
On Tuesday April 14th, Representative Joe Courtney of Connecticut’s Second District stopped by UConn for a brief tour of low impact development (LID), or green infrastructure (GI), stormwater practices on campus. The Congressman and his aide Cutter Oliver were doing some fact finding related to a bill introduced to the House last year, the […]
Connecticut Tree Wardens’ Association
– Article by Bob Ricard Approximately 85 tree wardens, deputy tree wardens, urban forestry volunteers, and others gathered in Glastonbury, March 20th, for the Tree Wardens’ Association of Connecticut, Inc., 22nd Annual Dinner Meeting. The primary purpose of the meeting was to conduct the business of the state-wide organization, founded in 1992 by UConn Extension […]
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 […]
A Climate Adaptation Academy for Connecticut
Modeled after CLEAR’s highly successful Land Use Academy, we are embarking on a new forum for land use officials and other interested professionals, a Climate Adaptation Academy (CAA). The CAA, sponsored by Connecticut Sea Grant and CLEAR, with funding from NOAA/National Sea Grant is envisioned to be an exchange of information, issues, experiences and solutions. […]
Climate Change: Beyond Dispute or an Attempt to Redistribute Wealth?
On Friday Governor Dannel Malloy and UConn President Susan Herbst, along with a host of federal and state officials, announced the creation of the Institute for Community Resiliency and Climate Adaptation. Located at UConn’s Avery Point Campus, the Institute is a collaboration between UConn and CTDEEP and its mission, in broad terms, is to coordinate […]