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, […]
Programs
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 […]
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 […]
What We Don’t Know We Don’t Know About Climate Change
With a Shout out to Donald Rumsfeld “There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don’t know. ” […]
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 […]
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 […]
When it comes to Climate Change— Money Talks
It is generally accepted by climate scientists that New England will experience a trend of increasing intensity and frequency of storms resulting in an increase in flooding and coastal erosion. Recent storms have raised our collective awareness of the damage, both fiscal and physical, that these storms can cause. Consider that Sandy wasn’t even a […]
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 […]
The Salt of the Earth
Although signs of spring are appearing around us (crocuses are up at my house!), the remnants of winter linger. Piles of dirty snow snow still litter the landscape, refusing to yield to the lengthening days. Very soon our thoughts and activities will turn to all things spring; snowplows and road salt will be distant memories. […]
This is Not Your Dog’s Clicker Training
When you say the word “clicker” the first thing many people think of is training a dog. But clickers can also refer to the devices used to engage an audience in group decision-making. When a contestant in a game show decides to “ask the audience,” an audience response system (aka clicker) is used. Recently, clickers […]
Connecticut Has New Aerial Imagery
What’s stunning, statewide, and captured last March? No, not mountain lions — Connecticut’s new aerial imagery! And, while it may not be quite good enough to help you find your car keys, it’s probably good enough to allow you to identify the car in your driveway. Here are some key facts about this great new […]
Build a Rain Garden this Spring with NEMO’s New App & Website
February 20, 2013 Presented by David Dickson & Michael Dietz, UConn CLEAR Rain gardens are depressions in the ground that collect and soak up stormwater runoff from roads, roofs, driveways, and other hard surfaces. They are relatively simple to install, are beautiful additions to the landscape, and help prevent water pollution. And now NEMO has […]
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 […]
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, […]
Rain Garden App!
I’ve only had my iPhone since May 2011. It’s not that I didn’t think they were cool and useful (I had bought one for my wife a year before), I just was trying to delay joining the “in crowd” for a while longer. Now it seems like I have had it forever, and it is […]
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 […]