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 […]
Tools
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
GTP conducts training on ArcGIS in Asheville, NC
CLEAR’s Geospatial Training Program (GTP) is conducting a workshop this week (March 21 and 22) in Asheville, NC for the USDA Southern Regional Water Program. The workshop focuses on the use of ArcGIS.com, a relatively new option for users of all levels of technical skill to create and share maps on the web. The workshop […]