Not long ago, I joined the CLEAR water team and began to look at the presence of LID (or low impact development) in Connecticut, as a response to the reality of increased stormwater runoff in our state. When tasked with my first blog post (and knowing I was fated to follow the poet Andrew Kinlock), I decided […]
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GIS & Poetry? | Speaking of Connecticut’s Hydrography
If you have not already heard, CT DEEP became Steward of the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) and CLEAR has agreed to take the helm to update Connecticut’s hydrography. The NHD is simply a spatial dataset that represents the lake and river features across the country. All in all, we are excited that we will soon […]
Where Are We? Winter Fun With Maps
I don’t know about you, but I am starting to feel the first tendrils of the winter blues creeping in. While we haven’t had much snow (yet), the cold has certainly kept me inside more than I’d like. With football season ending and March Madness still a ways off, I’m on the lookout new distractions. […]
New Faces @ CLEAR
Two recent additions to the ranks have appeared in the hallowed hallways of CLEAR, swelling our ranks to double digits and causing the mean age of the CLEAR crew to plummet. Andrew Kinlock is a recent graduate of The George Washington University who comes to the Center from a position with the CT DEEP. Andrew […]
Targeting stormwater in Connecticut’s big cities, 1 rain garden at a time
Our older cities in the eastern part of the country have lots of character, however, along with this charm comes the unwanted effects of too much impervious surface draining into a combined sewer system. We have discussed this in a previous blog at CLEAR. Most large cities with combined sewer systems are under order from […]
NEARC is Coming to Connecticut
October 5-8 in Mystic! What is NEARC? It stands for the NorthEast Arc Users Group. What is Arc? It is the name, or a shortened name, for the Geographic Information System (GIS) suite of software created by the company ESRI. We like acronyms. What is GIS? Anything with a location, or x,y coordinate, is geographic […]
NYC Climate March Draws Hundreds of Thousands
Over four hundred thousand people from around the country, young and old, took action yesterday to make a statement about climate change. This event was one of many taking place around the world (http://peoplesclimate.org/), and drew national news attention. My stepfather Trip Barnett attended the march, and he told me that it was a life […]
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 […]
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 […]
Climate Change—Public vs. Private Goods
– Article by Linda Powers Tomasso, Project Associate, Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard University School of Public Health Climate change is in the news almost daily, and while many of us didn’t grow up with the phrase, our attentiveness to the causes of a warming planet gives us no cause for comfort. Our own […]
The Power of Water
I have been known to occasionally get a bit sappy about water…and with good reason. I feel that I owe my passion for the environment, and for water specifically, to experiences and people that were part of my life as a young boy. My father, uncles and grandfather all took the time to take me […]
Sewage Overflows Help Make Case for Greener Infrastructure
The historic rainfall that hit the east coast this week had some pretty nasty impacts. From flooding in Florida to a stunning street collapse in Baltimore, the images were remarkable. Here in CT we experienced a month’s worth of rain in 24 hours leading to sewage overflows into Connecticut’s rivers and Long Island Sound. In addition […]
Great Gull Island Airlift
If you are anywhere near the Groton shoreline on Friday April 25, 2014, you may see an unusual site. The Connecticut Army National Guard will airlift 28,000 pounds of lumber and equipment out to Great Gull Island (GGI) in Long Island Sound. Great Gull Island, owned by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), provides […]
TAX ON THE RICH TO PAY FOR CLEAN ENERGY RESEARCH
April 1, 2014 WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a stunning display of bipartisanship, an overwhelming majority of House Republicans voted with their Democratic counterparts to pass a bill taxing the wealthiest Americans to fund clean energy research. Speaker of the House John Boehner explained this seismic shift in policy saying, “So we take a little money […]
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 […]
Keep Your Butts Off Our Beaches
Recently a columnist in a local Southeastern Connecticut newspaper wrote about the things that bug him when driving. It included the usual gripes that we all have—people driving slowly in the passing lane, failure to use turn signals, merging on the highway with little consideration of the traffic already on the highway, able-bodied people parking […]
"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 […]
CLEAR Faculty/Staff Honored at 2013 Awards & Honors Event
Three CLEAR faculty/staff were recently honored by UConn’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. For the second year in a row CLEAR team members (a team of two this year) have won the CES Grant for Innovative Programming in Extension Award. David Dickson and Michael Dietz won for their creation of the Rain Garden App, 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 […]