North American Environment on the Map

A nice site for easily and intuitively viewing environmental data, perhaps aimed mostly at children, but with a nice feature for integrating with Google Earth, and for downloading the data. (The US and Canada are still far ahead in making it all free!) The site was created by another interesting organization, Greeninfo Network.  Among other US and California-oriented projects, they have a nicely-designed online  crowdsourcing tool, MapCollaborator.

Tree Maps now Open

This open source software is designed to help cities catalog their trees through crowdsourcing. The San Diego version has more than 331,000 trees shown on the map with details about their species, size, and economic impact. The Grand Rapids treemap has over 17,000 trees pinpointed. Clearly these were cities with extensive tree databases in the first place who have brought this data into the opentreemap system so that it can be updated and maintained, and most importantly shared with the citizens. Very interesting concept! The Opentreemap software is available from an innovative GIS application and software design company Azavea.

Sandy Missed My House

It was amazing to sit on the sofa on October 30th, watching the weather reports on TV and following the storm on the internet with Wundermaps, as it astonishingly went right around my house in Beacon NY. Tragic consequences in the New York boroughs, and especially New Jersey. An article in the Architectural Record interviews participants in the precient MOMA exhibition two years ago, Rising Currents, about ideas which might be revisited in the wake of the storm. The weight of the evidence, however, seems to be in favor of barriers. Expect to see some experienced Dutch engineers migrating to NYC.