Trail survey

If you use trails in New Jersey, here is a survey from the NJ DEP about trails and trail use.

Lost species

How can we lose a plant species? Especially one that is common and naturally occurring? Well, this is such a concern that every year we "celebrate" a Day of Commemoration for Lost Species. And the list keeps growing.

Another $65,000 in the fight against climate change?

 Is this our best response to increased flooding in a changing climate? New gates to close the roads? 

UNESCO World Heritage list in the US

 You don't need to travel to Europe or South America to visit UNESCO World Heritage Sites. There are multiple sites within an easy drive of Rutgers. And there are even more all throughout the US (28, to be precise), with the National Park Service and the Department of Interior maintaining a list of future candidate sites to list. Here is a list/map of the US sites.

What should be added? What is a site that is significant to the entire world's population?

FlowingData's warning about dishonest charts

 In the GISciences, people often cite Mark Monmonier's How to Lie with Maps. It is a very accessible guide to the ways that maps can trick us and how cartographers, even well meaning ones, can create maps that mislead.

So I am quite taking with the chart equivalent. FlowingData has posted an accessible explanation about Dishonest Charts that can help us both as the creators of charts but also as critical readers of data that need to be wary of what at first seems obvious.

Serious about recharge

 Drought-challenged areas can get serious about the water supply. Consider this story from Texas where the community acquired land that was the aquifer recharge zone as a way of protecting their water supply.

Good neighbor policy?

In New Jersey, Home Rule gives the municipality substantial autonomy over its own planning and zoning decisions. As such, even a development on a shared border with a neighboring town is left largely to the one community. Hence, Edison just approved a new warehouse on its border with Metuchen despite objections from "Metuchen's land use attorney and planner."