How important are soils in Nationa Parks?

Soils are important enough that the NPS has a special set of soils objectives and guidelines.

Internship at Montclair State

Possible Internship at Montclair State

The position requires an intelligent, hard-working, creative/artistic and   intuitive student for part-time work up to 20 hours a week thru the   summer and maybe into the fall semester.  Preference would be   someone who lives local to the Montclair area and is either a   sophomore becoming a junior or a junior becoming a senior

-Updating our AutoCAD architectural and site plan base maps   
-Development of 3D-models with either sketch-up or a comparable   program
-Ability to work on GIS and incorporate building floor plans into our geodatabase
-Drawing of some landscape planting plans for a variety of campus locations
-Review campus circulation patterns and developing solutions to some challenging ped/veh conflicts
-General office work such as renderings for presentation drawings, printing, burning CD's, campus deliveries, changing roles of paper in the plotter, misc filing etc. 

If interested, please contact:
  Michael J. Zanko  Director of Campus Planning  Montclair State University  University Facilities  855 Valley Road-Suite 107  Clifton, NJ  07013  office: 973-655-7706  fax: 973-655-6976

Benton MacKaye quote

This problem is basic for the regional planner-indeed it is for him the basic problem, the problem of minimizing existence, or concern with the means of life, and maximizing living, or fulfillment of the ends.

- Benton MacKaye

 

Energy Internships

PSE&G Internships
Rutgers Energy Institute Internships

The deadlines are coming quick.

Ryan Perkl's ecological design tools

Here is a great 11 minute video from the Geodesign Summit showing how GIS and landscape ecology can be combined to create new automated ecological design tools. The presentation is by Arizona's Ryan Perkl who is clearly one of the rising stars of the geodesign game.

For those of you interested in building your professional background, Rutgers' Environment and Public Health (EPH) summer course might be interesting to you. If you have an interest environmental health, it will help with some broad technical skills, ranging from epidemiology to environmental inspections to emergency response.  The seven-week course and accompanying five-week internship provide expertise and experience helping prepare you for the state licensing exam.  It sounds more fun than working at UPS. (SLYT)

Spring 2012 Environmental Geomatics Lecture

Please join us for the
Spring 2012 Environmental Geomatics Lecture

"Esri's Emerging Natural and Ocean Science Agenda"
Dawn Wright, Chief Scientist, Esri

4pm, Cook Douglass Lecture Hall, Room 110
Wednesday February 29th

Increasingly, GIS is included as part of the growing collaboration between computer scientists, information scientists, and domain scientists to solve complex scientific questions. As we know, Earth system science is based upon the recognition that the Earth functions as a complex system of inter- related components that must be understood as a whole. Examples range from understanding the complex interactions at seafloor spreading centers systems, to exploring the structure and evolution of continental earthquakes and volcanoes, to informing regional decision- and policy-making across several themes in coastal zone management and marine spatial planning. Successfully addressing these scientific problems requires integrative and innovative approaches to analyzing, modeling, and developing extensive and diverse data sets. The current chaotic distribution of available data sets, lack of documentation about them, and lack of easy-to-use access tools and computer modeling and analysis codes are still major obstacles for scientists and educators alike. Contributing solutions to these problems is part of an emerging science agenda for oceanography and related natural sciences that will be discussed. Esri has also recently launched a major ocean GIS initiative, and the talk will highlight some recent projects in progress, including a new ocean basemap, a new ocean geodesign platform for coastal and marine spatial planning, developing contributions to the new Ocean Health Index project, and more.

About the speaker:
In October of 2011 Dawn Wright was appointed as Chief Scientist of Esri. She maintains her appointment as Professor of Geography and Oceanography and Director of the Davey Jones Locker Marine GIS/Seafloor Mapping Laboratory at Oregon State University. Her current research interests include marine data models, benthic terrain and habitat characterization, and coastal/ocean informatics and cyberinfrastructure. She serves on the US National Academy of Sciences Ocean Studies Board, the NOAA Science Advisory Board, the Science Advisory Council of Conservation International, and many editorial boards, including the AAG Annals, IJGIS, and J. of Coastal Conservation. She is a fellow of Stanford's Aldo Leopold Leadership Program and of the AAAS.

Dawn holds an Individual Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Physical Geography and Marine Geology from UCSB, an M.S. in Oceanography from Texas A&M, and a B.S. in Geology from Wheaton College (Illinois)

Food + Land = Cool job

Here is one for those of you interested in land as an active source of food: The Farm at Locusts on Hudson is seeking Interns for the 2012 season.
h/t: Puk

Free GIS

You can pick from a variety of free GIS software at FreeGIS.org.  Of course, user beware, caveat emptor, etc.  But it gives you an idea of what some options would be for a cash strapped operation or just one interested in supporting this side of the software development community.  The opening screen only shows the 10 latest changes, but if you search the site, you'll find many more.

International border question

The NY Times explores the more-difficult-than-it-seems-it-should-be question of whether Russia borders North Korea.

Urban wetlands park

The LA Times has a short story on a site that was a bus parking lot but has just opened as a wetland park. KCET has photos.  Worth a peek, since it seems like a trend. (Mapped)

Lecture: The Death and Life of Great American Landscapes

Alan Brake: The Death and Life of Great American Landscapes
4:00 pm _ CDL 110

Allen, who is the Midwest editor and landscape design correspondent for The Architects Newspaper, has written that among the design disciplines, it is widely argued that landscape architecture is ascendant, and that its practitioners are claiming new professional territory from architects and urban planners. Landscape architects now frequently lead competition teams for masterplans, public space improvements, streetscapes, environmental remediation projects, parks, and community development projects. The rising concern about sustainability and, in the face of a slowed global economy, the waning of the so-called architecture of spectacle, have also bolstered the role of landscape architects, whose skills fuse placemaking and aesthetics with practical ecological needs like stormwater management and reducing urban air pollution. As a discipline, however, landscape architecture is poorly understood by the public. It receives little coverage in general interest publications, and, in the US, only one professional journal serves its practitioners. This lecture will argue for the role of critical writing in embedding landscape-based practice in the cultural, civic, and ecological future of cities, and for continuing to expand the intellectual and professional territory of landscape architects.

A Sunday walk in HMF

Sunday afternoon looks to be sunny and 46 degrees. Sounds like a great time to stretch your legs and learn.

Hutcheson Memorial Forest Tour

Sunday, February 26 at 2:00 p.m.

Tour Leader: Peter Morin (Community Ecologist)

“Winter Botany at Hutcheson Memorial Forest.”

The Hutcheson Memorial Forest (HMF) is a unique area consisting of one of the last uncut forests in the Mid-Atlantic States, along with the surrounding lands devoted to protection of the old forest and research into ecological interactions necessary to understand the forest. The tract is administered and protected by Rutgers University.  It is apparently the only uncut upland forest in the Piedmont of New Jersey, and appears on the National Park Service Register of Natural Landmarks.



Tours leave from the entrance of the woods on Amwell Road (Rt. 514) in Somerset. From New Brunswick, follow Hamilton Street west past JFK Blvd, Cedar Grove Lane and Elizabeth St. HMF is on the left past Gardener’s Nook Nursery. The driveway is located just past the guardrail over the brook.


The trail may be muddy in places so come prepared.  The tour through the woods and fields takes between one and two hours.

ERI for Englewood

The ERI for Englewood. And the appendix that includes an old study of the municipality prepared under the supervision of Ian McHarg.

Changing the way you see old places

This fun and wonderful video will change you see a few old spaces and buildings. But it also shows how absurdist efforts could impact other efforts to conceptualize places.

Buenos Aires - Inception Park from Black Sheep Films on Vimeo.