Student-friendly competition

Registration is open for the 30th annual NJDEP GIS Mapping Contest. The event features the best non-commercial mapping in the State of New Jersey. GIS users from federal, state, local government, non-profit agencies, as well as students are eligible to enter the contest.  Attendance is open to all.

Review the rules, categories and register online at the NJDEP GIS web site:
http://www.nj.gov/dep/gis.

New This Year:
Two Internet mapping categories – Best Story Map and Best Analytical Web Map

For Mapping Contest questions contact the Bureau of GIS Help Desk at 609-777-0672 or mailto:gisnet@dep.state.nj.us.

More salamanders

A Salamander Movement seems to be emerging to help protect the movement of salamanders. The US Fish and Wildlife Service posted a great piece on efforts in our area to help those little guys safely cross streets. We disturbed their habitat, so we should be helping them cope.

Design lecture: Public/Private Partnerships

ANDREW MOORE, ALISON SHIPLEY

Quennell Rothschild & Partners

“Public/Private Partnerships: Quennell Rothschild & Partners”

Rutgers University - Landscape Architecture Lecture Series

Wednesday, March 22, 2017 | 4:00 – 5:00 p.m.

Cook/Douglass Lecture Hall, Room 110, Cook Campus

Rutgers Landscape Architecture Alumni

City quote

“How’s anyone ever going to come up with a book or a painting or a symphony or a sculpture that can compete with a great city? You can’t. When you look around, every street, every boulevard is its own special art form.”

 - Gil in Midnight in Paris

LAM photo outtakes

Landscape Architecture Magazine keeps a running collection of photos that didn't quite fit into the latest issue, called the Art Director's Cut. The latest is a beautiful evening photo along Chcago's Riverwalk.Take a peek at the entire collection.

Phones as remote sensing scanners

HawkSpex mobile is a new app (public release later this year) that will turn your smartphone into a multi-spectral scanner. While your iPhone will be limited in range, I imagine this could be a very interesting educational tool for classroom introductions of multi-spectral analysis.

Potentially a very cool app.

Local planning board meeting

Tonight (Thursday) is the monthly meeting of the Highland Park Planning Board. Based on the agenda posted online, there is a little business to be conducted. But it is hard to tell if it will be very contentious. If you go, the meeting starts at 7:30 at Boro Hall, 221 South Fifth Ave. Highland Park, NJ in the meeting room just inside the front door.

Jame Rose book

Looking for some Spring Break reading??

New book by Professor Dean Cardasis.

Prof. Cardasis research reintroduced James Rose to the canon of American Twentieth Century Landscape Architecture. Rose was a classmate of Garret Eckbo and Dan Kiley at Harvard. This is the first biography of Rose – an artist who explored his profession with words and built works and fearlessly critiqued the developing patterns of land use he witnessed during a period of rapid suburban development.

Steve Strom's Suitability Analysis notes

Here are the old handwritten Suitability Analysis notes from when Steve Strom used these techniques in his studio. This four page set of Suitability Analysis notes is online now as a PDF. His description of weighted analysis lacks a graphic, so I created a digital version of both some of his graphics and a new Weight and Rate graphic that should help you work through it all as you look ahead to our next exam:To be clear, each grid shows the very same piece of land but being rated for a different issue (soils, slope, vegetation). Presumably that is fairly objective. But each individual criterion is then weighted based on relative importance. In this case, Slope has rather subjectively been weighted as 5 times more important that Vegetation. If you click on my graphic it will enlarge and be more readable.

Species extinctions under climate change: prediction, understanding, prevention

Ecology & Evolution Graduate Program Seminar


H. Resit Akcakaya
Stony Brook University

"Species extinctions under climate change: prediction, understanding, prevention"

Thursday March 9, 2017      4:00 p.m.
Alampi Room, Marine and Coastal Sciences

Planet

The world of geomatics is changing fast. And, like Google Maps, it will reach non-technical audiences in their daily lives. Read about Planet's immediate plans in The Atlantic.

“You can use the medium-resolution constellation to scan the planet every day, and then—say you see a plane crash or a flood in a town—you can use the high-resolution satellites to snap those changes,” says Will Marshall, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Planet.

Design videos

We had a conversation about design and planning today. I tried to find some interesting videos helping people walk through interesting examples.

The first surprise for me was the impressive set of videos from Smarthistory. These are Art History videos from Khan Academy. Two of them featured great designs, walking students through Maya Lin's Vietnam Veteran's Memorial and the timeless zen garden at Ryoan Ji.








Some of the videos I found were more documentary in style. The first one here is an older documentary about Fallingwater. Despite the older video, the content provides some nice insight. The second is a documentary about one of my favorite architects, Fay Jones.



There were also some that were more like visitors' walk throughs. This one of the Seattle Public Library let's you see much of the place.


Not every design gets executed without a hitch. This video reflects on the early problems that Frank Gehry's Disney Concert Hall experienced. The next video walks through the realities of living in Celebration, FL.

 

Alien invaders

The NJ DEP has a website that links to the fact sheets for 15 different invasive species in New Jersey. Some are plants, some are bugs, all are problems.

Resources of the Day

Some useful (and not so useful) planning resources:

* EnvPlan class website
* Ian McHarg and Design With Nature
* Phil Lewis
* USGS Topographic Quad Sheets
* County Soils Survey
* NJ Geoweb
* TRI Data and RTKnet.org (from the Houston Chronicle)
* NRIs and ERIs
* ArcGIS.com 

Participation

Samoan Circles, Fishbowls and the Feldman Variation.

Saturday night?

The salamanders might be crossing tomorrow night! If you live close to campus, this might be a very unusual wildlife viewing opportunity. Plus, it might help you in your study of habitat for an upcoming exam.

If you go, please observe all safety precautions described on the website.

Aquifer at risk

National Geographic has a great interactive story on the Ogallala Aquifer. Not only is it a large one, but it is in a central location. The aquifer underlies much of the Great Plains and provides 30% of all of the water used to irrigate US agriculture. Even though it is easy to read and written for a general audience, the story integrates key terms like recharge and unsaturated zone.

Wetlands value

When we talk about wetlands, we often assume that our audience already knows why they are so important. But every so often it is worth reviewing the message.

What makes wetlands valuable and to whom? The NRCS has developed an easy explanation which includes a small section on regional differences for each part of the country. The midwest section emphasizes a decline in waterfowl while the section on the West cites a specific loss, "Wetlands in California's Central Valley have been reduced from more than 4 million acres to about 300,000 acres."

Reading a hydrograph

For students interested in refreshing their memories on the way that hydrographs work, this video should help out.



Could you read a hydrograph if it showed up on the exam? What does this have to do with Environmental Planning?

Bird habitat

As we start to talk about habitat, I thought this post/ad from SFI might be interesting. It lists 6 projects promoting bird habitat. If you think that birds can just land anywhere, think about this list a little more.

Also, this weekend we saw a pair of bald eagles just 2 or 3 miles up the Raritan River (near the Somerset Diner) from the College Ave campus. Someone said their nest was nearby and eBird has someone sighting them recently too. Just a few miles further upstream is a widely known breeding pair at Duke Farms. You can watch them on the EagleCam, especially once they have some eggs to hatch.

Lecture: The Gardens of Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte

CONNIE WEBSTER
Professor Emerita, Rutgers University
"The Gardens of Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte"

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 | 4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Cook/Douglass Lecture Hall, Room 110, Cook Campus

Cuyahoga River fire

One of the more famous environmental planning disasters in American history centers around the polluting of Cleveland's Cuyahoga River. It is amazing to look back and see how bad things were for the river when it caught fire in 1969. The website, The Pop History Dig, has posted a recollection of that tumultuous time.

How much better is it today? Now the Cuyahoga Valley is a National Park!

Racial disparities data ban

Have you heard about the Local Zoning Decisions Act of 2017? It is a bill proposed in Congress that says:

“No Federal funds may be used to design, build, maintain, utilize, or provide access to a Federal database of geospatial information on community racial disparities or disparities in access to affordable housing,”

I have yet to see one comment from either the planning or the geospatial community that was not staunchly opposed to this. You can follow its progress at Congress.gov. Hopefully there won't be much to follow,

Landscape Lecture

Wednesday, February 15, 2017 | 4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Cook/Douglass Lecture Hall, Room 110, Cook Campus
DR. ULI PAETZE
Emschergenossenschaft and Lippeverband
“The Silent Revolution – Transforming Germany‘s Industrial Heart via Water Management”

Aquifer quality from USGS

The USGS has released a study on water quality that includes specifics on five major aquifers. It sounds like one of those "Good News, Bad News" reports with findings like this:

"The nutrient nitrate was the only constituent from manmade sources that exceeded the human-health benchmark. These findings were in the Valley and Ridge carbonate-rock aquifers and the Piedmont and Blue Ridge carbonate-rock aquifers at a low percentage (2 percent)."

 

Technical announcements for five aquifers studied:
Basin and Range basin-fill aquifers (western U.S.)
Valley and Ridge carbonate-rock aquifers and the Piedmont and Blue Ridge carbonate-rock aquifers (eastern U.S.)
Northern Atlantic Coastal Plain aquifer system (east coast of U.S.)
Southeastern Coastal Plain aquifer system (southeastern U.S.)
Coastal Lowlands aquifer system (south central U.S.)

Maps for casual reading

A great way to challenge your ideas about map design is to look at other maps. Some map galleries worth perusing include:

• The NJ DEP Mapping Contest Winners for 2016
• The NJ DEP Mapping Contest Winners for 2014
• The NJ DEP Mapping Contest Winners for 2012 
• ESRI US 2016 Map Gallery Winners
• Beautiful Maps on Tumblr
• Old maps at the Library of Congress
• David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

Why read when you can read maps?

Environmental planning job

The NJ Pinelands is a Truly Special Place. How great would it be to help keep it that way?

PLANNER-LAND USE/RESOURCE

The NJ Pinelands Commission, an independent state agency with regulatory jurisdiction over the million-acre Pinelands Area, seeks a full-time Resource Planner. Responsibilities include publication of the Commission’s periodic economic monitoring analyses, review of complex land use issues and municipal ordinances, coordination with other state agencies on infrastructure planning, and management of various water supply and water quality planning projects. GIS skills and experience with demographics, data manipulation and analysis required.

Bachelor’s degree in land use planning or related field and one year land use planning or related experience required or equivalent combination of education and experience. Master’s degree in related field is a plus and may substitute for one year required experience.

Only candidates selected for interview will be notified. For more information, see www.state.nj.us/pinelands 

Send resume and cover letter by February 17, 2017 to Pinelands Commission, P.O. Box 359, New Lisbon, NJ  08064 or Fax: 609-894-7330 or

E-mail: humanres@njpines.state.nj.us or complete an application at the Commission’s office, 15C Springfield Road, New Lisbon, NJ  08064.

EOE.

RotD: USGS Topo Maps

In class today we will be talking about ways to access the free USGS topographic quads for NJ online.

It is amazing to me to think how much the use of these has changed aver the years even though the maps themselves have changed so little. For those that are new to the maps, I am sharing some different scenes from around New Jersey that may be of interest. Just click on each and they'll expand.









A special thanks goes out to Mike Siegel and the Rutgers Cartography Lab.  This is a great resource for students and for pros.  A national resource is the Libre Map Project, but it is a bit harder for first time users.

GIS freedom concerns

For those interested in geospatial information, it used to be a moment to celebrate when GIS got mentioned in proposed legislation. However, the GIS community is not celebrating this recently introduced bill.

This bill was introduced in Congress (HR482 and S103) on January 17, 2017:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/482

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/103

SEC. 3. PROHIBITION ON USE OF FEDERAL FUNDS. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no Federal funds may be used to design, build, maintain, utilize, or provide access to a Federal database of geospatial information on community racial disparities or disparities in access to affordable housing.

Ahwahnee Principles

On Monday I told some students about The Ahwahnee Principles for Resource-Efficient Communities. Will they get renamed as the Majestic Principles sometime in the future? Probably not.

A moderate storm?

The Nor'Easter this week was pretty nasty but, as far as I can tell, not a hurricane and not a big killer. Because of that it is worth keeping an eye on the impact as a baseline for other events.

• Video/photos of the tiki bar underwater got retweeted a lot.
• The beach erosion is pretty stunning if you haven't seen it before.
• The water in the streets of places like Ocean City seems like more than just a minor problem.
• The thousands of people without power hope that the power returns before their 5 gallons of ice cream melts.
• A viral video of some very wet streets in LBI near Ship Bottom

So what are they problems here? Is this the new normal and we should plan on a few disruptions a year? Is this simply the cost of living close to the sea?  Is this a harbinger of things to come? (Robert Kopp says SLR could 8' by 2100) Is it just a problem when people die?

We'll talk about it in class on Thursday.


UPDATE:

Ortley Beach NJ January 2017 after the storm @JSHurricaneNews @News12 pic.twitter.com/d8zzAZTSgt

— David Lospinoso (@david_lospinoso) January 25, 2017

Poe's 208th

Today is Edgar Allen Poe's 208th birthday. There are plenty of places up and down the East Coast to celebrate, including Richmond, Baltimore and Philadelphia. But did you realize that there are 9 different Poe places in NYC?

If you can't get out, read some Poe!

Starting the spring with a planning post on housing

StrongTowns.org has a post that really works for the start of a new semester of planning.

Written by Nolan Gray, the post explains how Lexington (the best little city in America) could address its affordable housing shortage without compromising the city's famous urban growth boundary. So for a first day lesson, it already integrates the UGB and an important social and economic issue.

The article goes on to talk about mixed use, setbacks, parking, and little zoning tweaks that could make a big difference. For a first day conversation, it is a useful piece because it shows how planning often uses indirect levers to manipulate a problem. It also serves as a reminder that there is a lot to learn from informal sources, like non-profit blogs. Plus, Lexington is a great city that you should read about more often.

Health Story Maps

As we kick off a new semester of the Honors Seminar linking mapping, design and health, it would be useful to think about some very different ways that maps can speak to health issues. South Carolina has a very data-driven story map that allows side-by-side comparisons of health-related issues across the state. With maps like these, the biggest challenge may be the density of information that they contain. A remarkably different example is a story-driven story map by a group called One Million Community Health Workers Campaign. Each story it tells is mapped, but the locations and the map are more about background and context than they are data.

The point is, not only are there many different types of health issues that can be mapped (obesity, infectious diseases, cancer clusters) but there are many different ways to map them. As we move ahead with our exploration of mapping technologies,

MLK Memorial

Today is a great day to reflect on the complicated histories of the MLK Memorial in Washington DC. It will get used heavily today, and may become a more popular site over the coming months.

Appy New Year

A great way to start the year would be cleaning all of the old junk off of your smartphone. But then you'll need to reload it with new apps. What apps should you get? Start with the PlaNetizen list of Best Planning Apps from 2017.

5 Trends

According to Jack Dangermond, here are the 5 biggest trends impacting GIS. I probably don't give the location services enough attention. Maybe that should be my resolution for 2017.