Top 10 issues for the Lower Raritan

At Rutgers, we famously sit "on the banks of the Old Raritan." So it has been great watching the university become increasingly interested in the river over the past decade.

A great place to start is this list of the Top 10 Environmental Problems facing the Lower Raritan Watershed in 2019. The list is written by Heather Fenyk, President of the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership. Her list is great because it integrates scientific issues like biodiversity with institutional issues like the inability to develop a regional planning framework.

the food state we're in

Michele Byers writes a regular column, published in a variety of New Jersey papers, called The State We're In. Foodies will find her latest column interesting as it links regenerative agriculture with other topics including climate change and human health.

True costs of online mapping?

In a piece on The Medium, Jason Voiovich asks whether the utility of Google Maps is worth the hidden costs. Google long ago moved past being a search company and is now an information broker. But his reminder of how much of that information we provide was a good read at the start of the semester.

Post needs a map

This post of 10 Cultural Landsmarks in Section would be great if only it had a map. And maybe came with a plane ticket.

The power of where?

Shimonti Paul writes in "Maps define ‘The Power of Where’" about myriad ways that GIS and maps are serving people, ranging from basic public uses to advanced applications for emergencies. You can use a red flag to mark the spot where they call it utopian, but the piece has some nice quotes that make it worth a read.

Use at your own risk?

National Parks have always been a little dangerous. That is part of their appeal. But, while the park rangers are furloughed, some people are still using National Parks. And, explains the Washington Post, for at least three different visitors it has turned deadly.

“A casual cross country skier would want to go to Tower Falls” in Yellowstone, Wenk said. “If they suffer a heart attack — every year you have that — we wouldn’t be able to quickly respond. You might be dramatically delayed. It’s correct, people die in national parks all the time. If you can attribute [the shutdown] to people not being able to get to them for an hour and a half, that’s another story.”

Rough headline

The AP starts the new year with this rough headline:

Garbage, feces take toll on national parks amid shutdown

The intersection of art and the Lower Raritan

TaeHo Lee has posted a great interview with artist, Olga Bautista. Her work exploring natural materials and trash, will be displayed later in January at Kim's Bike Shop. I am looking forward to seeing the work because it sounds like she has found a way to connect personal or intimate interactions with plants and streams, with larger expressions about the forces nature.


The opening reception for Windows of Understanding is at the Zimmerli Art Museum on January 22^nd. Olga’s art installation will be exhibited at Kim’s Bike Shop, 111 French St., starting on January 21^st. From 10-noon on January 21 the Olga and the LRWP will participate in walking tours of the art installations and seed plantings at 10am and 2pm.

Free Webinar

WEBINAR #4: Co-designing sustainable land systems with spatial analysis and mapping tools

TOMORROW! Tuesday, 4 December, 2018 8:00 AM - 9:30 AM EST 
Attendance is free!

The GLP working group on co-production is pleased to invite you to the fourth webinar of the webinar series on co-production in the field of land-system science.

The webinar is open to people already engaged in co-production, as well as to newcomers to the topic, who are not currently engaged in this exciting work. The webinar will focus on co-designing sustainable land systems with spatial analysis and mapping tools.

Description
Land systems are inherently spatial. This means that participatory land use planning and management involve negotiation and decision-making processes on issues such as the location of things, activities, and responsibilities, or the connections and complementarities of functions among different areas. Therefore, tools that help visualising past and current, or modelling future states, extents, and interactions of spatial elements, can play a crucial role for the co-production of sustainable land systems.

Speakers
The three speakers will provide examples on how various types of mapping and spatial analysis tools can be used in participatory processes:

Joan Bastide (Senior Research Scientist, Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), University of Bern, Switzerland. Coordinator of OneMap Myanmar project): In Myanmar, the allocation of land to large-scale palm oil plantations have generated severe conflicts between local communities, government, private companies and ethnic armed groups. In order to address the complex land disputes, stakeholders are now collaborating towards the co-production of land use assessment data and tools by mobilising drones, interactive web mapping, participatory data collection and validation, and multi-stakeholder dialogue platforms. Based on this process, unused land will be redistributed to landless communities and internally displaced populations.

Michael Uwemedimo (Project Director, CMAP, Nigeria). Michael’s project endeavours to give excluded communities in Port Harcourt (Nigeria) the power to put themselves on the map, to identify and analyse key problems and potentials, in view of giving focus to future planning interventions. Youth-led participatory mapping teams are leading the citywide data collection component. Their efforts have ensured that informal settlements across the city are now included in the most ambitious water and sanitation infrastructure project in Nigeria. In his presentation, Michael, will provide insights into this project, which will form the foundation of an inclusive City Development Strategy.

Giacomo Rambaldi (Senior Programme Coordinator, Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, Netherlands). For the past 20 years, Giacomo has been animating a large community of practitioners engaged in the conduct of participatory mapping, later on dubbed as participatory GIS (PGIS). He will illustrate the diversity of PGIS practices with practical examples and then focus on the use of participatory 3D modelling and on case studies in the Pacific region where the participatory process and follow-up actions have led to profound positive change.

You can also view recordings of the first three webinars and download supplementary materials on the working group's homepage.

Registration Information
Registration is open to 1,000 people, but attendance is limited to the first 100 participants who join the meeting the day of the event, regardless of registration order. 

If you would like to receive copies of all presentations as well as a meeting recording link please register for the event even if you cannot attend.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

REGISTER HERE

Friday Fotos

Parc del Clot in Barcelona.

Finally fixing up that dump

LA+ JOURNAL has a published the winning redesigns for Central Park. It is about time. When NYC first laid it out, they hired a guy that had never designed anything. Maybe this time they can get a licensed professional.

Plus, it looks like some of the winners finally take care of the uneven terrain that makes the park so difficult to get around.

Interesting talk

'Is There Really a New Economy?' A Sociologist Tries to Understand New York's Innovation Complex
Sharon Zukin, Professor of Sociology
Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center


Friday, November 30, 2018
3:00-5:00pm
Academic Building West 6051
15 Seminary Place
New Brunswick

Population animation

An amazing animation that captures population growth by state. It looks like California passes New York at 1961.

Johnny Quispe lecture

The week of Thanksgiving can be a slow time, but this year it is loaded with opportunities. For readers of Places and Spaces, one stands out. Blake Hall's own Johnny Quispe will be speaking at the Lawrence Brook Watershed Partnership Membership Meeting, Tuesday, November 20th, at 7:30PM. The meeting is at the Milltown Senior Center.

The talk will provide an overview of sea level rise, its effects on coastal ecosystems, his research, and impacts on NJ.

Maplewood Memorial Park

Shout out to Rutgers alum Jennifer Ryan for her work helping restore the Olmsted Bros' Maplewood Memorial Park.

New Imperative

Doug Richardson's latest ArcNews column is worth a minute of your time. In The New Imperative: Spatializing Health Research and Practice, he describes how the International Geospatial Health Research Network (IGHRN) is leading the way on issues at the intersection of health and mapping.

Property rights

Keeping an eye on Knick v. Scott this year. The Inquirer inquired. One analyst warns it might revive debate over Williamson County.

ANJEC 2018

Had a good time at ANJEC's Environmental Congress today.

I talked about NJ Geoweb. Check it out if you don't know it. It has a primer and tutorial online. And NJ Map and GeoLab were there too.

Learned more about the Public Health and Our Ports: The Road to Clean Air Conference will be held on Friday, October 26th at Rutgers Center for Law and Justice.

Berlin's Floating University

As part of the Bauhaus centenary celebration, Berlin floated a new idea: a university on the water.

The Geospatial Data Act is almost law

For a while now, the GIS community has been trying to get the Geospatial Data Act passed by Congress. Yesterday, the bill finally passed out of Congress and headed down Pennsylvania Ave to await the President's signature, which is expected before Sunday.

In addition, the FAA Reauthorization bill asserted greater government authority over drones.