Our 2021 Summer Roadtrip

Perfect use of a story map: #minivanlife 2021

Warming as Topography

 Pretty cool! More @ https://www.woodwellclimate.org/research-area/arctic/

Why no action on climate change?

Well, this well-written paper provides the answers: Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven't We Bent the Global Emissions Curve? (Stoddard et al., 2021).

It's a long read, but worth it, and would make a great framwork for an upper-level course on climate change. My favorite section is on Page 672: "...any dicussion of emissions reductions is based on a percentage of reduction below current emissions. This presumption establishes deviation from the status quo as the burden to be divided rather than the burdens of the statuts quo themselves."

The rest of the papers in this volume also sound interesing - have a look: https://www.annualreviews.org/toc/energy/46/1

Push-Button Education

 

The Memex

In his essay 'As We May Think' (from July 1945!), Vannevar Bush describes a future device called 'the memex' and thereby (conceptually) invented Google and smart gizmos. Here, humans create their own associative joins bewteen items of information to build associative trails that can be shared from one memex to another.

Great read, especially Sections 6 and 7.

The Best Maps/Charts/Data Viz of 2021

It's that time of the year when the Top-10, 20, 30, 40, 50, etc. lists of 2021 come-out:

• Maps Mania Maps of the Year
• Favourite maps of 2021 (Ken Field)
• Data Viz Projects (Nathan Yau)

Exercises for GIS Guide to Public Domain Data book

Exercises for GIS Guide to Public Domain Data book presented as a story map - fun!

15 tips for cartographers in ArcGIS Pro

15 tips for cartographers in ArcGIS Pro is a beautiful story map (embedded below) with 15 tips for making better maps using specifically ArcGIS Pro.

GraphSnow

GraphSnow is a nice and simple way to visualize snow depth measurements from the National Snow Analyses database.

Communities in Crisis

Communities in Crisis shows the impacts of climate change on communities around the world. I like it: simple and effective. 

Weather Disasters 2021

It's the time of the year when these types of compilations show-up - first-up is the Washington Post with Cold, heat, fires, hurricanes and tornadoes: The year in weather disasters. One wish: please make these animations available as GIFs so we can share and use them.

EarthDEM

This sounds great: a DEM with 2 m resolution for non-polar regions: EarthDEM

The Nile Delta’s Disappearing Farmland

Great example of urban sprawl / urbanization at the expense of farmland: The Nile Delta’s Disappearing Farmland.

Climate Change & Conflict

How Climate Change Fuels Deadly Conflict is a nice map-based scrolly-map highlighting the connections between climate change and conflict around the world.

Geology with RICHARD D. LITTLE

Great YouTube channel Richard Little about the geology here in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts: Geology with RICHARD D. LITTLE.

Geology & Politics

The 'Blue Swoosh' in the Red South:  

Climate Change Solutions

Here ar a bunch of reasonable & robust plans out there to get to netzero carbon emissions by 2050 - here's one visualization of some of those plans: How to Get the World to Netzero Carbon Emissions by 2050 – A Graphical Guide.

I especially appreciate thaat the data are included as a shared Google Sheet - that's the way to do it!

Palm Oil, Deforestation, and Climate Change

 The World's Addiction to Palm Oil Is Only Getting Worse is a nice 'scrolly-map' by Bloomberg News.

Calculating where you should live

This could be cool: https://flowingdata.com/2021/11/24/calculating-where-you-should-live/ (if you can make it past the paywall).

Compare the Climate and Weather Between Two+ Cities Worldwide

Compare the Climate and Weather Between Two+ Cities Worldwide is very nice (just ignore the annoying ads). Take two or more cities & compare their climate, using the classic seasonality 'climographs' and interesting time-of-year vs time-of-day 'surface' charts. 

This could be a great teaching tool if it were not for the overwhelming and distracting ads.

Cities In Africa

AFRICA’S RISING CITIES: How Africa will become the center of the world’s urban future is a great 'scrolly-map' showing how the centers of urbanization are shifting towards Africa.

Salt & Ocean Circulation

Great video as usual: There's No Salt In The Ocean