Mapping social media is quickly becoming an everyday utility to understand our cultural landscapes (See Occupy Wall Street). But what about mapping natural phenomenon with social media?    I found the following map one of the most interesting intersections of social media, natural phenomenon and an outdoors pastime.  I found this interactive heat map on Field and Stream’s website.

The map requires a Facebook login and requires the users to report activity and rut phase of whitetail deer in the zip code that they hunt in.  The results are compiled and a heat map is generated on a daily basis.  Each one of the compiled maps is put in a time slider and allows the user to see changes over time.  
Of course the accuracy of the reports depends on the number of hunters who use Facebook, as well as those who are willing to submit their information.  I think it’s interesting nonetheless and worth checking out.

The interactive map from Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities displays Toxic Inventory Release Information.

NPR and the Center for Public Integrity have teamed up for a special investigation series entitled Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities. This series takes a hard look at the environmental protection, or like there of, in American communities. The series’ website includes an interactive map (see screenshot above) that displays the distribution of polluters all over the country. The map displays Toxic Release Inventory information, like the EPA’s myRight-to-Know application, but is much more user friendly than the EPA product.

More on this NPR series:

Part 1: Secret ‘Watch List’ Reveals Failure to Curb Toxic Air

Part 2: Oklahoma Town Battles Powdery Carbon Pollution

Scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center “combine analysis of satellite images of the Earth with field studies to measure, model, and map the Earth’s ecosystems, from thawing permafrost in the arctic to the expanding agriculture regions of the tropics.” The WHRC studies regions all over Earth, including their own backyard. The second half of the 20th century brought significant changes to the home of the WHRC, Cape Cod, including a doubling in the population. This increase in population has transformed land use patterns, and consequently the landscape, dramatically. The images below depict land use: dark green represents forests, yellow represents residential areas, red represents commercial and industrial areas, light brown represents salt marshes, pale brown represents sand, while orange represents agricultural areas:

1951

1985

2005

The WHRC has made a variety of resources available regarding the Cape, including time series photographs of Falmouth, maps of land cover change by town, a description of critical habitats, and an exploration of why some areas on the Cape should be a priority for local governments to acquire.

The previously scheduled maintenance of CT ECO from Nov 1-3 has been postponed to ensure CT ECO maps, viewers and map services are available during the storm recovery. All sections of CT ECO are available for use.

CT ECO is available at: http://cteco.uconn.edu

CT ECO will be unavailable Nov 1-3 due to scheduled maintenance. At this time, certain sections of the website including the Map Catalog, Simple Map Viewer, Advanced Map Viewer and Map Services for GIS users may be not be available for use. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

CT ECO  can be accessed at: http://cteco.uconn.edu

According to a Pew Hispanic Center report, poverty among children in the U.S. is now highest in the Latino population.

According to a recent report from the Pew Hispanic Center, poverty among Latino children is at an all time high and, for the first time, has displaced White children as the single largest group of children in poverty:


“More Latino children are living in poverty—6.1 million in 2010—than children of any other racial or ethnic group. This marks the first time in U.S. history that the single largest group of poor children is not white. In 2010, 37.3% of poor children were Latino, 30.5% were white and 26.6% were black.”


Also according to the report, while about two-thirds of the children’s parents immigrated to the United States, an overwhelming majority (86%) of the children were born in America. It seems that this increase, both relative and absolute, is another impact of the Great Recession:


“Prior to the Great Recession, more white children lived in poverty than Hispanic children. However, since 2007, that pattern has reversed. Between 2007 and 2010, an additional 1.6 million Hispanic children lived in poverty, an increase of 36.3%. By contrast, even though the number of white and black children living in poverty also grew, their numbers grew more slowly—up 17.6% and 11.7% respectively.”

Cravify features an interactive map of tweets related to the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

Cravify, a location based classified ads search engine, has developed a map of tweets related to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Similar to the map developed by ESRI, this map aggregates tweets related to the demonstrations and displays them over an easy to navigate basemap which, in the case Cravify, is Google Maps. Follow this link for more on Cravify or follow the developers on Twitter (@Trung_cravify and @humphrey_f).