Mapping

Who doesn’t like maps? Our director James Strittholt has said before that maps are a unifying object from which people can find common ground. You can take a group of people, spread out a map on the table and everyone will begin dreaming, talking and telling stories. Data Basin is not much different and, from the beginning, we have been thrilled by how much the community has taught us how it will be used. 

In my August blog post about abstaining from plastic, I referenced a site describing the detrimental effects of plastics in our oceans and briefly mentioned the “garbage patch” in the North Pacific Gyre. Many people allude to this large concentration of plastic waste when appealing to the public to ban plastic bags or increase plastic recycling programs. Recently, there has been some debate about the actual size of the plastic waste expanse in the North Pacific Gyre.

Over my career I can’t recall how many paper napkin maps I have digitized into datasets.

Protected areas are important to each person in their own way.  Be it a special spot, a rare habitat or unique ecosystem, we all have our reasons for caring.  While I care deeply about the intrinsic value of protected areas, I also care about the data that helps us catalog these places.  One of CBI’s recent projects is PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition) dataset, a national inventory of protected areas.