Flow diagrams of U.S. and Western water use from EcoWest on Vimeo.
Flow diagrams of U.S. and Western water use
Americans use an average of 410 billion gallons of water per day. Where does all that water come from and where does it go? Flow diagrams from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory provide excellent summaries of the nation’s water use. These graphics, also known as Sankey diagrams, show how much we pump from groundwater aquifers, [...]
read moreGauging wildfire severity with suppression metrics
The number of acres burned is the most common metric used for tracking wildfires, but there are other important measures for gauging the severity of the fire season. The struggle to suppress wildfires is something that the federal government monitors very closely. For decades, it has been consistently reporting data on the army of firefighters [...]
read moreAir pollution overview from EcoWest on Vimeo.
Our air is cleaner, but big challenges remain
We’ve made significant progress in reducing pollution since the Clean Air Act (CAA) was enacted more than 40 years ago, even during a period of strong economic growth. Just since 1990, when the CAA was last amended, GDP is up 65%, while aggregate emissions of the six major pollutants that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [...]
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Human footprint maps of Western states and cities
Just a quick post to let you know that I’ve created a gallery of high-resolution maps depicting the human footprint in each of the 11 Western states, plus some major cities in the region. I wrote about this dataset a few weeks ago and wanted to share some more detailed, zoomed-in views. White indicates areas [...]
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Land
Human footprint maps of Western states and cities
Just a quick post to let you know that I’ve created a gallery of high-resolution maps depicting the human footprint in each of the 11 Western states, plus some major cities in the region. I wrote about this dataset a few weeks ago and wanted to share some more detailed, zoomed-in views. White indicates areas [...]
Wildfires
Gauging wildfire severity with suppression metrics
The number of acres burned is the most common metric used for tracking wildfires, but there are other important measures for gauging the severity of the fire season. The struggle to suppress wildfires is something that the federal government monitors very closely. For decades, it has been consistently reporting data on the army of firefighters [...]
Water
Flow diagrams of U.S. and Western water use
Americans use an average of 410 billion gallons of water per day. Where does all that water come from and where does it go? Flow diagrams from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory provide excellent summaries of the nation’s water use. These graphics, also known as Sankey diagrams, show how much we pump from groundwater aquifers, [...]
Data visualization
Google Timelapse animates Earth’s changing landscape
Google has just released an interesting tool for tracking environmental changes through satellite imagery. Timelapse shows changes to the Earth’s surface over nearly three decades, from 1984 to 2012. Each frame in these animations is a year of imagery from the Landsat satellite program. Google has put together some pre-made views and below I’ve pasted [...]
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Recent Articles
Flow diagrams of U.S. and Western water use
Americans use an average of 410 billion gallons of water per day. Where does all that water come from and where does it go? Flow diagrams from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory provide excellent summaries of the nation’s water use. These graphics, also known as Sankey diagrams, show how much we pump from groundwater aquifers, [...]
Gauging wildfire severity with suppression metrics
The number of acres burned is the most common metric used for tracking wildfires, but there are other important measures for gauging the severity of the fire season. The struggle to suppress wildfires is something that the federal government monitors very closely. For decades, it has been consistently reporting data on the army of firefighters [...]
Our air is cleaner, but big challenges remain
We’ve made significant progress in reducing pollution since the Clean Air Act (CAA) was enacted more than 40 years ago, even during a period of strong economic growth. Just since 1990, when the CAA was last amended, GDP is up 65%, while aggregate emissions of the six major pollutants that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [...]
Human footprint maps of Western states and cities
Just a quick post to let you know that I’ve created a gallery of high-resolution maps depicting the human footprint in each of the 11 Western states, plus some major cities in the region. I wrote about this dataset a few weeks ago and wanted to share some more detailed, zoomed-in views. White indicates areas [...]
Google Timelapse animates Earth’s changing landscape
Google has just released an interesting tool for tracking environmental changes through satellite imagery. Timelapse shows changes to the Earth’s surface over nearly three decades, from 1984 to 2012. Each frame in these animations is a year of imagery from the Landsat satellite program. Google has put together some pre-made views and below I’ve pasted [...]
Tracking conservation ballot measures
Open space bonds and other ballot measures are a critical source of environmental funding in the United States. Since 1988, American voters have approved 1,810 ballot measures that have generated more than $58 billion for conservation. These measures usually pass, even though they typically involve increasing taxes and government spending. To track the success of [...]
Lay of the land: who owns the West?
The preponderance of public land is one of the American West’s defining features and it’s a primary reason why so much of the region has escaped the kind of intensive development that characterizes most areas back East. In this set of slides, I examine the lay of the land in the West and explain how [...]
Go with the flow: Sankey diagrams illustrate energy economy
Energy flows through everything, so it’s only fitting to use flow charts to depict our complex energy economy. Since the early 1970s, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has been producing such graphics, not only for energy, but also for water and carbon dioxide. Technically known as Sankey diagrams, these data visualizations summarize flows through a [...]
Tracking trends in recent wildfire activity
With drought gripping much of the West, 2013 could be another active wildfire season in the region. There’s already a fast-moving blaze in Southern California that is threatening hundreds of homes. To track the severity of wildfires, I’ve created a dashboard on this page that summarizes recent trends, both nationally and in the West. The [...]
The human footprint in the American West
Over the past few years, I’ve been creating slides—hundreds and hundreds them. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, a major environmental funder, asked us to take stock of the state of the North American West, one of its geographic priorities. Rather than write a report that would quickly be shelved, we decided to answer the [...]
A dashboard for monitoring drought
Aside from the Pacific Northwest, nearly all of the land west of the 100th Meridian is currently drier than normal. The drought has been especially severe in the nation’s midsection, where some areas are suffering through “exceptional” conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. To track drought severity, I’ve created a dashboard on this page [...]