Community Engagement 1, ... 12, 13, 14 & 15
[ Update 3: the next installment updates the infrastructure aspects of this for East Anglia
Update 2: Cambridge could be completely underwater by 2100, warns Emoov report
Update 1: added slide deck at bottom, to summarize the last two years of work on this ]
After a hiatus focusing on Coronavirus and story maps on East Anglia and other mapping topics, let's revisit that moving target of sea level rise timing.
Over 1½ yrs. ago Part I said that I left socials and geo work... well not quite! I did quit all activism and will soon return to my family home in France left almost 50 yrs. ago.
I left now by entering the 2023 Story Map competition with "a story about conserving Earth’s lands and waters": East Anglia Fenlands: Peatlands Restoration to mitigate Climate Change sums up my work in East Anglia under Cottenham Open - introduced here 4½ years ago as Local community engagement - you can follow my professional portfolio either at top right of my blog home in desktop mode, or my story map direct.
[ Update: Part II re-uses this and improves the manual for a London area action ]
Part of our mandate at cottenham.info is to raise awareness around climate change issues in East Anglia. A key part is to quantify risks around flooding from land during increasingly variable weather, as well as to predict what sea level rise would look like over time from melting polar ice caps. That combines respectively excellent ground work by DEFRA - see their Future Fens twitter feed - and modelling against topography by Ordnance Survey and DEFRA. And timing of sea level rises is an emotional issue: to balance the reality of the risk with questions around time scales (see comment), will help raise awareness without unduly raising alarm.
Update 2: Anaglyph 3D pops up Central Cambridge halfway down under Other Areas
Update 1: added four effects to enhance relief maps on mountain areas at the bottom
Tip: see how to make topography look "right side up" in a trick around light source
Last month's Story-in-a-map reminded me I created a number of map posters, as a mean to reach out to the community, where prints are better in town hall or small group presentations, as well as wall art.
Satellite imagery has been around for almost as long as GIS, and the following may just make them so easy they finally gain momentum. The same way Jeeps and Suburbans had been around for a couple of generations, but only the last generation saw Ford legitimize SUVs with its Explorer.
Community Engagement 1, ... 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 & 20
Update 7: peatlands restoration in Dartmoor here
Update 6: peatlands revisited in 2025 here
Update 5: Community Interest Company re-engagement is here
Update 4: actual Fenlanders interviewed in this fab blog post
Update 3: peatland restoration by numbers, Indonesian example
Update 2: soil degradation and climate change masterclass, TEDtalk pointers
Update: added Why we should all be obsessed with Peatlands at the end of the story map below ]
No. 20! Isn't it fitting that chronicling East Anglia challenges & opportunities w.r.t. climate emergency - risk of flooding, sea level rise, vulnerability indices and now pandemic - uncovered the greatest opportunity yet: returning local peatlands from carbon emitters to original carbon sinks could dwarf any individual effort to mitigate CO2 emissions, currently the major driver of climate change.
This follows on blogposts about East Anglia in general here. It continues on Arctic peatlands news here.
The last post on infrastructure affected by sea level rise is here. Contrast below Environment England's Risk of flooding from river and from sea at left for waters coming naturalls from onshore & offsore, and my Seal level rise model by simply intersecting various sea level elevations and Ordnance Survey topogaphy (intro here and workshop here). Think of it below as fresh water largely going NE to the North Sea at left, and at right as sea water encroaching largely SW onto the land:
Update1: see clipped oroginal and working vector datasets posted as detailed at bottom.
Update 2: added DIY map-mapping workshops & notes to help citzen science
Update 3: here at the end is the relevance of this sort of effort in a broader context
Update 4: worrying revisit of peatlands degradation with increased drought & extreme weather here: increased heat degraded carbon absorption, and that is mirrored in tropical forests turning into carbon emitters seen here
Update 5: see follow-on here: East Anglia environment in a global context
***
This follows on previous Peatlands blog posting here, last of the Community Engagement Series.
As news abounds about Arctic Permafrost & Peatlands degrading faster than thought (Copilot), this may be a good time to bring back some Natural England and Environment Agency data under Open Government License (OGL, National Archives). The upshot is that returning peatlands to their original state is the biggest climate change mitigator in the UK detailed here & here: briefly, peatlands either degraded thru neglect or converted to farm land, not only shrinks & stops being floodwater catchment, but it converts carbon sinks through sphagnum moss into carbon emitters thru windborne dried peat. In other words, re-watering peatlands dwarf efforts from other mitigation of climate change (see sources at bottom).
Update 3: follow on next post "Even more maps, with a twist" here.
Update 2: found a textbook example of "carving upstream" in this gorgeous video of the Uinta Mountains of Wyoming.
Update 1: more offshore canyons crowning Antarctica found with new digital terrain data and give us a beautiful map @ bottom.
This follows on the previous map story here. The next one is here for maps & here for geomorphology.
This follows on a map story here. Next history map is here.
Update : check out below how a new map, itiner-e, updated the Roman Roads view.
Update 2: speaking of malaria in second map, appended maps on trade routes that triggered the Black Plague in the 14th c. Mediterranean.
Update 3: And here is a news story on Alexander the Great's port rediscovered in So. Iraq, well inland today of the then Persian Gulf.
Not William Wilder's 1953 Gregory Peck & Audrey Hepburn flick (Wikipedia)! When drawing up a map of Apostolic Palestine for local Catholics, I ran across Ancient World Mapping Center (AWMC) at UNC-Chapel Hill. While their web app (ArcGIS Online) is a cool one-stop-shop for their rich data set - for ex. I cannot do point clustering (Comet Assistant) with my standard Argis Pro desktop license - I loaded, picked apart an re-sorted some of their data for some interesting insights.
[ Update 3: action in Update 1 resulted in Trinity Hall declaring divestment... hurray!
Update 2: the next post rounds this up with a Story Map that includes flood risk
Update 1: here is a video of the action mentioned below, re: colleges divest from oil ]
An Extinction Rebellion Cambridge action, demanding colleges divest from oil investment, led to a simple yet arresting idea: map the level below 12 m. sea level rise each college would be under, if climate change we left unabated, as a means to help convince them of the consequences of climate inaction.
[ Update: here is a final version for finer-grained subdivision of the same data ]
This is the third in a series of Story Maps after Sea Level Rise models in Cambridge, East Anglia and on Local Flooding in Cottenham immediately north. Full page here.
This follows on East Anglia environment in a global context. A recent article, Peatlands across the Arctic are expanding as the climate warms, research shows via @physorg_com, made me look to map data for that. I posted a fair bit on East Anglia peatlands in this blog. I also recently used polar Arctic basemaps N of 50°lat., like Arctic Waterfront, a measure of geopolitical stakes, amongst this blog's Arctic coverage. Next post is Mapping Arctic Boreal Peatlands, cont..
