Return East Anglia Peatlands to being carbon sinks

Community Engagement  1, ... 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 & 20

[ 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.

Sea Level Rise Maps #reloaded

[ Update 2: at bottom is the comprehensive water web map that followed this...

Update 1: near the end of the story map, see how you can style your own DEM tiles ]

 East Anglia Flood Defences Final showcased in a story map the entire flooding infrastructure framework for the region, both from rising sea levels and risk of flooding, complete w flood defence infrastructure.

Online discussions in the wake of the IPCC 2021 report broadened that scope back to an original posting almost two years ago Sea level rise models show ins&outs of climate change science. Here is that update expanding to England and NW Europe, wrapping in all the lessons learned along the way. 

'Emo' vs. 'Goth' map looks

Recently updated this story map Maps like 3D Prints: Emo or goth? A map tour of special effects - adding to existing Ice Mountain hillshade style (augmented with Misting - the Emo part), a Sunrise Hack (in fact more like sunset - the Goth part) - all John Nelson's on Esri Living Atlas Terrain layers.

"Start me up" reloaded

[ Update: watch this creepy reprise by Rolling Stones & Boston Dynamics on the 40th anniversary of the Tattoo You album ]

The 25th anniversary of Win95 launch reminded me of the cringy launch party livestreamed where I was then in Calgary. What struck me was in Rolling Stones' lyrics including "you make grown men cry" in the launch party was clipped in later adverts... 

"With a little help from my friends", Part II

New how-to 

Part I showed how a map of DEFRA open data can help situational awareness for a West Midlands XR event. Having done a sea level rise and risk of flooding map for the Thames River valley near London last year, I redid one now with the lessons learned in the interval. The previous Sea Level Rise map from Open Data was rather onerous: I streamlined the process to simply load free & open data with only GIS styling; the resulting Build your own can be replicated on other GIS with listed data sources.

Unlocking Open Data from a legacy site

 In the process of looking at land cover per previous post, I found Natural England's Natural Capital Atlas - their story map encouraged me to enter EsriUK's latest competition - their Esri dataset is accompanied by ample documentation under data.gov. To save us reverting to ArcMap, let's use the provided layer files and a file geodatabase in three simple steps to map our own region on ArcGIS Pro.

Land cover to study East Anglia peatlands evolution

Community Engagement  1, ... 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 & 19

[ Update 3: next installment integrates this + companion below in peatland assessment

Update 2: see next how to re-use, clip & correct Natural England's Natural Capital Atlas

Update 1: added Living Atlas, ESA & USGS land cover and Natural England peat lands ]

Having concluded a comprehensive synopsis on risk of flooding and sea level rise, an opportunity arose to look at land cover classification with the data below and two peat land experts who will help with this.

What is your 'ikigai'?

 Ikigai (生き甲斐, "a reason for being") is a Japanese concept referring to having a direction or purpose in life, providing a sense of fulfillment and towards which they the person may take actions, giving them satisfaction and a sense of meaning. en.wikipedia.org

"With a little help from my friends"

[ 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.

Cambridgeshire COVID Info Portal 1¼ years later

Almost 1½ years from the onset of COVID, here a video of the info portal created using ESRI dashboard, inspired from the Johns Hopkins University pioneering hit - same tech with more data and expertise - our own info portal is a handy  bit.ly/CamCOVIDinfo.