Land Community Call

Last week, Public Lab held its quarterly community call focused on sharing experiences, concerns, and resources falling under the topics of land & soil. Thank you to @Pat for attending and sharing your vast knowledge about the frac sand mine industry, your passion for citizen science and community organizing, and your advice for young community scientists--- “persistence and determination are key!” Check out the notes from the call here.

Resources

Community Groups/Networks

• Citizen Action Wisconsin – People are the Source of Our Strength -- Pat has worked with this group to address climate change and promote sustainability at the county level
• Frac Sand Sentinel – Save The Hills Alliance -- Pat’s newsletter focusing on fracking topics like air, water, health impacts, and mine reclamation.
• FracTracker---”FracTracker uses mapping and data visualization tools like aerial imagery (with the help of LightHawk), georeferencing, drone footage, and GIS to confront the impacts and injustices of the fossil fuel industry and develop data and maps to fuel community-led campaigns.”
• Halt the Harm Network -- A collaboration of grassroots organizations sharing resources on the oil and gas industry tailored to your zip code & connecting concerned citizens

Mapping & Data Visualization Tools

• FracTracker has a National Energy Map showing pretty much everything to do with energy resources across the US, from extraction sites and storage facilities to refineries and pipelines
• AshTracker -- Data visualization and data download tool making industry data on groundwater contamination at coal ash pits accessible and easily understandable
• Coal Ash Pollution Documentation resource from the Environmental Integrity Project -- Another coal ash data resource; examines newly available data about groundwater contamination from coal ash (now required by the 2015 Coal Ash Rule)
  • Fill out a release form to download their database of groundwater monitoring reports from 265 regulated coal plants and coal ash dumps
  • Also from the Environmental Integrity Project, check out their photo storytelling project about the “Human Cost of Energy”
• EJSCREEN -- An open source GIS/mapping tool from the EPA great for easy data visualization
  • Pair your own shapefiles with numerous spatial data layers pre-loaded on the tool (environmental & demographic indicators, locations of schools, Superfund sites, public transportation, etc)
  • Use the ruler tool to calculate the distance from one point to another (For example, this school is x meters from a superfund site.)
• Justice Map -- Another mapping tool to “visualize race and income data in your community”

New Research Notes & Wikis

• New Projects at Public Lab
  • The Mountains and Mines Monitoring Project
• Soil
  • 🎈 Public Lab: How To Become a Carbon Gardener
• Landfills
  • 🎈 Public Lab: HOW WE RECOLLECT OUR DATA
• Data Visualization
  • 🎈 Public Lab: Data Visualization with Sheet Mapper: How to connect a live spreadsheet to a web map
  • 🎈 Public Lab: Recap of Greenpeace's Data Activist Co-op 2021
• Fracking
  • 🎈 Public Lab: Fracking

Please share any project updates, resources, questions, or just plain old cool stuff related to land & soil below!