The New York / New Jersey metropolitan region is home to several projects with many partnering organizations, community groups, and individuals. ##Gowanus Canal Mapping## The Gowanus Canal Conservancy is conducting environmental investigations in the Gowanus Canal sub-watershed by using balloon mapping to capture aerial imagery once per season over the past year. We are also flying a stereo camera rig to collect infrared imagery. We are documenting patterns/concentrations of vegetation or possible contaminants, and we are documenting the stormwater retention design interventions that the GCC is installing along the canal edge. Together with Proteus Gowanus, we are searching for unknown or unidentified pipes or sources of ground water entering the canal. Long-term this inquiry effort seeks to address the 300M gallons of untreated sewage that will continue entering the canal yearly even after the EPA finishes their Superfund clean-up of the toxic sediments at the bottom of the canal. Just starting up is a New Town Creek monitoring project, where the first set of imagery was collected from the Riverkeeper boat during a shoreline infrastructure assessment. New Town Creek is also a EPA Superfund site. Another regional project is Grassroots Newark, focused on development and community issues on both sides of the Passaic River: http://grassrootsnewark.wordpress.com/ The New School Geo Club is a newly formed student group that has been active mapping occupation patterns in Washington Square Park among other sites. See pictures from the October 2010 workshop held at Union Square with Parsons The New School for Design: http://grassrootsmapping.org/search/parsons