Everglades Restoration

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has invested over a billion dollars to restore Florida's Everglades as part of the Infrastructure Bill of 2021. The goal is to restore the natural flow that has been cut off by agriculture and urban development.

The original flow was from the Kissimmee River near Orlando, down through Lake Okeechobee, to the Florida Keys. As the area grew, wetlands were channelized and drained. This deprived the remaining wetlands of fresh water impacting the quality and quantity of drinking water, causing habitat loss and increasing invasive species. The plan will increase the amount of wetlands and restore much of the flow to the Gulf of Mexico, as seen in the left-most image. This and additional information can be found from the Florida Museum of Natural History.

The image above is from the museum. Since the background is transparent, I couldn't resist adding some artistic waves to the background.

 

Algal Blooming Across the World

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center produced a video showing the increase in harmful algal blooms over the last 50 years.

If the above video does not load try clicking here. This version ends by opening the globe into a world map to show everywhere at once. There is another version that ends with a zoom in on Florida.

Algal blooms happen when algae grows out of control.  Red tide is a type of bloom that emits toxins that kill fish and cause irritating odors and respiratory problems. The video above is part of a larger video showing the problems facing our oceans and how the newly launched PACE satellite is helping to quantify them.

Here is a still from the video showing the algal bloom in Lake Erie that shut down the City of Toledo's water supply.

Here is colorful still of oceanic circulation patterns.

Finally, here is an image showing data collected from the PACE satellite.

More information and a full list of film credits is here.

Guided Across Switzerland by Hand Drawn Maps

The New York Times has a piece where the author ditched his phone and walked across Switzerland guided only by hand drawn maps from the people he met along the way. I love a nice hand drawn map and this article provides lots of good examples.

These maps illustrate the things that are important to the people making them. For example, the cheesemakers put most of their detail into the house where the cheese is made.

This one has some detailed mountains, flowers and oddly drawn cows.

A nice touch is the sign that reads "Wow!! How good is life?"

 Here is a nice one with some towns indicated by houses, a lake and some upside down mountains.

Finally, here is one super busy example, complete with footnotes.

Summer Light Reading 2024

Here is another installment of what is becoming an annual summer tradition. Just like the light beach reading, here is some light map reading. Not much to comment about, just some maps and related items I like.

First of all since the Olympics are in Paris, a nice papercut map you can enjoy, or buy here.

A very colorful map from Wikimedia Commons showing the different sections of the Rhine River. As one reader pointed out it looks like a water quality map and probably is as river quality tends to get worse as more cities and farms downstream dump pollution into them.

A map of things to do in New England. I copied a portion and highlighted some of my favorites such as "loafing", "sleeping under blankets" and "doing nothing".

Transit map of Kaohsiung on Taiwan. There are some great station names like Dream Mall, World Games and Oil Refinery Elementary School.

A screen shot from Yahoo Japan that I like for no specific reason.

Finally, Tsunami Generating Earthquakes. I think this originally came from some social media site that was once known as Twitter. Maybe from the U.S. Geological Survey.

OK, back to your beach read.