Cengage: Gale Debuts New Digital Archive Series on Environmental History

Cengage Group: Gale Debuts New Digital Archive Series on Environmental History . “Gale, part of Cengage Group, is introducing the first installment of its new Environmental History series of digitized primary sources. Environmental History: Conservation and Public Policy in America, 1870–1980 is the research market’s first digital archive that examines the history of the environment and conservation efforts across the globe from the late 1800s onwards.”

WaterBear: Building A Free Platform For Impactful Documentaries (Part 1) (Smashing Magazine)

New-to-me, from Smashing Magazine: WaterBear: Building A Free Platform For Impactful Documentaries (Part 1). “WaterBear is a free platform bringing together inspiration and action with award-winning high-production environmental documentaries covering various topics, from animals and climate change to people and communities.”

Studio Silverback: Studio Silverback launch Open Planet, a free footage library for global impact

Studio Silverback: Studio Silverback launch Open Planet, a free footage library for global impact. “We’re excited to reveal our new project, a ground-breaking new footage library, Open Planet, announced today (18 Sept) at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. Launching globally in early-2024, Open Planet aims to revolutionise the way we tell stories about our changing planet by enabling everyone, everywhere, access to high-quality, scientifically accurate footage – free to use for educational, environmental and impact storytelling.” There are already about 3,000 clips available on the pre-launch site.

Bellingcat: A New Tool Shows What War Has Done to Ukraine’s Forests

Bellingcat: A New Tool Shows What War Has Done to Ukraine’s Forests. “We’ve launched the ‘OSINT Forest Area Tracker’, hosted on Google Earth Engine. Our tool compares data collected by Sentinel-2, a satellite which detects changes in infrared wavelengths and can be used to study the health of forests. The tool reveals the scale and intensity of anomalous changes on land. This narrows down search areas for researchers working on environmental damage in Ukraine.”

National Security Archive: 50 Years of U.S. Resistance to Environmental Reparations

National Security Archive: 50 Years of U.S. Resistance to Environmental Reparations. “As the world’s wealthiest countries continue to avoid making serious financial commitments to developing states on the front lines of the climate crisis, declassified records published today by the National Security Archive document more than 50 years of U.S. resistance to environmental compensation measures.”

Ground truth: CSIRO launches national data and information tool for soil (CSIRO)

CSIRO (Australia): Ground truth: CSIRO launches national data and information tool for soil. “Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, has launched a new tool that will help Australia sustainably manage a critical natural resource which sustains lives and livelihoods. Now live and available for use, the Australian National Soil Information System (ANSIS) brings together soil data from across Australia, connecting multiple data sources to provide access to nationally consistent soil data and information.”

Agriland: New website to show effect of farm practices on environment

Agriland: New website to show effect of farm practices on environment. “The website was created by the EU Science Hub and EU Agriculture, and displays content gathered from the collection of published scientific evidence on the impacts of farming practices on the environment, climate and agricultural productivity.”

York University: Scientists discover air quality monitoring stations are collecting urgently needed biodiversity data

York University: Scientists discover air quality monitoring stations are collecting urgently needed biodiversity data. “An international team of researchers has discovered that thousands of ambient air quality monitoring stations around the world are unwittingly recording more than just atmospheric pollutants and dust: they are also likely collecting biodiversity data in the form of environmental DNA (eDNA). Until now it was thought that the infrastructure for monitoring biodiversity and national and global scales does not exist.”

EPA: Environmental Compliance History Database Continues Upgrades Through Introduction of Clean Air Tracking Tool

EPA: Environmental Compliance History Database Continues Upgrades Through Introduction of Clean Air Tracking Tool. “Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the ECHO Clean Air Tracking Tool (ECATT), which serves as an interface and repository for Clean Air Act data that can be used to evaluate emissions at stationary sources of air pollution and analyze general air quality for the United States. ECATT is the first EPA tool to integrate data from multiple emissions inventories…”

BBC: The ‘ninjas’ fighting climate change denial on Twitter

BBC: The ‘ninjas’ fighting climate change denial on Twitter. “Secretive internet vigilantes have made it their mission to fight climate change denial on Twitter. But, as a vicious information war rages online, do they risk becoming the very trolls they claim to be targeting?”

Ars Technica: The mounting human and environmental costs of generative AI

Ars Technica: The mounting human and environmental costs of generative AI. “Over the past few months, the field of artificial intelligence has seen rapid growth, with wave after wave of new models like Dall-E and GPT-4 emerging one after another. Every week brings the promise of new and exciting models, products, and tools. It’s easy to get swept up in the waves of hype, but these shiny capabilities come at a real cost to society and the planet. Downsides include the environmental toll of mining rare minerals, the human costs of the labor-intensive process of data annotation, and the escalating financial investment required to train AI models as they incorporate more parameters.”

University of Western Australia: Aboriginal art and knowledge unlocks mystery of fairy circles

University of Western Australia: Aboriginal art and knowledge unlocks mystery of fairy circles. “Fairy circles – barren patches which make polka-dot patterns in dry and desert areas – were first described by scientists in Namibia in the 1970s, sparking global debate about the phenomenon. A paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, authored by a cross-cultural team of researchers and Aboriginal people from Australia’s Western Desert region, has challenged scientific theories by learning from Aboriginal people.”

The Conversation: How to use free satellite data to monitor natural disasters and environmental changes

The Conversation: How to use free satellite data to monitor natural disasters and environmental changes . “I work with geospatial big data as a professor. Here’s a quick tour of where you can find satellite images, plus some free, fairly simple tools that anyone can use to create time-lapse animations from satellite images. For example, state and urban planners – or people considering a new home – can watch over time how rivers have moved, construction crept into wildland areas or a coastline eroded.”

ABS-CBN News: DENR, PhilSA to create database of natural resources

ABS-CBN News: DENR, PhilSA to create database of natural resources. ” The environment department and the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) are teaming up to create a database of natural resources. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and PhilSA on Monday signed a memorandum of agreement to use satellite imagery in the creation of the national environment and natural resources geospatial database.”