U.S. Department of Energy: Clean Cities

"Keeping cities clean and "green" is at the top of many policy makers lists these days, and the "Clean Cities" initiative at the U.S. Department of Energy is a great place to learn more about everything from alternative fuel sources to hybrid vehicles. Visitors to the site can sign up for their free electronic newsletter, take a look through the alternative fuels and advanced vehicles data center, and read through "Clean Cities Now", which is their quarterly newsletter. Policy makers and others will definitely want to click over to the "Coalitions" area. Here they will find information on how to start a coalition of local stakeholders to work on these issues in their area. Additionally, visitors can look through the "Coordinator Toolbox" area for information on how to fund various projects and how to communicate with fellow stakeholders and participants."

Doodle

This is an interesting site! "Doodle helps finding suitable dates for group events, e.g., an appointment, a conference call, a family reunion, etc.. Doodle is particularly useful to people who do not use a common calendar.

What can Doodle be used for?
Doodle is extremely flexible. Typically, Doodle is used for scheduling events: Be it an assembly, a team conference, a business lunch, a dinner among friends, a general assembly, a workshop, an excursion, a company event, etc.

But you can use Doodle differently as well, for the exercise planning of your sports club, for instance, or to find out who travels to the company excursion by train and who by car as well as who has space left in the car.

Doodle is a Web-based service which is free and requires no software installation."

Conservation GeoPortal

"The Conservation Geoportal is a collaborative effort by and for the conservation community to facilitate the discovery and publishing of geographic information systems (GIS) data and maps, to support conservation decisionmaking and education. It is primarily a data catalogue, intended to provide a comprehensive listing of GIS data sets and map services relevant to biodiversity conservation. The Conservation Geoportal does not actually store maps and data, but rather the descriptions and links to those resources, known as "metadata."

It includes the following capabilities:

Search for data and maps by keyword, category, geography, or time period
Save your search queries for future use
Use the built-in Map Viewer to display, manipulate, and combine live map services
Create, save, and email custom maps using data from various map services
Publish metadata for your maps and data so others can find them

The Conservation Geoportal is designed to make it quick and easy for conservation practitioners to find, and if possible, preview and download GIS data and maps. This is a free tool for all conservation practitioners and supporters to use and contribute content."

EcoNet

EcoNet is "a wireless sensor network which allows data collection of environmental factors virtually anywhere and also allows its monitoring from any point where internet is available." EcoNet is still in demonstration mode, but shows how "having data continuously monitored in a cost-effective manner increases substantially the chances of uncovering anomalies early enough to investigate them promptly and thoroughly." This is a really interesting invention which could be applied to "related domains; for example monitoring disposal of hazardous material, monitoring of water quality, monitoring ice cap movements in the Arctic or using imagery data to monitor hard to witness phenomena."

World Environment Library

Developed in 1999, the World Environment Library "contains 400 publications (45,000 pages) of ideas and solutions in the fields of Agriculture, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Environmental Impact Assessment, Energy, Health, Natural Resources, Policy, Sustainable Development, Waste Management and Water." Search via keyword, title, subject or organisation.

Running the Numbers

This is an amazing depiction of resource use/waste!! Chris Jordan, an American artist, has produced Running the Numbers which "looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on." Incredible detail!!!

Fire ecology and management in northern Australia

"These teaching materials have been developed from a collaboration between the Tropical Savannas CRC and the Bushfire CRC and staff in their partner agencies...[The website contains] research papers, website resources, management case studies and monitoring tools [which provide a] greater understanding of the issues surrounding fire in northern Australia." This website will be useful for those studying or working within natural resource management.

Catalog of Fishes

Looking for a fish?
The Catalog of Fishes is the first treatment of all described fishes since Linnaeus in 1758. Originally in print, the on-line version includes all species, genera, and references, along with the classification, introduction, and list of museum abreviations. Included are about 56,000 described species and subspecies (= species) of fishes, about 10,600 genera and subgenera (= genera) of fishes, and about 21,700 references. About 200-300 new species are being described each year.

Water footprint

"Water footprint", "virtual water" and "water neutral" - these concepts relate to the volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by individuals, businesses or nations and how humans can reduce, neutralise, compensate or offset their water footprint. This is a really interesting site with links to footprint calculators and a product gallery where an indication of how much water is used to produce specific foodstuffs is provided.