Team Earth is a worldwide sustainability movement that unites businesses, non-profit organizations, and individuals to address five critical environmental issues: climate change, water, health, waste and food. The initiative urges individual actions and presents easy solutions to ensure a more sustainable world. Team Earth is represented by three non-profit organizations: Conservation International, Rocky Mountain Institute and Prince's Rainforest Project. Founding companies include Dell, Harrah's, SC Johnson, Starbucks, and Wrigley, and PepsiCo China, ePals and Marriott International are also participating.
Team Earth is committed to recruiting individuals to save the world's forests, a vital element in preventing climate change, by signing up for the Prince's Rainforest Project campaign at the Team Earth beta site, www.teamearth.com. The Prince's Rainforest Project, established by The Prince of Wales, calls for emergency action and funding in order to achieve a fast and significant reduction in tropical deforestation by helping rainforest nations to focus instead on alternative, more environmentally friendly (low carbon) economic development activities. By signing up, Team Earth members add their voice to the many calling for urgent action to fight climate change by saving forests.
The official Team Earth web site will launch in November 2009 and will include social networking functionalities, educational content, environmental impact measuring tools and more.
The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC(R)) and GeoConnections announce the release of a video that documents last year's successful interoperability demonstration, a major output of the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure Interoperability Pilot (CGDI IP). GeoConnections sponsored the Pilot, which concluded with a Web Conference that was witnessed live and online by more than 500 people. GeoConnections is a Canadian partnership program whose primary objective is to evolve and expand the CGDI. The CGDI IP was an OGC Interoperability Initiative.
The CGDI Interoperability Pilot video is available in English and French.
'Revolutionary' CO2 maps zoom in on greenhouse gas sources. A new, high resolution, interactive map of United States carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels has found that the emissions aren't all where we thought. The maps and system, called Vulcan, show CO2 emissions at more than 100 times more detail than was available before. Until now, data on carbon dioxide emissions were reported, in the best cases, monthly at the level of an entire state grid.
The Vulcan model examines CO2 emissions at local levels on an hourly basis. Purdue researchers say the maps are also more accurate than previous data because they are based on greenhouse gas emissions instead of estimates based on population in areas of the United States.
Funny. Miss West Carolina speaks out about what maps are. This video was inspired by the answer of Miss Teen South Carolina (you know the story, don't you?).
So what is a map? Let this girl answer it for you.