New USDA Climate Zone Maps

Photo courtesy of National Gardening Association

To paraphrase Dylan in the worst possible way:  the times they are a changin'.  And so has the USDA's Climate Zone map.  The last map was issued in 1990 and the new map uses 30 years of data from 1976 to 2005 to offer a more accurate map.  In addition with the advent of digital GIS information, the USDA has data available for this analysis that did not exist or had yet to be digitally compiled previously.

These maps list average minimum temperatures for different latitudinal zones. Each zone is based on 10 degrees Fahrenheit with Zone 1 as the coldest (-60 to -50) and Zone 13 is hottest (60 to 70) (found only on Hawaii and Puerto Rico). Two new zones were added in hotter climates this year for a total of 13 zones.

So does this mean that climate change is real?  Is the jury really still out on this one?

Watch the video here:

To find out your zone check out this site:

http://www.garden.org/zipzone/index.php

Citation:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/story/2012-01-26/USDA-climate-zone-map/52787142/1

Landscape Architecure and Engineering Apps Revisited

It seems like everyday, more and more new apps are given birth and it's hard to keep up! We are trying to update this post as we find more useful apps for landscape architects. Please let us know if you have any more suggestions and check out our first post with more apps that are useful for landscape architects.

Project Noah

“Foursquare meets nature.” Be a part of a wildlife study or know what  organisms have been observed near you. Fun app to have despite your profession, age or level of training. 

Graph Pad

Useful for drafting quick, to-scale drawings.

My Measures and Dimensions

This app could be really useful for initial site visits and for construction observation.

Clinometer- Measure Slope

We like this level because you can calibrate it. 

Manage Your Research 

For bloggers, students, professors or just the life-long student, Mendeley is a great way to organize your research and this app lets you take it with you wherever you go.

TED Talks

Be inspired on the go. 

Houzz and Pinterest- Find Design Ideas

If you don't use Houzz or Pinterest already, both are great websites to use if you are looking for design inspiration, especially when choosing materials. What has impressed me the most about Houzz, is that if you ask a question about the design (like, "what kind of stone is that?"), the designers themselves and others are quick to chime in. Pinterest is unique in that you can share your "pins" with your friends on facebook.

 

iTunes U- Design, Architecture and Landscape Architecture University Lectures

Although not an app, iTunes U has a wealth of available lectures from a myriad of universities and departments. Some of our personal favorites include the intro design course at NC State with Dean Malecha, Design Thinking, UC Davis's Design as Activism, and Anne Whiston Spirn's lectures at MIT, Sensing Place.

GPS Kit- A Better GPS App

This app is way better than Motion-X mentioned in the previous blog because you can upload multiple waypoints at a time and even group points and tracks. 

 

Leaf Snap- Plant ID

Take a picture of a leaf and ID a tree?! I'll believe it when I see it. I saw it!

 

Penultimate- Goodbye Paper!

Pair this app with a stylus on your iPad and never buy a sketch book again!

iannotate PDF- edit PDF's 

logmein ignition- log onto your pc or mac 

 

Jesse's Work Flow Suggestion

"Snap a screenshot in google earth, bring it into procreate, sketch on it, then put it right into a presentation. Uses stylus, via adapter, and costs minimum of 1.99 for procreate (sketchbook pro works too)"

Thanks again Jesse! 

GoToMeeting- Join a Web Meeting

I use GoToMeeting at work quite a bit, and this app allows you to join meetings. It would be a lot better if you could host them, but hopefully that is soon to come.

Landscape Water Budget Tool

WaterSense, a partnership program by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, seeks to protect the future of our nation's water supply by offering people a simple way to use less water with water-efficient products, new homes, and services.  The program is a sort of water focused LEED system that seeks to help consumers make smart water choices that save money and maintain high environmental standards without compromising performance. Products and services that have earned the WaterSense label have been certified to be at least 20 percent more efficient without sacrificing performance.  


As part of that program they address landscape irrigation and  they have a fairly basic but interesting application called the Water Budget Tool.   This tool compares your required water use for your improved landscape via irrigation compared to a baseline water requirement of 4" high maintained turf-grass.


Simply input your information and hit "Next Step":

This next screen is extremely easy to use but in doing so oversimplifies landscape areas into broad area such as "Trees" or "Groundcover"  the reality is that often these areas overlap.  See below:

















Input a finer level of information, click "Next Step", and voila:

As a jumping off point at a schematic level, this basic tool gets designers and irrigation specialists thinking about the balance of plants based on water use.


Give it a whirl:


www.epa.gov/watersense/water_budget/application.html

Recreating an Ice Age

Photo courtesy of Inhabitat

From out in the south of Chersky in the Sakha Republic in northeastern Siberia a Russian geo-physicist by the name of Sergei Zimovis is attempting to recreate the last ice age across 160 sq km of Siberian “desert”, a project he calls the Pleistocene Park.  Permafrost has heretofore trapped hundreds of thousands of tons of methane below its surface.  As the industrial revolution, the automobile, and all of our other favorite carbon releasing baubles march on in more and more countries, the Earth's climate, as we all have heard is warming...check that..."changing".  This "change" is causing the permafrost to melt thus releasing methane like so many Taco Bell restaurant patrons.

Photo courtesy of Inhabitat

But wait, Zimovis disagrees.  His theory is that the herbivores grazing on that land kept it in its tundra-steppe, a cold, dry grassland state and that over hunting of these large animals, not climate change, led to their extinction.  He attributes the following ecological reasons for the warming of the land with regard to herbivore extinction:

1. Herbivores were no longer present to maintain the grassland ecology
2. "Grasses and their root systems stabilize the soil." 
3. "The albedo—or ability to reflect incoming sunlight skyward—of such ecosystems (grasslands) is high, so warming from solar radiation also is reduced"
4. "With lots of herbivores present, much of the wintertime snow would be trampled, exposing the ground to colder temperatures that prevent ice from melting."

According to Zimovis, all of this suggests that reconstructed grassland ecosystems, such as the ones we are working on in Pleistocene Park, "could prevent permafrost from thawing and thereby mitigate some negative consequences of climate warming.”

“The ecosystem that used to be here many years ago cooled the climate substantially. And the present-day situation – I mean climate warming and the melting of permafrost – is a separate problem which we are seriously engaged in. We came to realize that the revival of a rich ecosystem on a vast territory will considerably affect the climate and help us control the process of global warming. Scientists find hundreds of kilograms of mammoth-epoch bones on every hectare of northern Yakutia, which testifies to the bygone abundance of herbivores and a different landscape. Our objective is to find out why the situation varied so much after all.”


Zimovis has applied his theory to  Pleistocene Park  where he knocked down the trees and introduced grazing animals to feed on the grass.  Oddly enough, the research on the Park indicates that Zimovis may be correct. He has garnered attention from as far off as Princeton University.  He is looking to, with proper funding, scale up the research. 

Photo courtesy of Inhabitat

Read more: Geo-physicist Tries to Recreate an Ice Age Ecosystem in Siberia to Prevent the Release of 500 Billion Tons of CO2 | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World 

MSNBC 

Pressure Washed Street Art

Belgian artist and illustrator Stefaan De Croock aka Strook used a moss covered wall outside of the STUK art center in Leuven, Belgium to sketch a mural with a pressure washer.  It was completely improvised with no reference...and Croock had never used a pressure washer before.  

Thanks to thisiscollasal.com for the original post and photos.