Clark Labs was awarded a million dollar grant from Esri to create a cloud-based version of their Land Change Modeler for ArcGIS. Land Change Modeler is suite of tools to assess and predict land change and evaluate the impacts of change and includes REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) tools for modeling the impact of land cover change on carbon emissions. Currently Land Change Modeler is only available in IDRISI and as a software extension for ArcGIS (the latest version is compatible with v10.2). This will make this tool more easily assessable to the wider public and scientific community.
From Clark Labs press release:
"Clark Labs was recently awarded a million dollar grant from Esri to create a cloud-based version of their Land Change Modeler for ArcGIS. Currently, Clark Labs’ extension is for the ArcGIS desktop.
Land Change Modeler for ArcGIS, first released in 2007 with Version 2 released this past month, is a software extension for ArcGIS users, offering a suite of tools to assess and predict land change and evaluate the impacts of such change. Clark Labs recent release includes many significant enhancements. The new version is compatible with ArcGIS Version 10.2
The Land Change Modeler offers an extensive suite of tools for land change research in a simple and automated workflow. It provides a variety of tools for land change analysis and prediction, as well as the impacts of those changes.
The new version release of this fall provides significant enhancements, particularly for its utility for REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). Land Change Modeler now includes functionality for modeling the impact of land cover change on carbon emissions. “Our world is changing rapidly, and technology to efficiently model and predict future land change is vital to addressing global challenges,’ said Jack Dangermond, Esri President. “We’re pleased to award this grant to Clark Labs to jumpstart their effort to utilize and provide rich content through ArcGIS Online.”
The new version also provides more capability for estimating land change impacts on habitat and biodiversity. With the grant from Esri, Clark Labs will be creating a cloud-based implementation of Land Change Modeler for their platform.
Clark Labs and Esri have been business partners for nearly ten years, working collaboratively on GIS research."
For the full news release see here.
According to a new study by Dan Kammen and graduate student Christopher Jones at UC Berkeley, population-dense cities contribute less greenhouse-gas emissions per person than other areas of the country, but these cities’ extensive suburbs essentially wipe out the climate benefits.
Dominated by emissions from cars, trucks and other forms of transportation, suburbs account for about 50 percent of all household emissions – largely carbon dioxide – in the United States.
The study uses local census, weather and other data – 37 variables in total – to approximate greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the energy, transportation, food, goods and services consumed by U.S. households, so-called household carbon footprints.
A key finding of the UC Berkeley study is that suburbs account for half of all household greenhouse gas emissions, even though they account for less than half the U.S. population. The average carbon footprint of households living in the center of large, population-dense urban cities is about 50 percent below average, while households in distant suburbs are up to twice the average.
Interactive carbon footprint maps for more than 31,000 U.S. zip codes in all 50 states are available online at http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps.
A link to their paper in Environmental Science & Technology is here: Spatial distribution of U.S. household carbon footprints reveals suburbanization undermines greenhouse gas benefits of urban population density (ES&T, 2014)
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