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Bridging the Divide

In light of recent events such as Hurricane Katrina and the looming threat of global climate change, PlaceMatters and David and Lucile Packard Foundation have identified a critical need for ways to effectively integrate ecosystem science and community planning in ways the public and decision-makers can readily understand and act on. 

Likewise, PlaceMatters and the Packard Foundation believe the scientific community will benefit from tools and techniques that more effectively engage the public to help build consensus around critical ecosystem management measures in the context of broader community development objectives. 

PlaceMatters and the Packard Foundation have entered into a novel partnership to develop new tools and resources to help communities in the U.S. better understand and protect the natural, cultural and economic resources vital to their long-term success, especially in sensitive high growth coastal areas. Starting in 2006, Packard has been funding PlaceMatters to undertake this new initiative, called the “Bridging the Divide” project.  These funds, combined with PlaceMatters' staff and technology resources, allowed PlaceMatters to hire a PlaceMatters-Packard Fellow to conduct research and other project activities and to develop a pilot program for implementing new planning tools and processes in select “showcase” coastal communities where growth pressures are competing with ecological health.  The Fellow works extensively with NatureServe, a Washington, DC-based organization that provides scientific information and tools for effective conservation.

News: PlaceMatters Hires Jacob Smith as PlaceMatters-Packard Fellow

Project Goals

  • Integrate databases of ecosystem-based and community planning tools and processes into a single resource
  • Identify coastal areas under significant growth pressure and apply the tools and techniques identified and created by the Fellow through pilot projects
  • Share the lessons learned from these projects with others to assist in integration of science-based management and community planning on a larger scale
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Visualizing complex time series

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 05/30/2009 - 7:01pm.
If you have not looked at the two lectures on TED dealing with remarkable presentations of statistics, you should. The software is available under the Creative Commons License. Find the 10 most popular lectures on TED, and watch the two available from this physician/sociolgist. The second lecture, on poverty, does some really incredible representations of levels of poverty in Africa and keys into the means for escaping its most debilitating impacts. Just type in TED to get there. This software makes stats intelligible, and pictorial -photographic materials can be put into the program (as seen in lecture two). This software produces animated stats, making it possible for a lay audience to grasp complex ideas. Bridge the divide is an apt phrase. Laura H. Chpaman Cincinnati Ohio
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