Ecological effects of international border barriers

Landscape Architecture magazine recently published an op-ed against Trump's proposed border wall, focused on effects on wildlife. Their article cites an article from YaleEnvironment360 about how the razor wire barrier on the border between Slovenia and Croatia, meant to prevent refugees from Turkey entering Europe, has harmed migratory wild animals, including ecologically important large carnivores such as bears, wolves, and lynx. The YaleEnvironment 360 article includes a link to a 2011 study of the risk of barriers that may significantly impede animal migrations within the ecologically sensitive Mexico-U.S. border.

Practical beginner's guide to learning Python

This popped up in my LinkedIn feed and I just briefly skimmed it. It appears to be a good first step to learning Python, the scripting and programming language used by ArcGIS and other GIS software products. Something I have been meaning to do for a long time. Read more here.

Shinrin-yoku, or Forest Bathing

Checking my email today, I came across a couple of paragraphs from the Great Smokey Mountains Institute at Tremont introducing me to the concept of Shinrin-yoku, or Forest Bathing. Unlike a traditional hike or guided nature walk, Forest Bathing involves simply taking in the forest atmosphere, slowing down, or not moving at all, and receiving the therapeutic effects of the natural setting. Forest Bathing involves no programmatic goals, no extraction of information, no effort to identify species, say, or to reach a destination. An aimless perambulation through the forest reminded me of the dérive, a revolutionary strategy associated with Guy Debord and the mid-Twentieth-century Situanionist International avant-garde group. That strategy involved people, as individuals or small groups, moving across urban landscapes in an unplanned and unpredictable way, simply letting themselves be "drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there." The goals of the dérive include studying the terrain of the city (psychogeography), emotional disorientation, and, ultimately, a radical break with the predictable and monotonous experience of everyday life under capitalism and the human degradation engendered by the "Society of the Spectacle," mass media, and commodity fetishism.

Understanding patterns of sunlight and shadow in a landscape of tall buildings

The New York Times recently published this fascinating article about mapping and understanding the effect of sunlight and shadow through the seasons in New York City. Really nice use of maps.