Mapping New Mexico’s climate issues

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Screen Shot 2016-03-15 at 7.54.40 AMI love maps, and especially paper maps: tacked to the wall, spread across my desk or folded all the wrong ways and shoved in the glovebox. But fancy interactive maps on the web are pretty cool, too.

Thanks to the New Mexico Community Data Collaborative, I’m creating a map that provides an overview of climate change impacts and issues in New Mexico.

You can see it here.

For years, I’ve asked around to see if any agency or academic community is collecting the various reports and studies that focus on the impacts of climate change here in the state.

There’s a lot of research being done. People across the state and beyond our boundaries are studying everything from impacts on wildlife species to dropping aquifer levels. But there’s no one clearinghouse for all this information.

This map is a step toward trying to collect that information – and presenting it to the public in a way that’s easy-to-use and relevant to peoples’ communities.

If you click on the green pins, you’ll see everything from our recent news stories to government reports and peer-reviewed journal articles.

This is just the beginning of a work-in-progress, so zoom in on New Mexico and take a look. Then, either leave a comment or drop me a note with ideas for other resources to possibly include.

Right now, we’re about five months into our year-long climate reporting project, “At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate.”

As I wrote at the beginning of this project: “This project will be a journey. And I want all of you along with me. In fact, I need all of you along with me, asking questions, sharing your observations, and initiating new conversations.”

So, what are you experiencing? And what do you want to know more about?

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