Latest Contributions by LisaBerry

Have you ever needed to perform a local water quality assessment? Getting started with that process is now made easier by having the EPA Impaired Water Bodies dataset available in ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World. Under Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act, states and Tribes are required to assess and report water bodies that do not meet water quality standards. These hydrologic features are classified as impaired if they are affected by pollutants or conditions that limit their designated uses—such as drinking water supply, fish consumption, recreation, and more. Each state or Tribe submits its assessments to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and in many cases, they also develop restoration plans that include Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs)—the maximum amount of a pollutant that a water body can receive while still meeting standards. For the full blog by @GonzaloEspinoza-Davalos, visit this page.  ... View more

ProtectedSeas, a pioneering project committed to mapping and sharing global ocean protection data, is now part of ArcGIS Living Atlas. By providing detailed, standardized, and up-to-date information on marine protected areas and their regulations, ProtectedSeas empowers decision-makers, researchers, coastal communities, and advocates worldwide.  ProtectedSeas’ data in the Living Atlas is already making a difference. Researchers are leveraging these layers to identify gaps in protection, assess compliance with international agreements, and track conservation outcomes. Coastal planners and local governments use the data to align development with ecological priorities. Educators bring the ocean to life in classrooms, and NGOs use the maps to engage the public and advocate for stronger protections. For more information about the ProtectedSeas and their new Living Atlas layer, check out this blog by @KeithVanGraafeiland.  ... View more

Understanding how temperature and precipitation may change in the future is a key part of the Steps to Resilience and building more climate-smart communities. We are excited that NOAA has contributed the latest climate projections, LOCA2, to the Living Atlas that were developed for the 5th National Climate Assessment (NCA5). Which climate data should you use? This blog helps address when to use LOCA2, CHELSA, NCA5 Atlas, or Global Wet Bulb Temperature in your work.  For the full blog by @DanPisut and @rantwerpen, click here.  ... View more

Understanding where and how fatal motor vehicle crashes occur is crucial to making roads safer, informing public policy, and supporting transportation planning. A new feature layer sourced from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) is now available in ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, providing data on motor vehicle fatal crashes from 2019 through 2023, across the United States. The FARS Fatal Motor Vehicle Crashes 2019 to 2023 layer, along with several web maps and an accompanying dashboard are all available in Living Atlas to help support the GIS community in advancing transportation safety toward the goal of zero motor vehicle deaths. This goal, shared by Vision Zero and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration’s Safe System Approach, acknowledges that while reaching zero deaths may be an ambitious goal, no loss of life on our roads is acceptable—and it is a collective effort to systematically eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries. For more information about FARS and to learn how to use and access the content from Living Atlas, read the full blog by Steven Aviles here.  ... View more

Mangrove forests are among the most vital and dynamic ecosystems on our planet, providing critical habitat for wildlife, protecting coastlines, and playing an essential role in carbon sequestration. We are thrilled to share the news of an exciting addition to the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World: the Global Mangrove Layer, contributed by NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System. Layer: https://arcg.is/15Om4u0 NASA Metadata: https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1665 Click here for the full blog by @KeithVanGraafeiland. ... View more

As climate change continues to worsen, rising temperatures lead to increased heat stress. This poses a risk to human health and may have significant social and economic consequences. A crucial metric to evaluate heat stress and its impact on human health is the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT). This comprehensive heat stress metric considers not just temperature, but also humidity, wind, cloud cover, and solar radiation, providing a more accurate representation of the heat stress that individuals experience. To effectively evaluate the risks and impacts of heat stress, having accurate and reliable projections is essential. However, projecting WBGT far into the future presents challenges. Fortunately, researchers at Purdue University have developed a new methodology that uses various climate models and scenarios to calculate WBGT projections. The research team has contributed their WBGT projections dataset to the Living Atlas, where it is now available to all! For the full blog and detailed information about Wet Bulb Temperatures, visit this blog by @rantwerpen. ... View more

Economic Mobility refers to the ability of individuals or families to improve their economic states over time. It often reflects how easily someone can move up (or down) the economic ladder and is often influenced by a range of factors. A study conducted by Opportunity Insights, a research team at Harvard University, and in collaboration with the U.S. Census Bureau, laid out findings that highlights the changes in economic opportunity for individuals born between 1978 and 1992 and how community-level changes impacted those trends in mobility. This research can be explored in more depth via the Opportunity Atlas. These layers and maps are now available in ArcGIS Living Atlas for the GIS community to explore and leverage for other mapping efforts. There are four main feature layers that highlight both household and individual income at the county geography level and the commuting zone geography level. These layers include more than 270 attributes each, that cover either household income or individual income earned by an individual measured at age 27, and can be further broken down by race, gender, and parent income percentile group. For more information about these layesr, maps, and apps, visit this blog by @LauraPhoebus. ... View more

Achieving the conservation targets of 30×30 is an ambitious goal, and one that needs to be guided by data and stakeholder input. The Living Atlas is a great place to start that process with contributions from organizations like the U.N. World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Conservation International, and iNaturalist that can inform biodiversity and conservation planning. And now that process is a bit easier. Esri is applying a geographic approach to some key biodiversity and conservation data and information that were contributed to the Living Atlas by the GIS community.  Over 20 of the datasets are now summarized into 55 fields using multiscale, nested H3 hexagons. This StoryMap provides some more detail on them. H3, developed by Uber, is a standard for mapping information, as it provides consistent and repeatable geographic units at multiple scales. Seven hexagons nest into the next largest level, and Esri processed 4 scale levels of summary information on these geographic units. The Global Hexagons for Biodiversity and Conservation group layer provides data at levels 2-5, which range from ~87,000 to 250 sq km. What datasets were used for the summaries? World Database of Protected Areas SBTN Conservation Hotspots Ocean Conservation Priorities Biodiversity Hotspots Biodiversity Intactness IUCN Red List iNaturalist Observations Esri Sentinel-2 Land Use/Land Cover World Seafloor Geomorphology World Terrestrial Ecosystems Land Cover Vulnerability to Change 2050 Tree Canopy Height Irrecoverable Carbon Above and Below Ground Carbon Biomass Terrain – Elevation, Slope, Roughness Global Fishing Watch Global Forest Watch WorldPop Population   For the full blog by @DanPisut and @KeithVanGraafeiland, visit this link. ... View more

Ookla Speedtest for Global Broadband Performance is available within ArcGIS Living Atlas. This ready-to-use layer shows global fixed broadband and mobile (cellular) network performance metrics in zoom level 16 web Mercator tiles (approximately 610.8 meters by 610.8 meters at the equator). Download speed, upload speed, and latency are collected via the Speedtest by Ookla applications for Android and iOS and averaged for each tile. Measurements are filtered to results with GPS-quality location accuracy. At the end of each quarter the data is downloaded from github.com/teamookla/ookla-open-data, processed, and published to ArcGIS Living Atlas by the Esri Telecom Team. To learn more about this dataset and how it can be used within your mapping projects, check out the following blog by @PatrickRyan  Visit the ArcGIS Living Atlas home page to learn about what's new and how to use content. See the ArcGIS Living Atlas blog for more blog articles that help you get the most out of Living Atlas.    ... View more