[caption id="attachment_1530" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Click to view live map in a new tab/window.[/caption]

In order to develop a successful watershed stewardship, we need to identify interested groups, such as schools, home owners, park friends & groups or municipalities, etc., who live on or around the river. Many people don’t realize that their own back yard contributes to the health of a stream ecosystem. For example, lawn fertilizers or salt deposits washed from rainstorms can quickly build up in our reservoirs or drainage systems. These problems created by us can lead to myriad issues including changing the pH, temperature, or even flow of the river, which can ultimately deteriorate the river and organisms over time. The Park River Watershed can help orient these interested groups towards annual activities that improve water quality and gather information from these events and organizations. Thus, we are able to gain aggregate site specific data.

Collected data can then be forwarded to state and federal environmental programs or government agencies as well as nonprofits that work on the larger water bodies such as Connecticut River Watershed Council and Save the Sound, which is the Long Island Sound coastal environmental nonprofit group.

With help from Trinity College students, Shaina Lo and Veronica Armendariz were able to create data visualizations about certain schools in the Park Watershed that incorporates environmental goals into their school curriculum. Public school information was obtained from the SmartChoices website, and the Park Watershed Project categorized the school data. From this website, one can read further on deciphering the differences between the types of SmartChoices schools around the Hartford area region. SmartChoices includes public school in the city of Hartford as well as 19 other suburban towns.

This interactive data visualization can help parents around the Hartford area view specific schools they are interested in for their children that are concentrated on environmental goals. It my also be helpful for teachers or people interested in the educational system to help them discover these specific schools that are in or around the Park River Watershed.

Below are the descriptions and color identifications for each school:

Yellow/1) Water or wetland adjacency: school grounds are within walking distance of a river, brook, or pond. This increases opportunity for water quality monitoring, environmental research and stream stewardship.

Green/2) Environmental goals: School curriculum prioritizes natural sciences, which increases potential for local environmental research and stewardship.

Purple/3) A nature trail, park, or open space within walking distances indicates opportunities for classroom or extra curricula site specific (environmental activities).

Pink/4) Science goals could include topics such as medicine or technology that is not directly related to the environment.

Red/5) STEM schools are schools that concentrate on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.

I also received sample data of the ‘interdistrict’, ‘district’, and ‘more Pre-K centers’ from Professor Jack Dougherty who retrieved this data from SmartChoices. From this website, one can distinguish between the different types of SmartChoices schools around the Hartford area region further.

Finally, I created data visualization through GitHub repositories, which can be easily found by searching my username: slo2293. Data and HTML coding here can be forked with other users and updated through Java Script. Jack has also created a wonderful tutorial for first time users to understand here in his Data Visualization Wordpress. Though coding is not for everyone, there are other files one can search for to tweak for their liking.

Overall, the data and tools that I worked with were all pretty standard in terms of difficulty of accessing or understanding things. GitHub and Google Drive are public sites for anyone to create an account, and the SmartChoices descriptions are all public.

In order to develop a successful watershed stewardship, we need to identify interested groups, such as schools, home owners, park friends & groups or. . . municipalities, etc., who live on or around the river. Many people don’t realize that their own back yard contributes to the health of a stream system. For example, lawn fertilizers or salt deposits washed from rainstorms can quickly build up in our reservoirs or drainage systems. The Park River Watershed can help orient these interested groups towards annual activities that improve water quality and gather information from groups, so as to aggregate site specific data.

[caption id="attachment_356" align="alignleft" width="231"] For my Methods in Environmental Science course last fall (2013), I studied the water quality of the Park River between upstream and downstream. The map I created in ArcGIS as well shows the various river patterns that run throughout the watershed.[/caption]

Collected data can then be forwarded to state and federal environmental programs or organizations, government agencies as well as nonprofits that work on the larger water bodies such as Connecticut River Watershed Council, and Save the Sound, which is the long island sound coastal environmental nonprofit group.

Utilizing the GitHub tool, I was able to play around with the town boundary and watershed boundary lines. GitHub allows one to turn on or off the different types of polygon layers present. I also have divided the SmartChoices Schools into three different types of schools: Interdistrict, district, and Pre-K centers. You can learn more about what SmartChoices is here.

This interactive data visualization helps parents around the Hartford area to view specific schools they are interested in for their children. It my also be helpful for teachers or people interested in the educational system to help them discover these specific schools that are in or around the Park River Watershed. Please see this link to my map here.

[iframe width=”600″ height=”400″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”no” src=”https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?q=select+col12+from+1t7K0cOlYJB1yGfLbobWnipZKNsLVDV4ZtVSuZDUM&viz=MAP&h=false&lat=41.76972424928694&lng=-72.723569&t=1&z=10&l=col12&y=2&tmplt=2&hml=TWO_COL_LAT_LNG”]

Below are the descriptions and color identifications for each school:

Yellow/1) Water or wetland adjacency: school grounds are within walking distance of a river, brook, or pond. This increases opportunity for water quality monitoring, environmental research and stream stewardship.

Green/2) Environmental goals: School curriculum prioritizes natural sciences, which increases potential for local  environmental research and stewardship.

Purple/3)  A nature trail, park, or open space within walking distances indicates opportunities for classroom or extra curricula site specific. environmental activities.

Pink/4) Science goals could include topics such as medicine or technology that is not directly related to the environment.

Red/5) STEM schools are schools that concentrate on Science, Technology, Engineering , and Math.

Data is constantly changing especially when incorporating new and existing school information. But I hope this was a small step into teaching others about how important a watershed does affect us and our community. Thanks for checking my page out!

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