The 2015 BES Data Jam: A Contest of Science, Creativity, and Communication
The idea of data jamming, exploring openly available data in a collaborative way, sounds a lot like jazz. A data jam is an event that brings people together to explore data that intrigue them, either for some practical or basic scientific…
Urban Ecology: Knowing or Making?
Our friend and colleague, Alex Felson, of the Yale School of Architecture and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies has a unusual perspective on what urban ecology is and does. Trained as a landscape architect, urban designer…
The Human Ecosystem: What’s Missing?
The human ecosystem concept is one of the most common tools used in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER. Adopted from a team of social ecologists and sociologists who were involved in community forestry in the Himalayas, the application…
The Kind of Solution A City Is
A while ago I wrote about Jane Jacobs’ insight that cities were complex systems[i]. The stone that she dropped in the urban pond in 1961 has rippled widely, and the ideas of cities as complex adaptive systems, with emergent properties,…
Why Come to Africa to Fully Understand Urbanization?
The transformation of the Earth’s human population to a predominantly urban home is one of the major milestones of the 21st century. While urbanization in industrialized regions such as the United States and northern Europe has…
BES Sexual Harassment and Discrimination Policy
The posts here often discuss conceptual issues, ideas and empirical insights, and opportunities for learning and communication that can promote the science, education, and community engagement of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study. This post…
