Network InitiativesThe Network was originally envisioned as a cooperative of educational programs that would assist each other in fulfilling their mission of educating local decision makers. But as the Network has grown, it has begun to demonstrate that it can be far more than the sum of its parts, helping to leverage federal and state information, programs and dollars in a unique and effective way.
LID Atlas
The National LID Atlas was created to highlight innovative LID practices around the country. Its goal is to encourage and educate local officials and others about low impact development practices by providing specific, local examples of their use.
Franchising Web-based Tools>
The Network Hub, with funding from the Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology (CICEET) at the University of New Hampshire, is facilitating wider use of web-based geospatial tools within the NEMO Network through the “franchising” of CT’ NEMO’s Online Community Resource Inventory (CRI) tool to at least three other states: Rhode Island, Minnesota, and South Carolina. The Online CRI, is a website that provides users with access to 14 geospatial data layers of natural, cultural, and economic resources for every town in Connecticut. As users page through the data they effective produce a basic resource inventory that can be used to inform land use planning decisions. The site serves as a complement to NEMO workshops that focus on the basic premise that good local planning should begin with an understanding of what and where the community’s natural and cultural resources are. Under this effort, the CT and RI NEMO programs are collaborating on developing a similar site for Rhode Island as well as enhancing the CT site with more advanced features. Once that has been accomplished. The CT and RI programs will work with NEMO programs in South Carolina and Minnesota (and eventually other interested NEMO programs) to adapt the tools to portions of their states. For more information visit CRI Online. FREMO = Forest resources + NEMO>
It has long been understood that the forested landscape is closely linked to water quality, and, more broadly, the overall ecologic, economic, and public health of our communities. As communities continue to grow and develop, the health of our forest lands is threatened by their conversion to other uses, fragmentation, and division into smaller lots (i.e., parcelization). Because the majority of forested land is privately-owned, the majority of educational efforts seeking to protect the forest resource have focused on individual land owners. It is becoming increasingly apparent that community land use decision makers (the focus of NEMO programs) are also critical to the sustainability of the forest resource. Enter the NEMO Network’s Forest Resource Education for Municipal Officials (FREMO) project. Launched in 2006 in partnership with the USDA CSREES Forestry Program and the U.S. Forest Service, FREMO is an effort to integrate the forested landscape more fully into the efforts of NEMO programs to assist communities in protecting natural resources through land use planning. The approach is to facilitate the adaptation and development of educational workshops, materials and resources by Network members throughout the country that convey the impacts of forest fragmentation, parcelization, and conversion to local land use decision makers and provide land use planning based solutions for addressing those challenges. Interested Network members will participate in a workshop in September 2007 focused on the community-wide benefits of forests, forests and watershed health, the challenges of forest conversion, fragmentation, and parcelization, and what local land use officials can do to protect the forest resource. The workshop will serve as a springboard to the development of new education efforts and materials by individual NEMO programs and collaboration with the “traditional” forestry education community. The project will also look at using geospatial technology to help analyze and visualize the forest landscape. Planning for Open Space
In 2002, an exciting collaboration began between the NEMO Network and the EPA Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation, Division of Development, Community and the Environment, also known as the “Smart Growth” Office. Through this Smart Growth through Open Space Planning partnership 14 NEMO programs in 13 states attended an August, 2002 Open Space Boot Camp training session organized by the Hub. Attendees were taught how to demystify open space planning for local leaders through a series of practical steps that outline the information gathering, prioritization, public input and public outreach phases of planning. Network programs are now in the process of developing educational programs to assist communities as they plan for open space conservation. Targeted regions, several located in some of the most rapidly growing areas in the country, include: Knox County, Tennessee; Nissequogue River watershed, Long Island, New York; Town of Northport, Maine; City of Lewes, Delaware; Scott County, Minnesota; Ogeechee River watershed, Georgia; Beaufort County, South Carolina; Hendricks County, Indiana; and City of Fairhope, Alabama.
Impervious Surface Analysis Tool
Through the work of NEMO, the Center for Watershed Protection and others, the importance of impervious surface as an indicator of water quality degradation has become widely accepted. More communities are now interested in identifying where these surfaces are located in their town or watersheds, so they can begin to develop strategies to minimize the effects of development on their water resources. A collaborative of UConn's Geospatial Technology Program, the National NEMO Network and NOAA Coastal Services Center has addressed this need by developing an “add-on” module for a commonly used GIS software package. Called the Impervious Surface Analysis Tool (ISAT), it helps communities estimate levels of imperviousness through the use of land cover coefficients. Since these coefficients vary considerably from region-to-region and state-to-state, a workshop was held in October 2002 to train Network members in the use of ISAT, and to develop standard protocols for the development of local coefficients. This information will be compiled by the Network Hub and represent the first time a unified, nationally derived set of coefficients has been assembled. The use of the Network to test and collect scientifically relevant information is a model for future collaborations.
>Enhancing Coastal NEMO Programs
In recognition of the fact that on-the-ground NEMO education was a tailor-made vehicle for several NOAA programs to attain their goals, in 2001-2002 four branches of NOAA collaborated on the Coastal NEMO Enhancement Grant Program. The Coastal Programs Division, National Sea Grant College Program, National Estuarine Research Reserve System and Coastal Services Center worked with the Network Hub to make available $200,000 in NOAA funding in competitive grants to coastal NEMO programs, to enhance their educational efforts. The purpose was twofold: to stimulate intra-NOAA collaboration between the four arms of NOAA, and to give a “shot in the arm” to the NEMO Network. It worked. Six proposals were funded out of the 15 proposals received. The resultant projects, each involving a long list of partners, will strengthen not only the NEMO programs in these six states but the entire Network.
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