“Today, to the southeast of Block Island, there are five new structures rising from the ocean. These are the towers of the Block Island Wind Farm, the first offshore wind energy installation in the United States. The turbines will generate 30 megawatts of energy; providing electricity to 17,000 households on Block Island and coastal Rhode Island (McCann, 2016), and replacing the diesel generators that previously powered the town New Shoreham.”

Source: uri.maps.arcgis.com

One of the overriding, major take-home points of this ESRI StoryMap, is that a project of this scale, scope, and magnitude requires geographic data across many disciplines (to see the largest off-shore wind farm in the world, click here).

Tags: mapping, Rhode Island, ESRI, StoryMap, GIS, resources, water, coastal, energy, environment depend.

Interested in this local event?  Please Register!

The share of local workers with jobs in manufacturing plunged from 40% in 1980 to 11% in 2014, a Fed researcher reports.

A new study illustrates just how drastically employment has plunged in Rhode Island’s historic industrial base over recent decades. Since 1980, the Providence metropolitan area has experienced the largest shift in the country away from manufacturing jobs and into work requiring college degrees, according to a paper by Stephan Whitaker, a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. “In 1980, 40% of workers in the Providence metro area worked in manufacturing and 25% worked in degree-intensive fields,” Whitaker writes. “By 2014, manufacturing had dropped to just 11%, and degree-intensive jobs had risen to 47%.”

Tags: urban, industry, manufacturing, labor, economic, Rhode Island.

Source: wpri.com

As a part of a national map competition sponsored by ESRI, Rhode Island is having it’s own statewide map competition for students.  All Rhode Island public, private, or home-schooled students (grades 4-12) are eligible to enter the contest. Maps can be submitted individually or as a team of two students. Limit of one entry per student or team.

Challenge: Your challenge is to create an original Rhode Island based map on a topic of interest or concern to you. The area mapped can range from the entire state to a smaller area, like a county or city. As an ESRI competition, you must use ArcGIS Online to create your original map.  See the promotional flyer here and access more information on the competition website.

Source: sites.google.com

I am excited to see the full kit that National Geographic and Alliance leaders have put together.  There are some fun lessons and plenty of room to individualize the activities and be as creative as you want to be.  Here are some of files to explain the supplemental materials that are in the trunk (besides the map of course!). 

• RI Giant Map Trunk Contents
• State Map Lesson Handbook
• Map Legend Scavenger Hunt

I hope you enjoy bringing the map to your school!! Please email atibbetts@ric.edu to get the map to your school.

Source: rigea.org