Creating Useful Products From Connecticut's 2000 LIDAR Data Set JHR 08-314 Project 07-2

The State of Connecticut owns a LIght Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) data set that was collected in 2000 as part of the State’s periodic aerial reconnaissance missions. Although collected eight years ago, these data are just now becoming ready to be made available to the public. These data constitute a massive “point cloud”, being a long list of east-north-up triplets in the State Plane Coordinate System Zone 0600 (SPCS83 0600), orthometric heights (NAVD 88) in US Survey feet. Unfortunately, point clouds have no structure or organization, and consequently they are not as useful as Triangulated Irregular Networks (TINs), digital elevation models (DEMs), contour maps, slope and aspect layers, curvature layers, among others. The goal of this project was to provide the computational infrastructure to create a first cut of these products and to serve them to the public via the World Wide Web. The products are available at http://clear.uconn.edu/data/ct_lidar/index.htm.

The Challenges of Living with Disabilities in Connecticut

The UCONN Master of Public Health Program’s Practicum Project The Practicum Project is a supervised service-learning experience that integrates curriculum with hands-on experience in a public health setting. All 2nd year students are expected to work collaboratively in assessing the extent, causes and public health responses to a selected public health problem confronting citizens of Connecticut. The focal topic for the 2007 Project was The Challenges of Living with Disabilities in Connecticut. During this past spring, 17 students of our program, working alongside 50 communitybased stakeholders across Connecticut, completed 1,800 hours of service-learning in pursuit of answers to the following questions: • How is the concept of disability defined by various health and social service providers? • What are the estimated numbers of persons living with disabilities in Connecticut and what is the range of their disabling conditions? • What arrays of services are in place to facilitate the full integration of persons with disabilities into their communities? • What opportunities exist to expand our understanding of the challenges faced by persons living with disabilities and promote public policy on their behalf? This occasion and the accompanying report marks the completion of the 3rd in a series of practicum project reports by UCONN MPH students. Through their combined efforts, students gained experience and skill addressing one of the most significant public health issues of our time; they gained insight into the breadth and capacity of our public health system and established invaluable relationships with public health practitioners, agencies and institutions around the state. Their report documents a rich campus-community partnership to advance public health goals.

Population structure, growth and production of the surf clam Donax hanleyanus (Bivalvia: Donacidae) from northern Argentinean beaches

The surf clams Mesodesma mactroides Reeve, 1854 and Donax hanleyanus Philippi, 1847 are the two dominating species in macrobenthic communities of sandy beaches off northern Argentina, with the latter now surpassing M. mactroides populations in abundance and biomass. Before stock decimation caused by exploitation (during the 1940s and 1950s) and mass mortality events (1995, 1999 and 2007) M. mactroides was the prominent primary consumer in the intertidal ecosystem and an important economic resource in Argentina. Since D. hanleyanus was not commercially fished and not affected by mass mortality events, it took over as the dominant species, but did never reach the former abundance of M. mactroides. Currently abundance and biomass of both surf clams are a multiple smaller than those of forty years ago, indicating the conservation status of D. hanleyanus and M. mactroides as endangered. Therefore the aim of this study is to analyse the population dynamics (population structure, growth and reproductive biology) of D. hanleyanus and M. mactroides, and to compare the results with historical data in order to detect possible differences within surf clam populations forty years ago and at present.

Annual report of the Secretary of the Connecticut Board of Agriculture.

v.5 (1871-1872)