U.S. Business R&D Highly Concentrated by State and Metropolitan Location
National Science Foundation | READ STORY

This brief provided by the National Science Foundation discusses where business research and development (R&D) is located. According to the report nearly half of the research and development paid for and performed by companies in the 50 United States and the District of Columbia in 2011 was performed in five states: California, Washington, Texas, Massachusetts, and Michigan. It also found that business R&D is concentrated in a small number of states, with the 10 states with the highest levels of R&D performance accounting for $163 billion (70%) of the $233 billion total.

Food Environment Atlas
ERS | READ STORY

This interactive map put together by the USDA has two objectives: First, to assemble statistics on food environment indicators to stimulate research on the determinants of food choices and diet quality and second, to provide a spatial overview of a community's ability to access healthy food and its success in doing so.

Track a Century of U.S. Development With a Tool That Centralizes Old Maps
Citylab | READ STORY

This interactive map tool provided by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) allows those interested in cartography and development a way to view the agency's expansive collection. The website allows the user to access over 178,000 maps going back to 1884; the maps are also searchable by city. It is possible to layer maps on each other which allows for a very clear visual representation how a city or area has expanded.

State of the World's Rivers
International Rivers | READ STORY

The State of the World's Rivers is an interactive web database that illustrates data on ecological health in the world's 50 major river basins. Indicators of ecosystem health are grouped into three categories: River Fragmentation, Biodiversity, and Water Quality. Each focus basin describes the threats from dam building, and allows users to see how dams can impact Ramsar Sites of Wetlands of International Importance and UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Billion-Dollar Weather
NOAA | READ STORY

The graphic presented by NOAA helps to show how the different types of identified U.S. Billion-dollar disaster events have changed over time. This interactive graphic is part of the U.S. Billion-dollar Weather/Climate Disaster report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations' National Climatic Data Center which provides readers with an aggregated loss perspective for major weather and climate events since 1980.

Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change
WRI | READ STORY

Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change analyzes the growing body of evidence linking community forest rights with healthier forests and lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This report makes a strong case for strengthening the rights of indigenous and local communities over their forests as a policy tool for mitigating climate change. A helpful infographic that goes with this report may be found here.