Whenever a water well is constructed, the driller is typically required to report details about the well on a driller’s log, or driller’s report. These logs include everything from date and depth drilled to location and lithology. Once the log is completed, it is submitted to the state environmental agency for processing. Sometimes state agencies will map these records. Otherwise it’s up to us to sleuth them out! After all, a well log is useless if you don’t know where the well is located. Continue reading
Locating Water Wells from Driller’s Reports
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Historical Maps and Aerials: Looking to the Past to Plan for the Future
With the innovations in satellite and drone technology in recent years, procuring highly detailed aerials and topographic maps of a site is becoming easier than ever. Current, high-quality maps and imagery can be used to help farmers identify trouble spots on their land or property developers plan a new neighborhood. But what about all of the historical resources? In the United States, there are aerial photographs available for many areas as early as the 1920s. Topographic maps have a history as old as the country itself. Continue reading
Posted in Aerial photography, Environmental data, GIS
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Wind energy competes for the spotlight
Happy 2016! For those of us in the environmental industry, 2016 has already been a year full of headlines. Some of the more positive headlines however, happened just before the end of 2015. In late December, Texas set a new energy record when it produced 40% of its total electricity by wind for 17 full hours. Take a moment to let that sink in. For 17 straight hours Texas was producing just under HALF of its electricity via wind turbines. Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Industry news, Technology, TX
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Making a Bold Statement with a Small Bird: How the Sage Grouse is Emblematic of Tensions over Government Intervention
The sage grouse is a bird that made national headlines this week because of the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to keep this animal off of the federal endangered species list. This verdict comes out of multiple years of tension between the federal government, environmentalists, and energy companies in contemplating how to best protect both the bird and financial interests. Continue reading
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Geographic Information Systems (GIS) fundamentals
Much of our work at Banks involves GIS software. We thought we’d give you some background on these tools.
GIS, which stands for geographic/geospatial information systems, is a software tool used for analyzing the spatial components of any given data set. One of the most widely used tools is ArcGIS software, but there are also many free GIS systems available to people of all experience levels as well as plentiful online resources to learn about the various softwares. Most of the tutorials are free. Continue reading
El Niño to bring rain to California
Credit: Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group, via Associated Press
El Niño, also known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, is a climatic condition where warm waters in the pacific alter weather patterns across the globe. In the United States, this typically results in dryer than average winters for the northern states and wetter than average winters for the southern states down to Mexico. These conditions usually emerge about once every five years.
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Posted in Analysis, Environmental data
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