December 21st marks the year’s longest night and shortest day, with daylight lasting only 9 hours and 20 minutes on the Western Slope. This is our winter solstice, the first official day of winter.
iSeeChange is a participatory environmental reporting project led by Julia Kumari Drapkin at KVNF. It generates story topics from users' weather observations, and then taps scientists to explain the whys and hows. This bottom-up crowd-sourcing has foreshadowed some of the nation's biggest recent weather stories—weeks and sometimes even months in advance. Stories sourced from the KVNF community have been reported throughout 2012.
Bark beetles flourish with dry warm weather, which makes 2012 the perfect year for them to take advantage of weakened pine trees. But this year's record setting warm dry weather made for a surprise bumper crop among fruit tree farmers in the North Fork Valley. For iSeeChange and KVNF, Julia Kumari Drapkin takes a look at what changes in this year's growing season boosted the bumper.
Produced by Julia Kumari Drapkin, the iSeeChange project at KVNF is part of Localore, a nationwide production of AIR designed to accelerate transformation and extend public service media to all Americans. KVNF was selected as one of only 10 Localore stations across the country—learn more at airmediaworks.org. Localore is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Wyncote Foundation, the John T. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Interactive storytelling partner Zeega co-produced TheAlmanac.org with iSeeChange.
This month marks an anniversary for Western Slope Skies. Our first broadcast was in November of 2011 and Jupiter was the topic. Once again this year, Jupiter will be the brightest object in the night sky. It rises in the east during evening twilight in late November.
