first published week of: 03/28/2016
Big Idea: The Texas Landscape Project
Earlier, the Conservation History Association of Texas had organized something called The Texas Legacy Project. From 1997 through 2008, the Legacy Project videotaped oral histories with conservationists who'd fought to preserve the state's land, wildlife or public health. Those interviews eventually became a video archive and the book The Texas Legacy Project: Stories of Courage and Conservation.
Its successor, the Landscape Project, aims to be more objective, less idiosyncratic: It's all about visual materials based on data sets. Todd, who has a background in environmental law wrote the text, collected the data, drew the few sketches in the book, and prepared draft maps. Ogren, who has a masters degree in geography and the environment, produced the more than 300 finished maps, charts and composite figures. "We are visual creatures," Ogren notes.
The pair hope that the atlas will give readers a new window into understanding Texas' natural and built world, and will encourage the public to protect the state's land, water, wildlife, air quality, and energy resources. continued…