Stormwater becomes a big media story during disasters such as floods and hurricane surges, and it's essential to cover the basics then. But there are dozens of related issues that can contribute to the disaster, and covering them in advance can help your audience understand ways of possibly preventing the peak crises.

The atlas — a database actually — is based partly on climate-related changes in tree cover. It maps out current distribution of 147 species and modeled distribution resulting from climate change.

The organization Maplight now offers three additional ways of looking at its data. Over 14 million records cover ties between lobbying money, legislators, and either all legislation or that relating to several environmental topics. This information can help you better cover Congressional election races of interest to your audience.

This user-friendly tool will help you understand and analyze discharges from point sources such as factories, sewage treatment plants, power plants, airports, and feedlots. EPA consolidated data from a number of inventories, making it easier to see who is dumping what, when, and where, and who is known to be in violation of their permit.

The confidential National Air Quality Site Assessment Tool helps the livestock owner/operator figure out how changing on-site practices can reduce emissions of ammonia, methane, volatile organic compounds, hydrogen sulfide, fine particulates, and odors. This may be useful for journalists; whether an owner/operator will discuss the details of their operation or not, there's a story.

SEJ regrets to announce that biweekly publication of the TipSheet will be suspended after the next issue pending renewal of adequate funding.There is some chance the TipSheet may be reinvented. In order for this to happen, it will help if you let us know what you did and didn't like about the TipSheet.

This year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Feb 16-20 in Vancouver, BC, offers dozens of sessions on environmental topics — climate change, mineral resource dependency, water, critique of science journalism, disaster recovery, science integrity in government agencies, and more.

NOAA, the USFWS, and the NY State Dept. of Environmental Conservation (representing all state and wildlife agencies) released on Jan. 19, 2012, a draft of the first national strategy for responding to climate change effects on plants, fish and wildlife. The public comment period is open until March 5, 2012, and public meetings and a webinar will occur until Feb. 22, 2012.

Finally, after numerous delays amid allegations of political interference by people who don't want to see documented evidence of climate shifts, the wait is over. The new detailed interactive map is based on data from 1976-2005, and is the first official revision since the 1990 update.

The American Horticultural Society and the National Arbor Day Foundation offer generalized hardiness maps as a starting point, until the US Department of Agriculture gets around to unveiling its own update.