The site offers some improvements over poring through the Federal Register, but it's not comprehensive, topics are too broad, and there's poor differentiation between topics and constituencies. On the plus side, visitors can comment on in-process regulations, get alerts about specific regulations, attend online public meetings, and sort in-process regs.

The site includes news, studies, reports, fact sheets, data, predictions, educational tools, an events calendar, and images. The agency says it will adapt the site in response to comments, so feel free to provide feedback.

Educating your audience about the complicated new law will be a useful public service. It will also familiarize you with the people involved at your local facilities, what steps they are taking, and who you can contact if a shooting incident or other violation occurs.

The Trust for Public Land's updated online database includes mapping and a finer level of detail, such as information at the county and parcel levels, for some but not all states as yet.

USDA's first major national survey of U.S. organic farms includes 14,540 farms and ranches that cover 4.1 million acres in 50 states.

University of Virginia researchers find algae-based biofuel uses more energy and water and emits more greenhouse gases than other biofuel sources. However, algae has a high energy yield, and growing it wouldn't significantly affect food crops.

NOAA's proposal to apply quotas to individual fishing operations, rather than across an entire fishery, lands support from environmental groups, draws opposition from many US fishing operations.

RSVP by 4:00 p.m. February 12, 2010, to learn about the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force's proposed marine spatial planning framework for coordinating many ocean and coastal activities by multiple agencies and actors.

Billed as "a resource to support citizens negotiating with big energy," this brand new Center for Future Civic Media service could become a useful tool for energy and environment reporting.

Environmental reporters who use databases to find and build stories have a fresh windfall, including three new datasets from EPA, plus many others relevant to the EJ beat.