When Reporter’s Toolbox scours a new dataset for your environment and energy reporting use, it asks a key question: Where does the data come from? This time, the answer serves more as a warning. The latest column looks at a previously stellar data source — the CDC — and finds it lacking. Here’s what you need to know.

The Interior Department keeps an extensive database of thousands of permits it issues to use federal lands for grazing livestock. And as the latest Reporter’s Toolbox notes, that data can readily be used as an investigative tool to look for one thing the government would rather the public not see — a penchant for permit partiality.

Occupational exposure to toxic chemicals can serve as an early warning system for broader public risks, just one reason the extensive data gathered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is a valuable tool for environmental journalists — even if much of the resulting reporting focuses on agency failings. Reporter’s Toolbox on OSHA datasets.

As the Trump EPA prepares to erase critical emissions data gathered for the U.S. greenhouse gas reporting program — abandoned along with international climate change obligations — a group of researchers has made it their business to safeguard the data. The latest Reporter’s Toolbox outlines the preserved dataset and what it can tell journalists about the state of U.S. emissions.

As wildfires rage in the U.S. West, Canada and other hot spots around the globe, reporters covering this environmental hazard in the United States can access high-quality data of exceptional timeliness via the Watch Duty app, finds the latest Reporter’s Toolbox. The tool offers everything from emergency notifications to data deep dives, all smartly integrated in its mapping interface.

An effort by the Trump administration to tank a highly useful data source on climate change trends has met impressive resistance — in the form of a group of fired NOAA staffers who have rebuilt the climate.gov website stripped by the federal government. And as the latest Toolbox notes, it’s a great resource. Reacquaint yourself with it.

An explosion of new artificial intelligence data centers means potential trouble, as they hoover up power and water, and spew global warming gases. It’s a story with national and global ramifications, certainly. But it’s also one that can be reported locally. Reporter’s Toolbox offers up some handy databases for environmental journalists to find data center stories in their communities. 

Hazmat risk data has long been subject to blackout efforts by industry. And now, Trump administration allies may change the rules to make existing information even harder to get. But Reporter’s Toolbox knows where journalists can still find the goods to support their reporting. Read on to learn about risks to the program in question — and Toolbox workarounds.

When it comes to tracking weather phenomena from heat waves and tornadoes to wildfire smoke or storm surge, environmental journalists could hardly do better than the vast array of data from the National Weather Service, writes the latest Reporter’s Toolbox. A tour of data maps and viewers, forecasts and weather insights from the large scale to the local. 

Emissions of the global warming gas methane are widely tracked through satellite sensors, despite some unexpected bumps in the data-gathering effort. But a big challenge is how to interpret and use the resulting insights in your coverage. The latest Reporter’s Toolbox points out several important methane datasets and offers useful insights into how to turn them into stories.