Veronica Penney

An area chart showing the annual imports of macaques to the US over time, showing China and Cambodia swelling and dropping off while Mauritius grows to become the leading importer of an overall lower number of the monkeys.

Clash on Monkey Island

by Refael Kubersky | Science Magazine, published March 20, 2025

A detailed timeline shows the percentage of ERS staff with more-than and less-than two years of experience, which shows an exodus of experienced researchers under the Trump administration.

Experts Uprooted

by Jeffrey Mervis | Science Magazine, published Jan. 24, 2025

A map of France showing high speed rail lines that were targeted and the locations of the arson attacks. Lines to Lille, Strasbourg, Rennes and Bordeaux were impacted.

Saboteurs Targeted a Rail Network So Vast That It’s Impossible to Fully Secure

by Aurelien Breeden | New York Times, published July 29, 2024

A series of maps and annotations showing areas of the US with proper conditions to allow the spread of coccidioides, primarily in the Southwest, and a second row showing the extent of its expected growth based on current climate projections.

An Invisible Killer

by Joshua Partlow, Veronica Penney and Carolyn Van Houten | The Washington Post, published Nov. 13, 2023

>A graph of reported cases of Valley Fever over time, with annotations labeling that fewer cases are reported during droughts, and that heavy downpours after droughts cause noticeable spikes.

An Invisible Killer

by Joshua Partlow, Veronica Penney and Carolyn Van Houten | The Washington Post, published Nov. 13, 2023

An annotated map of the mouth of the Mississippi River with markings showing where and when the saltwater wedge reached various areas upriver, along with some projections of how far it might go.

At the end of the Mississippi, a saltwater wedge overwhelms a community

by Brady Dennis | The Washington Post, published Oct. 7, 2023

An annotated map of the Middle East with various-colored dots showing the number of days forecasted to be above 32C in the year 2030. Yemen has a high proportion of the most dangerously hot days.

Where Heat Worsens Hunger

by Kareem Fahim, Ali Al-Mujahed and Lorenzo Tugnoli | The Washington Post, published Oct. 12, 2023

A dot-plot graph showing the increase or decrease of water-stressed countries per-capita water usage from 2019 to estimated 2050 numbers. Greece and Spain are at the top of the chart with sizable increases; Belgium and Iraq follow in usage but show decreases overall.

Here's where water is running out in the world — and why

by Veronica Penney and John Muyskens | The Washington Post, published Aug. 16, 2023

A chloropleth map of counties in three separate Colorado metro areas showing the rate of incarcerated individuals per 100k residents with obvious clusters in specific areas.

Just a handful of Denver neighborhoods are home to a disproportionate number of imprisoned people

by Allison Sherry and Veronica Penney | Colorado Public Radio, published July 22, 2022

A map of Colorado with overlapping shades of colored areas representing deviation from normal precipitation levels over a 90-day period in 2022. The North-East portion of the state received considerably less rainfall, while areas in the South and South-West received consdierably more.

Colorado's monsoon season is over. Summer rains were ‘hit and miss,’ and a warm, dry fall could be ahead

by Joe Wertz | Colorado Public Radio, published Sep. 1, 2022

A detail map of Larimer County, CO showing areas of (occasionally overlapping) wildfire burns, with the total volume of colored area accounting for an appreciable percentage of the whole county.

How humans start most of Colorado's wildfires — and get away with it

by Ben Markus and Veronica Penney | Colorado Public Radio, published Nov. 11, 2021

A masked and annotated satellite image of a portion of downtown Denver, CO with various landmarks and areas of interest outlined and unmasked based on ownership.

The family that owns Walmart could shape central Denver

by Ben Markus, Veronica Penney, and Desiree Mathurin | Denverite, published Jun. 08, 2022

A bar chart showing electric vehicle credits on the Y axis and household income brackets on the X axis. The bars are very small on the lower end and scale up slowly until the $100k income bracket when they jump up by several orders of magnitude. An annotation calls out that more than 80% of credits have gone to households above the State's median income.

In Colorado, electric cars are mostly for rich people. Could federal and state policy change that?

by Sam Brasch | Colorado Public Radio, published Dec. 31, 2021

A line chart showing riders-per-day over time, with dramatic dips during 2020 and slow recoveries into 2021. Dotted lines connect the 2021 numbers to 2025 ridership goals set by RTD that involve precipitous increases.

Why don't RTD's trains go into Denver's neighborhoods?

by Nathaniel Minor | Denverite, published Feb. 22, 2022.

A map of the continental United States showing concentrations of two-colors of small dots, representing wind and solar power infrastructure that needs to exist by 2050 in order to meet stated goals. The blue Wind-related dots cover considerably more area.

Where Wind and Solar Power Need to Grow for America to Meet Its Goals

by Veronica Penney | The New York Times, published May 28, 2021

A scatter plot with color-coded containing blobs showing cost vs. emissions of various types of cars. Electric vehicles have the lowest emissions, and a reasonable spread between almost the lowest costs to roughly the middle of costs. Gas-powered cars have the highest emissions and a couple dots representing the lowest costs, but also considerably more costly dots than any other category.

Electric Cars Are Better for the Planet — and Often Your Budget, Too

by Veronica Penney | The New York Times, published Jan. 15, 2021

Side-by-side satellite images of a region in India from Feb. 6th, 2021 and Feb. 7th, 2021. Annotations show debris flows and dust plumes radically changing the environment after a landslide.

Mountains, Ice and Climate Change: A Recipe for Disasters

by Henry Fountain | The New York Times, published Feb. 8, 2021

A map of California with tree ranges in green and annotated by type of tree, overlaid with 2020 fire extents showing proximity and a wide concentration of fires across the whole state.

They're Among the World's Oldest Living Things. The Climate Crisis is Killing Them

by John Branch | The New York Times, published Dec. 9, 2020

A detail map of an area in California showing areas of sequoia groves underneath larger areas of burning, vibrantly color-coded by intensity of burn.

They're Among the World's Oldest Living Things. The Climate Crisis is Killing Them

by John Branch | The New York Times, published Dec. 9, 2020

A detail map of a different area in California, showing a large swath of redwood ranges, with old-growth areas highlighted in a darker color. A large burn extent covers the largest of the old-growth areas and quite a bit of the range itself.

They're Among the World's Oldest Living Things. The Climate Crisis is Killing Them

by John Branch | The New York Times, published Dec. 9, 2020

A line graph showing average public transit ridership in New York City from March 2020 through March 2021. Ridership declined nearly 100 percent compared with 2019 levels immediately following the COVID-19 lockdown on March 22.

How Coronavirus Has Changed New York City Transit, in One Chart

by Veronica Penney | The New York Times, published March 8, 2021

A map of the MTA subway routes with each subway stop marker colored based on the decline in ridership in January 2021 compared with January 2020.

How Coronavirus Has Changed New York City Transit, in One Chart

by Veronica Penney | The New York Times, published March 8, 2021

A map of the western United States showing Washington state through Colorado, with orange dots marking locations where lightning ignited large fires between 2006 and 2016. There is a line of dots following the Mountains from northern Washington through California and another cluster of dots in Idaho.

In the West, Lightning Grows as a Cause of Damaging Fires

by John Schwartz and Veronica Penney | The New York Times, published Oct. 23, 2020