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It’s that time of year again.

The time when we look back and remember the stories that made a difference or left a mark in the past year. Over coming days our beat reporters will share their picks from the Land, Money, Hawaii, Honolulu, Education and Washington, D.C. beats.

I hope this series give many of you a chance to catch up on what you might have missed on Civil Beat, a chance to get a better picture of the range and depth of our reporting.

We start today with a recap of some of Adrienne LaFrance’s exclusive reports from the nation’s capital.

But there are also stories that don’t fit comfortably into any single beat, such as the tsunami or the APEC summit.

So here are a few links that you won’t find in any of our beat recaps:

• LIVE BLOG: Hawaii Tsunami was a place many turned to follow the frightening events in Japan and how they were impacting the islands. Among the stories that changed policies and practices after the tsunami was During Tsunami, Hawaii Homeless Left Behind, as a later story, Honolulu Will Revise Tsunami Evacuation Plans For The Homeless, made clear.

• Live Blog: Aloun Farms Human Trafficking Trial — The End was where many turned to follow perhaps the most dramatic trial of the year, the federal human trafficking case against Mike and Alec Sou. Readers could watch the prosecutors’ case fall apart in real time in the first real-time coverage of a federal trial in Hawaii history. Civil Beat told it like it was, and it wasn’t pretty: Jurors: Prosecution Botched Aloun Farms Case.

• APEC 2011 Hawaii — LIVE BLOG was the place to follow the APEC conference, but long before the dignitaries began arriving in ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ was revealing what was going on behind the scenes: Honolulu Police Load Up on Taser Ammo, Pepper Spray, Bean Bags for APEC.

• The debate over Honolulu’s proposed rail project may have become even more intense over the past year, and Civil Beat was all over the questions with its Fact Checks. Scorecard on Honolulu Rail Opponents’ Claims summarized an extensive examination of the claims of opponents. But there were also plenty of cases where we examined the claims of government officials:FACT CHECK — Carlisle: Ansaldo’s Copenhagen Line One of World’s Best, FACT CHECK — Chin: Lingle Added $129 Million to Cost of Rail Project, FACT CHECK — Aila: FTA Required Phased-In Approach For Rail, FACT CHECK — Rogoff: ‘Not Unusual’ For Cities to Award 20 Percent of Rail Contracts Before FFGA, FACT CHECK — Cachola: Honolulu Rail Project the Most Expensive in U.S. and FACT CHECK — Carlisle: In July, City Government and Rail Part Ways.

• The U.S. Census was a huge story across the nation this year, just as it was in Hawaii. Civil Beat examined the story from many different angles, including Off The Beat: Want Hawaii Census Data? Ask FedEx.

• Our editorial board weighed in on a number of controversies, including What Abercrombie Didn’t Tell Us About HGEA Deal and Did City Mislead Public About Rail’s Impact on Congestion?.

• Perhaps the most touching story of this year was that of Linda Mae Maldonado, A Lost Child of Kalaupapa.

• Perhaps the most entrancing story was that of Hawaii’s native orchids, Saving Hawaii’s Rarest Orchid .

• Then there were the Community Voices, everything from Joe Bright’s series “Un-homed but not Unhinged,” where he shared his personal experiences and challenged conventional wisdom about homelessness, for example in this column, Re-Homed & Off the Edge: Rats Really Are Everywhere, to a series on energy by Richard Ha, a Big Island farmer who is chairman of the board of Ku‘oko‘a, a company that wants to buy HECO.

We hope to share many more community voices in the coming year. If you have something you want to say, please let us know by emailing news@civilbeat.com.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this look back. It’s amazing to consider all that’s happened in such a short time.

The Series:

• 2011 Year in Review — DC808
• 2011 Year in Review — Hawaii
• 2011 Year in Review — Honolulu
• 2011 Year in Review — Land
• 2011 Year in Review — Money