Yr13 - a couple of Ecosystems bits and pieces...

News article from the BBC about urban trees helping migrating birds (link to the wildlife corridor concept) here.

And after my comment on Twitter about hoping that you lot were watching the One Show last night, I am now being followed by an environmental consultancy who seem to like eating Japanese Knotweed. Make of that what you will. Their website is here.

An oakless Britain?

Interesting article from the BBC about our disappearing oak trees...

Does it matter?

Antarctic Treaty

Thanks to Tony Cassidy for pointing out this Costing the Earth episode about the Antarctic Treaty - useful listening for both Yr12 who will be looking at this after the holidays and Yr13 as revision...

Yr13 - Cities

Some nice presentations on Tuesday about Urban Development Corporations, City Challenge and some of the more recent regeneration initiatives such as Sustainable Communities. Check back to the previous post on this for some links, etc. if you need to check details.

On Thursday, we started to look at the LEDW case - we started by brainstorming our perceptions of shanty towns, based on the work you did last year, and on what we "know" from the media, etc.. We then had a look at Dharavi, the Mumbai slum where Slumdog Millionaire was filmed, and talked about whether we thought it was a "slum of hope" or a "slum of despair".

The links to the photos, etc. we looked at are here:

Audio slideshow from The Guardian
Images from the National Geographic
BBC Interactive Tour of Dharavi

There are various clips on YouTube that are worth a look too...

After the holidays, we will have a look at the plans for the redevelopment of Dharavi...

In the footsteps of Shackleton

In 1908, Ernest Shackleton and his team set off to explore the Antarctic "terra incognita"... Towards the end of last year, some of their descendants embarked on an expedition to retrace Shackleton's footsteps.

There is a nice arcticle and video clips from the BBC here and their expedition is the subject of this evening's Timewatch at 8.40pm on BBC2. Will be well worth a watch for Cold Environments!

Oceans - The Arctic

I suspect that you were all too busy revising or writing coursework on Friday night (hmm...) to be watching the final programme in the excellent Oceans series, where the team went off to explore the Arctic. However, Friday's programme - and the rest of the series (the Southern Ocean one particularly is worth checking out) - is still available on iPlayer... Get watching!

World Population

Interesting viewing for those of you in Yr12 who are looking at Population at the moment, and for those of you in Yr13 who are revising for GGA2 resits in January...



Thanks to Kenny O'Donnell.

Oceans...

Given how busy you all are at the moment, I don't imagine that many of you will be watching BBC2 at the moment.

If you are, however, you will have seen sea dragons and fantastic sea stacks, and learnt lots about the Southern Ocean and ecosystem management (amongst many other interesting things...).

This was the second of the BBC's Oceans series, looking - unsurprisingly - at the world's oceans, and is well worth having a look at on iPlayer.

The website to accompany the series also has lots of useful and interesting information, images, video clips, etc. Click on the picture below to link to it:

The final programme of the series looks at the team's journey to the Arctic and as well as being worth watching just because it'll be excellent if the two programmes so far are anything to go by, it will be useful for you from a Cold Environments point-of-view and perhaps also from a Recreation and Tourism point-of-view.

BBC Aerial Journeys

Thanks to Val Vannet for highlighting Aerial Journeys - a collection of programmes from the BBC Archive featuring - as the name suggests - aerial journeys.

One that will be of particular interest is The Living Isles - After the Ice. (And no, I don't remember it from the first time round!!)

New battle over Arctic oil plans

This news story from Thursday about the plans for huge expansion of oil and gas drilling in the Arctic will be of interest to both AS and A2 geographers as you will all be looking at Cold Environments later this year.

Well worth a look at the video clip of David Shukman flying over Prudhoe Bay as well...

On the theme of exploitation of Arctic "resources", the controversy over Greenland's whaling continues...

Wettest January to August period on record...

According to this article from the BBC, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) have confirmed that this year has seen the wettest January to August period on record.

Worth a read, and worth a look at some of the reader comments as well!

Why dying is forbidden in the Arctic...

An interesting article from the BBC here!

La Nina again...

In case reading the article was a bit much, there's a nice video clip from the BBC here, looking at the effects of the current La Nina event as well as how it fits into the picture of overall climate change.

Flying Penguins!

Love this!!

More info from the BBC here.

Population Podcast...

I'm not sure whether you will recognise this man... I'm not sure that I would have... However, you will hopefully have heard of him and be familiar with the big idea about population growth and food supply that he came up with in the late 1700s.

I've only listened to the first few minutes, but this podcast from the BBC - "a discussion... which explores his why his theories on population growth are currently the subject of renewed debates" sounds worth a listen...

Planet Earth Explorer

Not sure why I have not seen this one before! Planet Earth Explorer is an interactive globe linked to some stunning video footage - including aerial footage of Erta Ale, sandstorms in the Sahara, the Yucatan Cenotes (is this what you were asking about the other day Anna?), and lots of impressive wildlife.

6 hours of Geography!

Dan Raven-Ellison and a team of Geography students, teachers and academics are the next act to take part in BBC3's Upstaged... Click on the picture to find out more about their ideas...

Dan and the team will be entertaining the nation with 6 hours of Geography, starting at 3.30pm tomorrow (Tuesday)... You can watch - and rate their performance, send in questions, etc. online, and there will be a highlights show on BBC3.

UK braced for storms and flooding....

This is from the front page of the Met Office website at the moment, together with advice to stay away from coastal areas between today and Wednesday...

According to this article from the BBC, the worst storm of the winter is on its way... Have a look at the pressure chart forecast and see if you can work out what's going on...

Flooding...

Following our conversations this morning about the current and anticipated flooding in England and Wales...

The picture below is of Upton upon Severn, in Worcestershire (the home of the amazing Map Shop) and is one of an In Pictures of the flooding from the BBC. The BBC also has several stories about the flooding (Experts' fear of further flooding, Flood warnings after overnight rain and others...).

Upton upon Severn's website has lots of information and photos of floods from the past ten years, and from 1947. (And as an interesting aside, it seems that Upton is also a plastic-bag free town!)

As I am writing this, there are still 71 flood warnings in place across England and Wales, and 163 flood watches. Several of the flood warnings and watches are on the Trent and the Derwent in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. The current flood warnings section of the Environment Agency website is here, but it's also worth having a look at the rest of the Flooding section of the website - there's some good stuff on there about how to prepare for floods, and a review of the Summer 2007 floods.

You can also look at the Flood Risk maps - the same ones that are used by insurance companies to help them to determine premiums.

Also just found the Flood Forum - I've not studied it carefully, but might be worth a look.

Let me know if you find anything else useful or interesting...

Boscastle stuff to follow...

Witches' knickers?!

If you're a regular Geogtastic visitor, you will no doubt already know my feelings about plastic bags... I've written about them a number of times - and Yr8 did some fantastic work on plastic bags last year... But I've never, until this evening, heard them referred to as "witches' knickers"!! According to an excellent new article from the BBC though, that is what they are called in Ireland (where, by the way, they'll cost you 9p each in a supermarket).

Councillors in Brighton and Hove recently voted on a bag ban, asking shops to stop handing them out to customers, and the village of Modbury in Devon have been pleased with their bag ban trial and have just made the ban permanent.

Check out the BBC article to find out more - including 10 arguments FOR the plastic bag... And a great video of A Day in the Life of a Plastic Bag...

Here's a picture of the superb plastic bag collage that 8HCh (now 9NSq) produced last year...