Shell seeks to drill in Arctic seas...

Interesting article here about Shell's proposals to drill for oil in the Arctic, despite the current situation in the Gulf of Mexico... A nice extra little "golden nugget" for those of you doing GEOG1 on Friday! :)

Year 12 - Work for Miss Taylor

Hopefully you are all doing plenty of research about oil in the Arctic, ready to debate the issue in the lesson on the first Monday back. You also need to be emailing Miss Taylor a response to the question "Can the production of oil in Alaska be sustainable?" - at least 300 words - by Friday next week.

A reminder of the links that Miss Taylor gave you. However, this is not an exhaustive list - if you find others, use them (and let us know!). Also check back to older posts on here from when I've taught this in previous years.

http://www.alyeska-pipe.com/Default.asp

http://www.anwr.org/

http://www.govspot.com/issues/anwr.htm

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12316773.400-alaska-has-its-fill-of-oil.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18401-alaska-faces-exxon-valdez-cleanup-conundrum.html

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/oil-spill-devastates-alaska

http://www.brighthub.com/environment/renewable-energy/articles/9274.aspx

Yr12 - Fluvioglaciation Homework...

Before Monday I would like you to visit this website which has some excellent descriptions, explanations and examples of landforms of fluvioglacial deposition, as exhibited in the Cairngorms and surrounding lowlands. Spend some time browsing through the various landforms you were introduced to in today's lesson (eskers, kames, varve deposits [mentioned in the "glacial stratigraphy" section] glacial lakes, kame terraces, outwash plains, kettle holes) - I would like you to note down some key information regarding each landform to aid discussion on Mon. Click on "glacial landscapes" then "glacial deposition" to find the fluvioglacial bits.

You may also be interested to look through some of the info on till and moraines - I'm still not 100% convinced you have all these key depositional features and landforms sussed.....

Miss Taylor

Year 12 - Cold Environments

Your work for Miss Taylor is: have a look at this website - visit the "Birth, Growth and Decay" and "Living Ice" sections. Choose two photos that you feel demonstrate well the processes of glacial formation and flow we have begun to explore (I've said two to lessen the chance of you all choosing the same one!)

Email them to me (type "taylore" and cc "vel" in your school email address bar) by 7pm on Sunday evening.

Choose carefully, as I will be asking you to present your photos to explain what they show. The captions with the photos will help you.


Have a nice weekend.

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...

Yr 12 - The Inuit

Double lesson before the holidays was spent looking at the Inuit people.

Various links here which will remind you about the distribution of Inuit people, their traditional way of life, and how their lives have changed.

Inuit Communities (in our least favourite font, sorry Laura - but some good info)
Canada's Arctic
Inuit Culture, Traditions and History
The Inuit (this one is a portal linking to lots of different sites including the Nunavut Government, various maps, and a site about Inuit games!)

We also watched the second (Baffin Island) episode of Billy Connolly's fab Journey to the Edge of the World series. The ITV pages for the series are here and have a variety of photos, video clips, etc. and a map of the journey.

Some fab photos on Flickr too, including this one from Gattou/Lucie/In and Out...

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!

Yr12 Cold Environments

Whilst I was off, you were researching and putting together a timeline and an annotated map showing the human activity in Antarctica. I now have that work from most of you, but there are still a few who didn't manage to find their way to the Humanities Block before the end of schoool today, and I am not very happy about that.

You also should have spent some time checking that you had thorough notes about each of the glacial landforms we mentioned (U-shaped valleys/glacial troughs, ribbon lakes, corries, aretes, pyramidal peaks, roche moutonnees and drumlins).

Yesterday, we looked at fluvioglaciation - processes and landforms caused by glacial meltwater. The photos we looked at at the start of the lesson were of Skeidarasandur - lots more on Flickr and it is worth a quick search to find out a bit more about the jokulhlaups that we mentioned.

For Tuesday next week (to Mrs Chambers), I asked you to describe and explain the landforms that you would expect to find in a fluvioglacial landscape. (You should be including outwash plains, braided streams, eskers and beaded eskers, kames and kame terraces, kettle holes, diverted drainage and proglacial lakes.)

Yr12 - Glacial Movement, Erosion and Glacial Landforms

A reminder at the start of Monday's lesson about glaciers as systems, anatomy of a glacier, etc. and also recap of thermal regimes(!). We then looked at different ways in which glaciers move, formation of crevasses, and then processes of erosion.

You then began to look at various glacial erosional and depositional landforms. Remember that for next Monday, you need to be ready to teach the rest of the group about your landform or landforms, including:

- description
- process of formation
- alternative names
- examples (located)
- photographs, and OS maps

If you need any resources, or any help, let me know BEFORE the weekend...

Yr12 - Cold Environments Introduction

Last Monday, we started to look at Cold Environments... After a discussion about what we mean by "cold environments" (particularly glacial and periglacial areas, and areas such as Snowdonia that were glaciated previously), and a think about why some places are colder than others, we talked about types of glacier. You should (unless you are Myles who has sent it already) have a piece of work ready for me with an example of each type of glacier, and a photo....

Year 12 - Introduction to Cold Environments

A couple of links that will be useful for you:

Some excellent pictures from Keele University here, and worth checking out Peter G. Knight's glacier pages...

Don't forget that if you click on the cold environments label at the bottom of this post, it will bring up all the posts from when Yr13 studied Cold Environments before Christmas.

Dress the Antarctic scientist...

Reminders about last week's lessons will be appearing over the weekend... As Yr13 were so upset that we didn't have time to play "Dress the Antarctic scientist" though, here it is:




Enjoy!!

Human Activity in the Arctic

Yesterday we spent a good part of the lesson putting together a map of the Arctic, thinking not just about where places are, but also thinking about some of the key sites in terms of human activity, history, culture, resources, etc.

Between yesterday and today's lessons we managed eventually to watch Nick Middleton on his journey via Irkutsk and Yakutsk to Oymyakon - the coldest inhabited place on earth! There's an interview with Nick about his trip - including his encounter with the Walrus Club - on the National Geographic site here.

Geogtastic post about Oymyakon from last year here.

I've also just discovered some fantastic photos of the region, including Oymyakon, on the Cape to Cape site. Click on the picture below to go to the site (which is worth exploring more generally, as well as looking at the photos...).

South Georgia

I mentioned South Georgia, and in particular the two fab webcams the other day... As well as penguin-watching, it is interesting to see how the view changes throughout the year.

Not many penguins about yet today, but plenty of seals - and a ship!

Looking a bit more carefully at the South Georgia website though, I've just discovered a set of Visitor Management Plans - these have routes for visitors to follow, give warnings for visitors about potential dangers, outline the known impacts of visitors on the flora and fauna, and describe the code of conduct for visitors. Click here to access the plans (links on the left-hand-side). Have a look at the Information for Visitors as well...

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.

The Tundra Biome and the Southern Ocean...

After an introduction from the Mighty Boosh and the wonderful BrainPOP video, we talked about the tundra biome - you have the powerpoint via email, but the key points were:

- types of tundra and global distribution

- low-energy biome and low NPP

- limited biodiversity (just for you Ben...)

- adaptations of plants and animals

- food web

- soil characteristics

For no particular reason other than that you seemed quite impressed with them this morning, a nice picture of a lemming (courtesy of Flickr user kgleditsch under CC):

The exam question that I gave you needs to be finished for Wednesday next week please.

The ecosystem of the Southern Ocean was the final thing that we looked at - rich ecoystem due to the cold water holding plenty of oxygen and carbon dioxide, turbulent waters ensuring a ready supply of nutrients, and long daylight hours for part of the year allowing for plenty of photosynthesis.

And for those of you who preferred chinstrap penguins to lemmings, a rather nice picture from Flickr user robnunn, again under CC:

Global Glacier Changes

I've not quite managed to read all 45 pages yet, but the UNEP's Global Glacier Changes report looks like a really useful resource, both for Year 13 who are doing Cold Environments at the moment, and for Year 12 who will be starting Cold Environments after Christmas... Click on the picture to link to the report:

Thanks to Rebecca Anniss

Periglacial Landforms

Research yesterday into the main landforms and features that you are likely to find in a periglacial region...

Some sites that might be useful:

http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/10ag.html

http://www.fettes.com/cairngorms/periglacial.htm

http://www.geomorphology.org.uk/pages/education/alevel/coldenvirons/Index.html

http://watershed.ucdavis.edu/copper_river/background/data/PeriglacialPaper.pdf

http://geosun.sjsu.edu/paula/134/pdf/lecture18.pdf

Although you might well find a selection of other strange things as well, searching Flickr for the names of the various landforms and features will likely produce some good photographs to give you a clearer idea of what the features look like. Although I've just searched it for "pingo" and not found anything, the Geography Teachers' Resources Group on Flickr that I mentioned might be useful as well.

Glacial Landforms...

Some interesting mini-lessons this morning!

We took rather a long time to work our way through the glaciation "dominoes" - we'll have another go tomorrow and see if we can be a bit speedier!

We then had a look at various glacial erosional landforms (glacial troughs; truncated spurs; corries; aretes; pyramidal peaks; ribbon lakes; hanging valleys...) and glacial depositional landforms (moraines - terminal, lateral, medial, recessional; roches moutonnees; drumlins...) and how they are formed. We still need to have a look at fluvioglacial and periglacial landforms.

Some pictures for you.... what features can you spot? And where were the pictures taken?

Year 13 - Cold Environments

Wednesday's lesson began - after the technological difficulties - with a look at the first part of Iain Stewart's Power of the Planet:

We then talked about glaciers as systems, with inputs of precipitation, energy and sediment, processes of ice movement, erosion (abrasion and plucking) and deposition, and outputs in the form of sediment, meltwater and calving.

We looked at the structure of a glacier - zones of ablation and accumulation - and the stratigraphy of a glacier... how temperature and velocity vary throughout the glacier... mechanisms of glacial movement.

We then watched another section of the Power of the Planet where Iain Stewart and glaciologist Miriam Jackson investigated what was going on underneath a glacier. You can watch that clip again here.

We finished with a quick look at processes of glacial erosion.

For next Wednesday, you are findng out about five glacial landforms - with examples of each and pictures (photographs or sketches) of each where possible.