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.

Polar Journeys...

Digital Explorer's Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop is currently en route to Antarctica... He is headed for Bellingshausen and the E-Base - a permanent educational base "to share the beauty of this continent with students and leaders around the world". During their time in Antarctica, Jamie and the team he is with will be only be using renewable energy - to demonstrate that if it's possible in Antarctica, it's possible here in the UK too.

Lots to investigate on the E-Base website and if you've been bitten by the Twitter bug, you could follow Jamie's journey there too.


You might well have heard in the news about the Catlin Arctic Survey team, who are now 5 days into their expedition to measure and map the Arctic sea ice. They too have a website and can be followed on Twitter and Facebook...

South Polar Gazette

Want to know what's going on in the Antarctic? Then check out the South Pole Gazette...

Tourism threatens Antarctica

An interesting article in an excellent environmental supplement in the Times last week - well worth a read before GGA4 tomorrow!

I thought this was an interesting choice of image under the headline "Tourism threatens Antarctica" as well!!

Some other articles of interest that I found while I was looking for this:

Carbon map of Britain's most toxic cities

Big increase in hurricanes is not caused by global heating

Farming is blamed as birds take flight

Seven Days - baby boom, housing and biofuel

Build on the Green Belt and build now

(And loads more besides - www.timesonline.co.uk - all these came up when I typed "environment" into the search...)

Interesting things to do with Google Earth...

Noel Jenkins has just pointed out this superb new blog with lots of really useful and interesting files. Amongst them, there are several Cold Environments related ones that will be of particular interest to Yr13, the Indonesian "mudvolcano" that I've posted about before, and a tour of some of the world's crop circles!

Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

This is what Yr13 will be thinking about over the next few lessons and they (and anyone else) can explore the issue in more detail with Google Earth...

If you click on the picture below, it will take you to the site of the Sierra Club (an environmental group) where you can download a Google Earth tour of the region, together with images, video, and some important questions to consider. BE WARNED THOUGH... "The Whole Enchilada" is a very very big file... Although it didn't take very long to download, it made my computer (which isn't top of the range and modern, but isn't that old...) run very slowly - it might be wise to download the individual files.


(Don't forget - people put things on the internet for lots of different reasons... what you see on the Sierra Club site might not be the whole story!)

Green TV

Green TV is a site linked with the United Nations Environment Programme and Greenpeace, and has some excellent short films on a wide range of environmental issues...

Year 13 will be watching one of them tomorrow ("Oil on Ice") - about whether the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska should be opened up for oil drilling, and there are a number of Fairtrade ones that we might having running during our tasting sessions on Thursday and Friday lunchtimes!

There is a variety of others that Yr13 should be having a look at as well - "Return to the Southern Ocean" and "Pole to Pole" are two that I've spotted... Have a look and leave a comment if you find any others that will link well to the Cold Environments work.

Big Deal!

Thanks to Mrs K for pointing out this excellent site from Cafod - loads of information on a variety of development issues such as Fairtrade, Debt, HIV/AIDs, Conflict and the Environment, and you can also find out more about Cafod and the work that they do...

Useful for RE and Citizenship as well as Geography...

Human Activity in Cold Environments - Yr13

Once we have looked at last week's test (!!) we will be starting to look (properly!) at human activity in cold environments tomorrow.

Tony Cassidy and Alan Parkinson (aka GeoBlogs) have been teaching the Pilot GCSE this year, and part of the course requires the study of an "Extreme Environment". Tony went for Antarctica, and Alan for Svalbard - both of them have been blogging for their students, and both blogs have some excellent links and resources (as well as other interesting geographical things) that will be useful to you...

www.pilotgcseradicalgeography.co.uk

www.kespilotgeography.blogspot.com

Penguin Spotting!

This webcam on the island of South Georgia was pointed out a while back by a Scottish geography teacher friend, and watching the penguins on the beach in front of the camera is a great distraction from marking mock exams!

South Georgia is an island in the South Atlantic, and is at about the same latitude relative to the South Pole as the north of England is to the North Pole, but is much colder than the UK - can you find out why?

Because South Georgia is in the southern hemisphere, it is summer there at the moment. Keep visiting and watch how things change when winter arrives...



There is plenty of interesting reading on the South Georgia website as well, particularly for Yr13 who will be starting to look at human activity in cold environments after Christmas. Watch out for some more human activity/cold environments links coming soon...