Well done Year 13!

Congratulations to the Year 13s who got their A level results this morning... The hard work that most of you put in was well rewarded!

Good luck with whatever you are doing next... And don't forget to keep visiting Geogtastic!

Year 13!!

An interesting Chinese proverb from Scottish geography teacher friend Val Vannet on her Higher Geog Blog...

And loads of useful stuff for Year 13, both for A2, and for those of you who are resitting AS modules...

£90 million needed for East Yorkshire sea defences

Just spotted this report in the Yorkshire Post about the need for £90 million to be spent on sea defences to protect towns along the East Coast of Yorkshire. This stretch of coastline is the fastest eroding coastline in W. Europe - at a rate of more than 2m per year in places.

Year 10, 11 and 13 know all about this already, but for those who don't... Much of this stretch of coastline is made of boulder clay, which is softer - and therefore less resistant to erosion - than coastlines elsewhere. This means that homes and livelihoods that have been built on the cliffs are at risk of falling into the sea - and many have already done so.

Sea defences are controversial, because they are expensive to construct and maintain, they are not particularly attractive, and it is often said that they might solve the problem in one place, but make things much worse further along the coastline.

There is another article from the Yorkshire Post here, and clicking on the image above will take you to a gallery of some rather alarming photos that have been sent in by readers.

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.

What's life like at -46oC?

That's the current temperature in Oymyakon in Russia, which is the coldest inhabited place on earth...


Year 13 have been reading today about geographer Nick Middleton's journey to Oymyakon, which was part of a project to visit the hottest, coldest, wettest and driest places on earth. He's written about his adventures in an excellent book called Going to Extremes.

Whilst I was looking for information about the weather at the moment in Oymyakon, I found this interview with Nick, from the National Geographic...


The Oymyakon Project's website is also an interesting read, with some great pictures... Including this one - of Oymyakon's airport!

How would you fancy living in a climate like this? What problems would you have to overcome? What advantages of living in a (very) cold climate can you think of? Leave a comment...

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...

An Arctic with no ice?

That could be the case by 2040, according to some new Nasa-funded research today! The images above show the Arctic ice in 2000 (on the left) and the predictions for 2040 (on the right). If the climatologists are right, what effects will this have? Click on the pictures to link to the full story on the BBC website. (For Yr13 especially, this is important reading!)

The story was also covered in the national newspapers - check out this article from the Times Online.