Who said soil was boring?

One of the exhibitors at the SAGT Conference on Saturday was the Macaulay Institute, who describe themselves as "the UK's premier land use research centre". They have produced some fantastic resources about soils and succession, which some of the Year 13 geographers will have seen before, but I have just been looking at their website and there is loads more fantastic stuff on there which is well worth a look.

And on the topic of soils, I've also just discovered Soil-net.com! Enjoy!!

Oh, and if your eyesight is not that good and you are wondering just how many living organisms there are in a teaspoon of soil, click on the picture which will take you to a pdf of the original poster on the Macaulay Institute website!

Earthquake in Pakistan

It seems that whenever we are studying tectonics, there is an earthquake or a volcanic eruption somewhere in the world. Unfortunately, this time is no exception...

An earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter Scale struck 35 miles from Quetta in the Balochistan province of Pakistan this morning at 4am. So far, the death toll is 160, but this is expected to rise.

The USGS has details here including a Google Map showing the location, and you can find out more from the BBC where there is a set of eyewitness accounts, an In Pictures series, and some video footage.

Yay! The return of the penguins!!

The seals have been back for a while, but I've just spotted the first penguins of the year on the South Georgia webcam! Webcam 1 is the original webcam, and you can also look at the seals closer up on Webcam 2...

Statetris!

Just spent rather longer than I should have playing on this...

Enjoy!!

Wet and windy Edinburgh...

Spent this weekend in Edinburgh for the SAGT Conference... An interesting lecture from Iain Stewart - "Unnatural Hazards: Creating Cultures of Catastrophe":


Two excellent workshops by Ollie Bray and Alan Parkinson - some great ideas coming soon to a classroom near you!

Lots of freebies including a fab notebook made from obsolete geological maps... Interesting conversations about the possibilities of trips to Norway or Switzerland... Excellent demonstrations of a twister in a jar and a clever way to show how warm and cold fronts move...

And a fascinating talk from "The Man Who Cycled The World":

The atrocious weather for most of the rest of the weekend meant that there wasn't much photography other than a quick snap of the Castle this morning:

Looking forward to next year!

360 Cities

If you have some time on your hands, have a look at this fantastic website which I had heard about before but hadn't explored until Ollie Bray reminded us about it yesterday...


360 Cities has some stunning panoramic photography from all over the world, and - despite the name - not all of it is city-based... This one, for example, is the beautiful Landmannalaugur in Iceland:

You can also use the little Google Earth icon in the bottom right hand corner of the image to view it in Google Earth...

More Earth as Art!

8CDr's turn this time, and some fantastic work which you can have a look at on Geogtastic's Flickr page. This one was my favourite today... Well done Liam!

If you want to make your own:
- find yourself a beautiful view in Google Earth
- save it as a png or jpeg file
- go here

Have fun!

Blog Action Day

By now you will have seen the fantastic World Mapper maps... As today is Blog Action Day, here's one for you to think about that links to this year's Blog Action Day theme:

How can YOU make a difference??

Our day out!

Lovely day out yesterday planning fieldwork along the River Dove for Year 12...

Earth as Art...

8KJe spent their lesson this morning using Google Earth to create some superb art work... My personal favourite is Kieran's "Fjord Claws" below, but you can check out some of the others on Geogtastic's new Flickr pages.


If you want to create your own, have a look at Big Huge Labs Motivator tool.

Cold Photo...

As promised Year 8, Laurel McFadden's fantastic blog about her adventures north of the Arctic Circle is here:

Plenty more about the Northern Lights here...

And for those of you who were interested in setting up your own blogs, go to www.blogger.com and click Create Blog!

You will need to have a Google account to do it - you can do that either through Blogger, or by going to www.google.com and then clicking Sign In in the top right hand corner - you will then be put in your password or create an account... (Even if you decide not to set up a blog, having a Google account is a good idea because it will allow you to use all sorts of excellent applications!)

Have fun!

South Georgia

Whilst it's getting colder here, things are warming up in South Georgia, and the seals are enjoying the sunshine on the beach...


This is the view from Webcam 2 at the moment:

And Webcam 1:

And this is what it looked like on 4th October last year:
Who will spot the first penguin?!

Volcano World and Montserrat

My Year 9 group will need to be having a look at the Volcano World website as part of their homework this week:

Well worth a look for everyone else as well though - information about volcanoes all over the world, details of current volcanic activity, photos, virtual volcano tours, games, etc.

Year 9 might also like to have a look at the website of the Montserrat Volcanic Observatory where there is detail of current volcanic activity on Montserrat, lots of excellent photos, and details of the new Hazard Level System.

Map Jigsaws...

Lots of interesting things on the National Geographic website, including a choice of 24 map jigsaws...

Shouldn't be too much of a challenge for you to beat my time of 10 mins 22 seconds for the Europe Political map!!

Thanks to Tony Cassidy for the tip-off.

More on The Box...

You can join the Facebook group... check out Follow The Container, and see photos of the Box in this Flickr pool...

Britain's Favourite View

A while back, ITV ran a series called Britain's Favourite View, where minor celebrities waxed lyrical about their favourite view in Britain, and tried to convince the public to phone in and vote for them... The winner was Wastwater in the Lake District:



The series has been the focus of some of the work that Year 8 have been doing this week - looking at the 16 views that the public voted for and making their own adverts. You can find out more about the series and the views from the ITV website here and on the Guardian website here. 8CDr had some interesting discussions about whether they should choose to promote a view that was famous and that they knew lots about already, or whether they should be encouraging people to find out more about places that were less well-known, and about whether "our" favourite view should be a natural one or a man-made one (or indeed if the "natural" views were really natural!). We also wondered about whether we should be basing our decisions solely on the photographs - we all agreed that Blackpool looked rather nicer in its photograph than any of us who'd visited Blackpool had experienced!

What is your favourite view in Britain? And why?

The Box

Various geobloggers have been writing about this over the past week or so...

Click on the picture to find out more about the project, watch some video clips, track The Box, and even make your own model of it!

Welcome!

Well, we are now two days into the new school year, and if you are an SHS student reading this you have probably been told or reminded about the blog by your Geography teacher... so welcome, or welcome back!

A very big welcome also to Miss Thurston and Miss Bradford, who joined us in the Geography Department this week. Hopefully they will soon be making contributions to Geogtastic.

The purpose of this blog is enthuse, inspire and support SHS students studying Geography - there will be geographical news stories, interesting websites, resources that might help with homework, competitions, and lots of other bits and pieces.

If you're a 6th form geographer, remember to look at Geogtastic6 as well, and for those of you in Yr10 or 11, there's the new GeogtasticGCSE.

I hope that you all had a fantastic summer, and look forward to some comments about the stories and websites on the blog soon.

Oh, and Geogtastic has now passed the 21,000 visits mark! Yay!

Where's your favourite place?

Had an interesting afternoon yesterday... Took myself to Phoenix Park where I left my car, and then hopped on the tram. Free parking and then £2.70 for a day pass is rather more reasonable than the £8 or £9 it would probably have cost me to park in the car park of a fairly well-known Nottingham shopping centre! And I didn't have the hassle of driving into Nottingham... Not quite sure why it's taken me so long to catch on!

Got off at The Forest and went to meet Mrs Kambalu at the New Art Exchange - where Mr Kambalu has some work displayed as part of the Next We Change Earth exhibition...

Then went into the city centre for a wander round the shops, and was interested to see an alternative to the usual "hello" in the pen-testing area of the shop that sells my favourite pens! And the apostrophe in the right place as well! Thanks to Mrs K for the photo.

While we're on the subject - where is your favourite place? And why?

Geography on TV

Thanks to Val Vannet for pointing out that Iain Stewart returns this Sunday (7th September) at 9.00pm on BBC2 with "Earth - The Climate Wars". The BBC don't seem to have pages for the programme at the moment, but you can read an interview with Iain Stewart about the series here.

At the same time on BBC1, Joanna Lumley is "In the Land of the Northern Lights"...

And on Monday 15th September, Bruce Parry is back!!! This time, he is travelling the length of the Amazon, meeting some of the people who live along the river, discovering their stories, and exploring some of the issues that they face... The picture below shows Bruce with one of the Kayapo - a tribe from the Central Brazilian Plateau, whose name means "the men from the water place". If you click on the picture, it will take you to the BBC's Amazon pages where you can read the blog from the journey, look at some photos (including Bruce in drag ready for a football match... hmm... not sure about that one...) and maps, and watch various video clips.