Countdown to your Human Environments NAB!

I understand from Mrs W that both Higher classes will be sitting their Human Environments NAB in the next week. As you conclude the Rural section of the course,

you might like to reinforce what you have been learning about extensive commercial agriculture by looking at a case study farm in Cambridgeshire which features on the Farming and Countryside website. The image above shows Lynford House farm from the air and if you click on it, you will link directly to the relevant web pages. You might want to pay particular attention to the sections (accessible from the the side bar) on 'current situation' and 'recent developments'.

And in a lighter vein.....

Click on the banner to link to 'Geography at the Movies'. Scroll down the page until you get to 'Green Revolution'. Click where it says 'click here to view the movie' or right click to save to your computer, turn on your speakers, sit back and absorb!

National Parks portal and the YDNP site

You could back up the work on National Parks that we have been doing this week by investigating this excellent portal which provides links to a variety of information about all of the National Parks in England, Wales and Scotland. Click on the image above and you will be directed to the home page from where you can link to general information about national parks in the UK as well as to the individual national parks.

The website for the Yorkshire Dales National Park (accessible by clicking the logo on the left) is full of useful information relating to the RLR section of the course. You could, for example, start here to read about the special qualities which earned the Dales their designation as a national park. The education files (some of which you already have as handouts) are also freely downloadable.

Remembering Aberfan

On the 21 October 1966, 144 people, 116 of them children, were killed when a tip of coal waste slid onto the village of Aberfan in South Wales.

I am old enough to remember the news coverage of that disaster and the image above of the mass grave of children's coffins is probably what sticks most in my memory. The death toll of children was so high because their school was right in the path of the mudslide which occurred just after the they had assembled in school at 9am.

I suspect most of you will never have heard of Aberfan. I used to use it as a case study of a mudslide but over the years there have been fewer and fewer pupils who even recognised the name. Today, 40 years on, is a good time to talk about it again.

The tragic events of 40 years ago unravelled as a consequence of both human and physical factors. Heavy rain saturated the unstable and highly permeable coal waste which had been piled high on the valley side (despite many warnings of the danger of this). Underneath was a layer of permeable sandstone and below this an impermeable rock layer. Surface springs had also been blocked by the coal waste and as it was unable to drain, it turned into the 'slurry' which was eventually propelled by gravity down the valley side.

Your textbooks contain some information about Aberfan which you might want to read in the section on Mass Movement (pages 81 and 84 in the new editions and pages 86 and 90 in the old editions). There is also a lot of coverage in the press today and on the BBC website. Click on this link to access it and try to find time to read broadcaster John Humphrey's poignant memories of the disaster.

For a limited period only!

You will need to be quick if you want to 'catch' this! During the PM programme on Radio 4 on Monday of this week (16th October), there was a 5 minute discussion of China's one child policy - in particular, the problem of an ever declining work force having to support an increasingly aged population. You can listen to the discussion on the BBC's 'Listen Again' facility for up to a week after broadcast. Here is how to do this......

Click on the image above and you will link to the BBC Radio's homepage. From here, look in the blue 'Listen' column on the right and select 'Launch BBC Radio Player'. Choose Radio 4 and scroll down the alphabetic list until you come to PM. Select Monday and you will immediately (if you have your speakers on!) hear the beginning of the programme. Use the buttons at the top to advance through to 48 minutes. The discussion of China's one child policy begins at 48 minutes and 30 seconds.

There are some good statistics to note down and a few new perspectives on the policy. You might like to think about the following....
How will the % of people over 65yrs change in the next 25 years?
How and why will the dependency ratio change?
What are the implications of this for a country like China where the economy is currently booming ?

There is more on the one child policy on the department blog for Sunday 29th June 2006 at http://www.gmpay.blogspot.com/

Grikey!

I hope you have all enjoyed the break and are ready for the term ahead. Tomorrow we are launching straight back into limestone and will be looking at the formation of limestone pavement.

Although these flat expanses of bare limestone (such as at Moughton Scars above) are common in the southern part of the Yorkshire Dales, they are a very rare habitat both within the UK and globally.

Seen close up. it is easy to see why they are referred to as 'pavement'. The flat paving slabs or clints to give them their correct name are separated by weathered joints called grikes.

But more of that tomorrow.....

If however, you can't wait, you could have a look at what the Limestone Pavement Action Group have to say about the formation of limestone pavements. Their website is worth browsing and bookmarking for future reference.

Shifting cultivation and intensive wet rice farming

With your Human Environments NAB assessment coming up at the end of October, you might like to devote a little of your time over the holiday to revising the agricultural systems which you have already studied with Mrs W in the Rural section of the course.....First up... shifting cultivation. Remember that as well as understanding the features and landscapes associated with the farming systems which you are studying, you have to be able to comment on rural change. Thus for shifting cultivation you have to understand the implications of, for example, deforestation on the farming system.

A good starting point for revision would be the BBC Higher Geography Bitesize revision pages on shifting cultivation which you can find here .

You have also been looking at intensive wet rice cultivation. If you click on the image to the left, it will link you to an excellent page of information about wet rice farming - especially aspects of 'change' mentioned above.

One of the case studies on the Farming and Countryside Education website is rice farming in the Phillipines. Click here to link to it.

And finally, the BBC Scotland Higher Bitesize website also has a section on the impact of the Green Revolution on rice farming.

P.S. Don't forget to keep looking at the Geog department blog at www.gmpay.blogspot.com where there is plenty of general geographical interest to read about.

Limestone Landscapes

If you would like to look more closely at some of the landscapes of upland limestone which we will be studying in class over the next few weeks, you can access and download one of my PowerPoint presentations which shows limestone landscapes in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Click on the following link here

At the bottom of the page you will find a download button. Click on this and you will get the option to 'open' or 'save' to your computer. The file is less than 2MB so you can download it easily and store it for future reference.

What's old, grey and cracked?!

You are going to get quite familiar with this stuff over the next few weeks! In fact, those of you who are going on the Dales fieldtrip in November will be getting close up views of this very spot.


The rest of you who are going in March might be lucky enough to get a view of this location in the wonderful snowy conditions we had last year at that time.


You will shortly realise that I love limestone scenery - possibly because it is quite unlike anything we have in Scotland! However, this means that it will be VERY new to all of you. In the Lithosphere section to date we have been looking at glaciated scenery which is familiar territory from Standard Grade. You don't have prior learning of limestone to fall back on so my message is to pay attention, use your textbook, keep your notes in order and read the blog!

You might like to get a head start by investigating this excellent on-line resource ....
Click on the banner above and you will link to BBC Scotland's upland limestone resource. It contains a huge amount of material so don't be daunted by it! I promise it will all slowly start to make sense.

P.S. I went to see 'An Inconvenient Truth' (ref previous post) last night and I would thoroughly recommend it.