Why is Santa relocating?

Here's something else for you to work on over the Christmas break - on top of the other two tasks I have given you to do (if you are HSD Geog bloggers!) .

Clue - find out where the location is and then try a few search engines or the search facility of a few media websites. I will give you the answer next week.

On the subject of people relocating, my 'relocation' to the Alps next week means that I can't keep up my postings on www.geobloggingwithmark.blogspot.com. However, I have arranged a 'guest presenter' so keep looking!

Merry Christmas - have a good holiday!

Chinese babies....again!

I know, I know... I promised no more articles on the Chinese one child policy! However, this is a really good one. It featured in the Times on Friday and describes a projected baby boom in the country. Click here to link.

Care for the elderly in China

Every so often I promise not to talk about the Chinese one child policy again and then along comes a new resource and I am forced to give in!
If you click on the population pyramids, you will link to an excellent article on the Population Reference Bureau's website which explores one of the consequences of the policy - the ageing of the population and the problems for the economy of long term care for the elderly. Don't just read it - take some notes and file them in the correct place in your folders!

19, 20, 21

That's an interesting statistic and one you can explore more by clicking on the image above. The website you will link to looks at the growth of world cities through time. It is particularly relevant for the Urban Change and Management option in paper 2.

The Power of Ice

In a follow-up to last week's posting about the series Earth : Power of the Planet, this is just a reminder that this week's episode (Tuesday BBC2 at 9pm) looks at the ability of ice to shape our planet. The programme description suggests that there will be much of relevance to Lithosphere and you can even watch couple of excerpts ahead of time.
Click here to see how snow turns into glacial ice and here to see what goes on underneath a glacier.

It's the world but not as we know it!

Here is a map of the world drawn so that territory size is in relation to population..Here is another one which shows total GDP (ie not per capita) by country..

And here is one which shows the number of primary aged girls who are not receiving schooling..

Finally, the consequence might be .....

This map shows books borrowed and so is a measure of a) provision of libraries and b) literacy

All of these maps come from the Worldmapper website which has 366 similar maps showing the scale of socioeconomic disparity around the world. One word of warning - remember that the maps show totals rather than per capita figures. You must therefore always bear map 1 above in mind when drawing conclusions from the maps.

Earth : The Power of the Planet

This posting follows on from one I put on 'Geography, My Place and Yours' last week.

The second episode in the series will be screened on BBC2 on Tuesday at 9pm. This episode will explore the Atmosphere and heaving read the programme content description, it sounds as if it will be well worth watching if you are a Higher Geography candidate.

BBC Geology toolkit

I'm not sure why this excellent interactive resource has escaped me up till now. Click on the image to link to a very comprehensive but user friendly explanation of many aspects of the geology of Britain. There is a huge amount of information for you to browse but you might like to set yourself the task of using the website to research the Yorkshire Dales and carboniferous limestone.

Hydrological cycle again!

If you are still needing practice with the vocabulary associated with the global hydrological cycle, click on the image above to link to the BBC Scotland rivers website.

Also, you should remember that you can link to any of the previous postings on Hydrosphere by clicking on the label in the right side bar. One of those postings should link to ....

.... a sort of textbook in a blog written by virtual colleague and friend Rob Chambers who teaches Geography in St Ives, Cambridgeshire. You may remember that he visited us at HSD and sat in on one of the Higher classes last month. He has kindly added loads of notes which are useful for Higher to his GCSE blog and if you click the banner above, it will link you to his materials on the hydrological cycle and drainage basins. There is plenty to read plus interactive games and exercises to work through.

Global Hydrological Cycle

I came across this good diagram of the water cycle today on the USGS website. When we were studying this in class recently, we were discussing all the various processes which transfer water in its many forms from one form of storage to another. The processes are listed and well explained here . An even fuller description of both transfer and storage is here.

The USGS website has a variety of other resources relating to the water cycle. You can, for example, follow the journey of a single drop of water . Or if a place mat on your desk would help, you could always try this ..... A print friendly version is available if you click on the image!

The largest expanse of limestone in the world...

Not in the Yorkshire Dales....but under the Nullarbor in Australia...
Click here to read about the world's largest karst landscape and here to discover how I found out about it! Amazing to think that just 90m under this treeless desert there are extensive cave systems and vast underground salt lakes. Well, you learn something new every day!!

Yorkshire Dales fieldtrip November 2007

Well done to all of you who were with us in the Dales this weekend. You walked well (with hardly a complaint about the rain on Saturday!), worked hard - until after 10pm on both evenings, earned plaudits from the youth hostel staff and were good company. Here, as promised, are a few highlights from the weekend, starting with Thornton Force from Friday afternoon.....

Saturday morning walk to Malham Cove and the pavement at the top of the 415 steps!


Then on to Gordale Scar....
...followed by a visit to the Norber erratics

This morning (Sunday) we went to the limestone quarry at Hortonthen on to the pavements at Scar Close
at the foot of Ingleborough.......

....where we had fun testing out the grykes for size!

Last stop was a visit to White Scar caves .......Outside there were great views across the valley to Twistleton ...

Happy Families UK style

There are some interesting (and some quite surprising) statistics about family demographics in the UK in an article on the BBC news website today.

Case studies of migration to the UK

There are some good case studies of migrants to the UK in yesterday's 'Guardian'. Click image to link and read the stories of....

Catherine Chuungwe, 43, from Zambia, settled in Northern Ireland three years ago, Narina Shorland, 24, from St Petersburg, works at Riverford Organic Vegetables in Devon, Grzegor Jagienak, 22, from Poland, has been in the UK for three months working full-time as a bartender at Cargo, a club in Shoreditch, east London and Victoria Patricio, 28, born in Botswana, has Portuguese nationality and has been in Thetford, Norfolk, for three years.

Why not print these stories off and go through them highlighting push and pull factors in each case?

New Climate Change Resource

There is a new climate change resource (click image to link) on the website of Learning and Teaching Scotland which contains material relevant to the Atmosphere section of the Higher course...The sections which relate directly to the course are :
1) Climate change is real (the section explaining how global warming works) and
2) Are we responsible for global warming?

Remember that (at present!) the Higher course does not expect you to know about consequences of global warming nor about strategies to minimise climate change.

Population Myth Buster

Try this - you might be surprised! Click on the image to link....

National Parks land use conflicts

We are about to embark on a couple of weeks of work looking at land use conflicts in the Yorkshire Dales National Park for the RLR section of Paper 2. It is important, however, to remember that the theme of land use conflicts is repeated in all national parks - in fact, it is a recurring theme in most rural areas of Britain. While it is important to know specific detail about a case study area (for us this will be the Yorkshire Dales), you should also be able to apply what you are learning to other areas and be able to comment on likely conflicts and ways of resolving them. With this in mind, here are a few resources you could explore...

The first looks at conflicts in the Peak District National Park (the extractive industry shown here on the left is just one of those conflicts). Click the image to link.

The second is an extract from the Wikipedia page on National parks in England and Wales . It is a more general overview of land use conflicts in national parks but has a lot of useful links to explore.

Finally, here is a decision- making exercise which looks at the conflicts of land use which are related to tourism within an imaginary national park. This would be well worth looking at - especially as tourist related activity is the first land use in the Dales which we will be studying in class.

Two reminders!

I am not going to 'repost' information which has already appeared on the blog so please remember how easy it is to access postings from last year. Use the list under 'Higher Units' in the sidebar and click on the unit for which you want to read previous posts. The blog will then 'reload' showing only the relevant posts. You would be well advised to do this on a regular basis!

Some day when time is heavy on my hands ( maybe when I retire!!), I will add more labels to all previous posts so you can refine your search further e.g. limestone, malaria..... In the meantime you will just have to read more than you need!

The second reminder is for all those who are going on the November Yorkshire Dales fieldtrip... parental consent forms are due back asap!

A new population explosion?

According to a new report for the Office of National Statistics, the UK is about to enter a period of very rapid population growth. After decades of slow rates of growth, new predictions suggest that our population might grow by as much as 4.5 million in the next 9 years. This would bring our population to 65 million by 2016.

As the graph on the left indicates, almost half of that increase will result from immigration. There is a good account of the report on the BBC website today (click graph to link) which examines the possible impact which the increases would have on the infrastructure and social services in Britain. It also makes reference to the new debates about controls on immigration which are erupting on the political scene.... this at a time when migration rates are set to rise.

I am old enough (just!) to remember the reverberations of Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech about immigration back in the late 1960s and so I will be watching with interest what the government and organisations like Migrationwatch and Optimum Population Trust have to say about these new figures.

African case study for Development and Health

The Guardian has today launched a new area of its website which is devoted to life in one village in Uganda (click banner to link). With the help of sponsors Barclays Bank and Amref (an African medical and research foundation) and with donations from Guardian readers, they hope to transform the lives of the people who live in Katine over the next three years..

The project is also launched in today's edition of the Guardian in a long article by its Editor. The article begins "With the right flight connections, a journey from the 21st century to the 14th century can take just over 12 hours. It begins in the hot, crowded duty-free hell of Heathrow's terminal 3 and ends - through the bushes down a snaking mud track - by the marshes under a cloudless blue African sky.

This is an excellent on-line resource for Development and Health with resources in a variety of media - images, video, audio and text. It would provide some excellent case study material for Paper 2.

Limestone cave danger

I was very sad to hear today of the deaths of eight tourists in a cave In Khao Sok National Park in Thailand.

The connection with Higher Geography is that the area is predominantly underlain by limestone - hence the spectacular caves and underground scenery. As you should know from what we have been studying in class, one of the characteristic features of limestone is a structure of joints and bedding planes which allows water to travel down through the rock. Thus, heavy tropical rains can have serious consequences for people who are underground. If rain is absorbed into the ground faster than the underground drainage can dispose of it, then levels of water in caves and potholes will rise, trapping those who have no means of escape.

It's Jurassic!

I have been experimenting with a new bit of presentation software...

It is early days yet as we haven't started coasts but in a couple of months you should be able to come back to this (which is made with images from my Dorset coast weekend) and list all the coastal processes which are at work here....

Greetings from the Jurassic Coast

Limestone links to keep you from wearying at mid term!

After a spectacular display of short term memory loss this morning by 5.4 ( it remains to be seen whether 5.3 can do any better tomorrow!!), here are a few aide memoires on the subject of limestone....


1) I am not going to re post all the links I put up last year, so I suggest you check out 'Lithosphere' in the side bar and look there for a lot of excellent material. Remember to look at 'older posts' when you get to the bottom of the page.


2) I have had a look at what Wikipedia has to say on the subject. It is quite good and there are a lot of hyperlinked words and phrases for you to check out.


3) Some good stuff on limestone pavements here courtesy of the Limestone Pavement Action group and also here.

4) Finally some good descriptions of the scenery around Malham which you will see in either November or March


Have a good break but remember .... first day back you have to give me 'chapter and verse' on limestone pavements!!

Changes on the farm......

The Rural Land Resources section of Paper 2 makes reference to changing rural land use and this is nowhere better exemplified than in the context of farming. The BBC website today carries a series of resources which explore this through several generations of one farming family in South Devon. there is also an excellent associated interactive resource which offers a 'snapshot of farming today in the UK' which you can link to by clicking the banner below.....

One hundred and still counting...

The over 90s are now the fastest growing age group in the UK... and that's official! In 1911 there were 100 centenarians and now there are 9000. This figure could reach 40,000 by 1931. The BBC website today is carrying a good article on the causes and consequences of this change in population structure. Click the image to link.

How strictly is China's one child policy enforced?

That is the question which the third in the current series of articles on the BBC website about China's one child policy poses.

You should read the article with two purposes in mind...
a) what circumstances officially permit couples in China to have more than one child?

b) To what extent is there really a 'relaxation' of the rules ?