Showing posts with label deserts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deserts. Show all posts
Monday, 20 April 2015
Learning about Salt Lakes with Top Gear!
One of my students suggested that we do a revision lesson on salt lakes using the Top Gear Botswana special, so I will be using this with my students next week. Thank to Chris for the idea!
Tuesday, 10 February 2015
What Else Causes Deserts?
Since I made a nice complicated and extremely long PowerPoint and accompanying worksheet for the first two causes of aridity, I thought I should probably procrastinate my Masters assignment a little longer and make an equally time consuming set of resources for the other 2 causes - Mountains and Cold Ocean Currents.
Please leave me some feedback and tell me what you think!
Sunday, 8 February 2015
What Causes Deserts?
At last! I have finished this extremely long and carefully edited PowerPoint and accompanying worksheet explaining the causes of aridity, well, 2 of them at least! I do plan to do another lesson on ocean currents and mountains for next week so please let me know if you would like those too.
When I first taught this topic I found it quite a complex topic, so I have tried to break it down in an easy to understand way and explain it step by step with the help of PP animations.
You can fill in the worksheet as you go through the PP, or do it afterwards to test your learning.
Since it took me such a long time to create this I thought I'd share it here in the hope that someone else gets some use out of it too. Please leave me a comment with feedback!
Saturday, 3 January 2015
How much do You know about the Kalahari Desert?
I recently signed up for a free trial with Netflix and last night I came across David Attenborough's Africa series and watched the first episode and part of the second (ok I know it came out a year ago and I need to get up to date!).
Anyway, I enjoyed it immensely, the stunning photography, the narrative, the sound track - all beautifully put together. It starts with the mystery fairy circles, which I had never heard of but immediately diverted me for half an hour of Google searches and made me wish I could do a field trip there to take some soil samples and see whether I could find any environmental gradients. Or get hold of some remotely sensed images to examiner their distribution and see if there was a pattern.
The stories of the animals really draw you in, from the nightmarish invasion of the giant ground crickets, to the mischievous drongo, the amazing cartwheeling spider and the romantic encounters of black rhinos under the stars.
And if all that isn't enough, it's narrated by Sir David Attenborough, so how could you not like it! (Although I was sad to discover a few weeks ago that not only had some of my AS students never heard of him, one of them even asked me if he was a paedophile?! =O).
Of course, the best thing about it was that I couldn't help noticing all the links to geography. I found myself wishing all my students were watching it too! So, I decided at 11pm last night it would be a good idea to make a quiz to go with the first episode. It could either be used in class or set as a homework, but particularly relevant for anyone studying arid environments (deserts).
Anyway, I enjoyed it immensely, the stunning photography, the narrative, the sound track - all beautifully put together. It starts with the mystery fairy circles, which I had never heard of but immediately diverted me for half an hour of Google searches and made me wish I could do a field trip there to take some soil samples and see whether I could find any environmental gradients. Or get hold of some remotely sensed images to examiner their distribution and see if there was a pattern.
The stories of the animals really draw you in, from the nightmarish invasion of the giant ground crickets, to the mischievous drongo, the amazing cartwheeling spider and the romantic encounters of black rhinos under the stars.
And if all that isn't enough, it's narrated by Sir David Attenborough, so how could you not like it! (Although I was sad to discover a few weeks ago that not only had some of my AS students never heard of him, one of them even asked me if he was a paedophile?! =O).
Of course, the best thing about it was that I couldn't help noticing all the links to geography. I found myself wishing all my students were watching it too! So, I decided at 11pm last night it would be a good idea to make a quiz to go with the first episode. It could either be used in class or set as a homework, but particularly relevant for anyone studying arid environments (deserts).
I hope it's useful to somebody, let me know if you'd like me to make quizzes for the other episodes too. By the looks of it they will be very geographical too, and I definitely plan to watch them all so I may as well make up some questions as I do!
Friday, 9 August 2013
Billboards and Camanchaca
Browsing facebook again and I noticed a headline 'Drinking Water out of Air' (check out the video below). Intrigued I read how a group of engineers in Lima have designed a billboard that captures humidity from the air to provide clean drinking water in city where many people don't have clean running water and much of the water they can get hold of isn't suitable for drinking.
As with anything the system isn't perfect. it requires electricity to run (perhaps solar panels could be installed? take advantage of the sun as well as the humidity!), it must be expensive to install (this could be funded by whoever had their adverts displayed on the board) and require some type of maintenance (though perhaps local people could be involved in this?) and unfortunately many areas around the world with water shortages probably don't have high enough humidity, but overall it's great to see innovative solutions to environmental challenges being tried and tested.
It reminds me of 2 things we study in the Deserts unit at AS. Further south along the coast from Lima a more low-tech solution to water shortages in the Atacama desert, Chile, has been successfully used to for some time to make agriculture possible in one of the driest places on earth.
Years can pass by at a time without rain falling in this area, yet near the coast the Humboldt current cools the warm air above it producing the camanchaca (love that name it sounds so descriptive), clouds of fog which blow over the land in the mornings like white blankets. They not only look beautiful but allow plants, and animals such as guanacos to survive in an area that would otherwise be too dry.
As with anything the system isn't perfect. it requires electricity to run (perhaps solar panels could be installed? take advantage of the sun as well as the humidity!), it must be expensive to install (this could be funded by whoever had their adverts displayed on the board) and require some type of maintenance (though perhaps local people could be involved in this?) and unfortunately many areas around the world with water shortages probably don't have high enough humidity, but overall it's great to see innovative solutions to environmental challenges being tried and tested.
It reminds me of 2 things we study in the Deserts unit at AS. Further south along the coast from Lima a more low-tech solution to water shortages in the Atacama desert, Chile, has been successfully used to for some time to make agriculture possible in one of the driest places on earth.
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| © Laurent Abad (Flickr) |
Years can pass by at a time without rain falling in this area, yet near the coast the Humboldt current cools the warm air above it producing the camanchaca (love that name it sounds so descriptive), clouds of fog which blow over the land in the mornings like white blankets. They not only look beautiful but allow plants, and animals such as guanacos to survive in an area that would otherwise be too dry.
The other thing it reminded me of was another example of environmental engineering that was proposed as a solution to mitigate desertification in the Sahel (last video for this post I promise!).
All this almost makes me wish I'd done engineering! I'm not sure if they're planning to actually try this out but apparently the 'Great Green Wall' initiative has already been started so perhaps this will be tried in combination if anyone can ever get it together to undertake such a huge project in such a hostile environment. If the project is successful it could have a huge positive impact in one of the poorest more insecure regions in the world.
Sunday, 4 March 2012
How the Trade Winds started Globalisation
Very interesting video about how the trade winds played a role in globalisation.
AS - this is a good video to help you understand the causes of deserts.
A2 - this is a great way for you to incorporate some synopticity!!
AS - this is a good video to help you understand the causes of deserts.
A2 - this is a great way for you to incorporate some synopticity!!
Monday, 20 February 2012
How to Make a Sand Dune
I found a great video clip about sand dunes and how they form, including barchans; check it out: