Desertification

Thanks to @richardallaway for this video.

Tundra High prices in supermarket

Glad I don't live here with those prices! I hope the Carrick pupils have worked out why all prices are so expensive.

Desertification

Desertification summed up
video here to help with this section. Thanks to sln contributor - Cindy for the linkWatch out for the “magic stones” and no I won’t be pronouncing the French bit in class!!

Desert animal adaptation

Desert Animal adaptation
Thanks to amybee on SLN for this one!

Tundra song

Thanks Rebecca for telling me about this one. Can't embed it but here's the link. Go youtube it folks!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9IjGNJPNyzU

Rainforest Canopy – Ray Mears

Rainforest destruction

In Google Earth. Nice one.

This is the scariest of them all and really sad. Try to find out what palm oil is used for in this country.

OK this is really a loose connection but I like it. Enjoy!

Amazon in one Minute!

New battle over Arctic oil

With the Arctic ice-cap melting far beyond average for the second year running - and with US petrol prices above $4 per gallon - there's growing pressure to exploit the reserves beneath the seabed. Sarah Palin has her say in this report too.
A whaling captain, however, believes that drilling offshore could threaten his culture and badly affect wildlife such as the polar bears. Read the article here to see what you think.

Thanks to Richard Allaway for highlighting this video. It is a BBC docudrama. You can also follow parts 2-6 on Youtube as well. Richard warns that it may not be on for long, so watch it now if you can. Very useful for S3 and revision for S4. Prelims coming up soon!

Amazon Programmes

Monday 15th September, Bruce Parry is back. This time, he is travelling along the Amazon, meeting some of the people who live along the river, discovering their stories, and exploring some of the issues that they face. Link here for more info about all the programmes. Now this is Geography in your face!!!!!

Why dying is forbidden in the Arctic

It is forbidden to die in the Arctic town of Longyearbyen! If you do die then no-one will bury you. At 78 degrees north, it lies on the archipelago of Svalbard, a group of islands between Norway's northern coast and the North Pole.The town's small graveyard stopped accepting new bodies 70 years ago, after it was discovered that the bodies were not decomposing.

School Issues are different here too –

Polar bears
Trips outside the school walls carry a more immediate danger for the children and, for this reason, the teacher carries a gun. There are some other interesting facts here about global warming. Read the BBC article here.

How important is the Rainforest to the world?

Most people don’t realise just how important the rainforests are for ALL of us. Deforestation releases more CO2 into the atmosphere each year than all of the world's planes, trains and automobiles put together! The truth is that cutting down the rainforests for farming and grazing produces more CO2 than all the UK energy used in our homes. Each hectare of rainforest - roughly the size of two football pitches - an area almost the size of England and Wales is cut down every year releasing billions of tons of CO2 into the air. The destruction results in millions of people being made homeless while causing animals and plants to be extinct. Read the whole Telegraph article here.

Go also to the Rainforest Foundation site here for some interesting photos.

Amazon Indians lead battle against power giant's plan to flood rainforest

At stake are plans to flood large areas of rainforest to make way for the huge Belo Monte hydroelectric dam on the Xingu river. Critics complain the environmental and social costs are too high. For people living beside the river, the dam will bring an end to their way of life. Thousands of homes will be flooded. The reservoir will flood up to 6,140 square kilometres (2,371 square miles). Scientists say it will cause a dramatic increase in greenhouse-gas emissions. from the decomposition of organic matter in the stagnant water of the reservoir.
"Hydroelectric dams have severe social impacts," Philip Fearnside, one of the world's leading rainforest scientists explains, "including flooding the lands of indigenous peoples, displacing non-indigenous residents and destroying fisheries."
Dr Fearnside said the project helps aluminium plants looking to cash in on exports but does little for local needs, and in fact increases the health risks to local populations, including malaria. Read here

Brazil makes 'rainforest' condoms

Making love might not seem like the most obvious way to save the world's largest tropical rainforest - and combat the threat of Aids.
But according to the Brazilian government, which this week opened a £10m condom factory deep in the Amazon jungle, it could be an effective weapon in the battle to stop the chainsaw damage of Amazonia.
The Brazilian government has begun producing condoms using rubber from trees in the Amazon. The Brazilian government has one of the biggest programmes in the world to distribute free condoms in the fight against the disease. The latex will come from the Chico Mendes reserve, an area named after the famous conservationist and rubber tapper who was shot dead in 1988 by local ranchers.
The factory will benefit at least 500 families and provide 150 jobs . Read here and here.

Rainforest Destruction

Two good videos here showing what is going on. I love the first one. Would you like this happening to your home?

Rainforest Carve up
Love the spiffing accent!

Rainforest Destruction

Sad but stunning film here where the lyre bird imitates other creatures in the forest but also the sounds of the chainsaws destroying the forest! The camera shutters are fantastic but the car alarm and saws disturb me too much. What are we doing to the planet?

Brazil is losing its Amazonian forests to farmers at an unprecedented rate, satellite observations have shown. In the past 40 years, 20 per cent of the Amazon forests have been cut down and in 2004 the highest rate of deforestation in Brazil was recorded when 10,400sq miles of the habitat, described as the world's lungs, disappeared.
Rest of the link here and here.

Desert Landscapes

Desert Introduction

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Introduction to hot deserts. Some good photos here as a reminder of desert conditions

Deserts

Listen to the ways the Saguaro cactus has adapted to their environment.

Look also at the information here and here for more.

Devastating Deforestation

This video shows the impact deforestation is having on the indigenous peoples of the rain forest in Papua.

Anatomy of a rainforest

BBC News science correspondent David Shukman has been looking at the effects of deforestation on Borneo's rainforests. The tropical rainforests - running in a belt around the Equator from the Amazon, through Congo to South-East Asia - are not only a vast store of carbon, but also have a direct impact on global weather patterns.
The problem is that the "rainforests are worth more dead than alive"Read these articles here and here. Here is a good video as well which is great for S4. Click the diagram below.And this video of the understorey is useful too. This one shows the forest floor and explains why those trees grow so tall.