South Downs becomes a National Park

This beautiful area of Britain has been made a national park today. The new South Downs national park will spread across Sussex and Hampshire. A lo of the land within the new park was already protected from development because it was classed as an area of outstanding natural beauty. Today's decision makes the South Downs England's 9th national park, bringing the total of areas protected as national parks to 10, including the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, which have equivalent status but are not quite national parks. Scotland has 2 national parks – Cairngorms and Loch Lomond. The BBC has a few pieces on this here too.There are some beautiful pictures also of this are here.

How did Earth Hour look?

Earth Hour 2009- Water Cube And Birds Nest Stadium's Lights Go Off

Malaysia switches off - Petronas Tower

Australia and New Zealand lead the way for Earth Hour 2009

Dubai makes a new World

Here are acouple of pictures from the Mail showing how the credit crunch seems to have missed out this part of the planet. It is rumoured that famous sportsmen and actors have bought some island. Read the rest here. If nothing else it shows how fantastic satellites are as this is the only way this amazing engineering exercise can be seen clearly.

Earth Hour tonight!

At 8.30pm, people, businesses and important buildings around the world will switch off their lights for an hour – WWF’s Earth Hour. Who will be involved? Nelson’s Column, the Forth Bridge, the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, the Eiffel Tower, Niagara Falls, Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Table Mountain in Cape Town and Sydney Opera House. The London Eye, too, will be switched off for the hour. Even the pyramids in Egypt are to be plunged into darkness for an hour.

A little disappointing to see our authority hasn't signed up - lets just hope it is an oversight! Time yet. See the WWF site for more info and the films below.

Here’s the Birds nest stadium in Beijing 2009 as a starting point.

This shows how this idea is now global.

Join in with this and support the world tackle global warming.

World map

Nice site I meant to show you earlier. Highlighted by Alan Parkinson over at Living Geography, this is interesting. Link here.

Street View

Many of you will know about this already but here is a nice short introduction about it. More later - I promise.

Tonga volcanic eruption

New land is made. This truly is "Geography in your face!"

The powerful underwater volcano that erupted in the south Pacific this week has created a new island off the coast of Tonga. The eruption happened about 39 miles north-west of the Tongan capital, Nuku'alofa. We don't really know if this new land will remain but it will be interesting to see what happens. This isn't the first time this has happened. See if you can find out about Surtsey in Iceland. Here is a starting point - Surtsey link.Hate to say this but this is perfect timing for Int 2 starting Environmental Hazard next week as a little "extra" in preparation for the exam whilst the Highers cover the Biosphere section. Click the photo link above for a short BBC video on this topic.

Extreme farming

OK this is a bit rude in bits but it made me laugh. Don't think this is all real but who cares?

Desert animal adaptation

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