GLOBAL

Why the Saudis Are Going Solar

The fate of one of the biggest fossil-fuel producers may now depend on its investment in renewable energy. http://tinyurl.com/solar-saudi

Concepts of thinking: Spatial significance, geographic perspective, patterns and trends, interrelationships

Prince Turki bin Saud bin Mohammad Al Saud belongs to the family that rules Saudi Arabia.

Charleston shooting: we need prayer, but also an end to this political genocide

After the killings, there was urgency about arresting Dylann Roof, but where’s the urgency to address the conditions that led to the tragedy?

Rev Jesse Jackson

http://tinyurl.com/Emanuel-church

People gather outside Emanuel Church a day after the mass shooting. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

Maps are powerful tools that to help answer the geographic questions: What is where? Why there? and Why Care?

 Concepts of thinking: Geographic perspective, patterns and trends

Lesson idea: create maps 

a) do some research on some of the statistics in the article and create thematic maps showing: highest rates of infant mortality, unemployment, of imprisonment,  poverty, heart disease, liver disease, diabetes, mental health issues, HIV/Aids in the United States. 

b) gather information on other type of situations and create a spatial journal to see what patterns may appear.

Copenhagen
10 of the best ways to enjoy Copenhagen … on a budget

The Danish capital’s reputation for being expensive is not entirely deserved. With planning, there’s lots of fun to be had on a shoestring (if a high-quality one) and even great places to stay need not be out of reach

http://tinyurl.com/visit-Copenhagen

Go with the flow … a Movia water bus approaches the Royal Danish Library stop on the Copenhagen waterfront. 



Photograph: Alamy

Concepts of thinking: Spatial significance, patterns and trends, geographic perspective

California

Worldwide wine routes

California’s Paso Robles wine route: top 10 guide

Paso Robles is the fastest growing wine region in the US, with over 200 wineries, yet its tasting rooms are far less busy – and its hotels and restaurants more affordable – than more famous Napa and Sonoma

• Sonoma wine route: 10 of the best wineries, restaurants and hotels

http://tinyurl.com/o7krzux

Concepts of thinking: Spatial significance, geographic perspective, patterns and trends, interrelationships

Lesson idea: Create a story map using ArcGIS Online to communicate what patterns have been observed.

Villa San Juliette, Paso Robles

Gemma Price

Wednesday 17 June 2015 12.30 BST

Nato shows its teeth to Russia with elaborate Baltic training exercise

Mock landing in Poland, just over 100 miles from Russian naval hub Kaliningrad, is an exhibition of allied strength but some say it could send a dangerous signal

Ewen MacAskill in Gdansk

Wednesday 17 June 2015 18.04 BST

Concepts of thinking: Geographic perspective, Spatial significance, Interrelationships

Lesson ideas: create a spatial journal of locations and continue to follow the issue.

Nato troops during a landing exercise off the coast of Ustka, northern Poland. Photograph: Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images

Canada Doesn't Impress On This Quality Of Life Index 

The Huffington Post Canada  |  By Daniel Tencer

Posted: 06/16/2015 11:22 am EDT 

http://tinyurl.com/o2un564

Concepts of thinking: Spatial significance, geographic perspective.

Ideal for World Issues class

Poles of Inaccessibility -

the Remotest Places on Earth

http://tinyurl.com/coolstorymap

Concepts of thinking: Spatial significance

Barrow, Alaska

The new cold war

http://tinyurl.com/oil-in-the-arctic

Concepts of thinking: Spatial significance, geographic perspective, interrelationships

Barcelona

Top 10 restaurants in Barcelona for great value set lunches

Pick the menú del día and lunch in Barcelona will become a tasty adventure in the best of Catalan cooking in the city’s most interesting quarters – and a more affordable experience too

http://tinyurl.com/q24xvr4

Concepts of Thinking: Geographic perspective, interrelationships, patterns and trends

Mapping Activity: Create a Spatial Journal or Virtual Tour of the restaurant location in Barcelona

Uganda: the human story behind gorilla tourism

http://tinyurl.com/batwa-and-tourism

Concepts of thinking: Geographic perspective, interrelationships, spatial significance, patterns and trends

Why might this situation have been allowed to happen to the Batwa? 

Ageing UK population will increase strain on public spending, OBR warns

Office for Budget Responsibility says that national debt would come down from its current 80% of GDP to 54% by the early 2030s and then start rising again

http://tinyurl.com/qbs8wnu

Concepts of thinking: Patterns and trends, geographic perspective

How might this compare to Canada's population patterns?

Ageing population is going to push up public spending, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Photograph: F1 Online / Rex Features/F1 Online / Rex Features

Nepal earthquake: Devastation in maps and images 28 April 2015 BBC

Concepts of Thinking: Spatial Significance (why is the earthquake location so important?) Interrelationships (why was it that so many buildings were not livable after the quake?), 

Geographic Perspective (how might people be able to best help the situation in Nepal?), 

Patterns and Trends (Why would so many people live in an area that has the potential or such damage? What, if any, evidence is there that this may happen again?)

What could be done to ensure that this type of destruction could be reduced in the future?

The link below has a lot of useful and interesting views of the Earthquake that recently took place in Nepal.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32479909

Clockmaker John Harrison vindicated 250 years after ‘absurd’ claims

The pendulum clock of Longitude hero John Harrison is tested and declared a masterpiece

http://tinyurl.com/pjktcqb

Concept of Thinking: Spatial Significance

A series of pictures showing some effects of population increase and the stress on the environment that comes with it.

Concepts of Thinking: Spatial Significance, Interrelationships, Geographic Perspective

http://tinyurl.com/effects-of-population-increase

This two web page were posted earlier but I thought it would be worth posting again.

Gapminder and Worldmapper are websites that are inter active graphs, maps, and charts. Supporting lessons for Gapminder are also available.

http://www.gapminder.org/downloads/

Concepts of Thinking: Patterns and Trends, Geographic Perspective

http://www.worldmapper.org 





A fun video that gets across the mapping essentials.  

Suggested use as a minds on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txsmjOItqWE

Geographic Perspective: Spatial Significance

They Flew a Drone Over a Pig Farm to Discover It’s Not Really a Farm. It’s Much More Disturbing.

A drone visits some pig “farms” run by the world’s biggest pork producer…
http://tinyurl.com/pig-farm-from-the-air

Concepts of Thinking: Spatial Significance, Geographic Perspective

NASA: Global Climate Change, Vital Signs of a Plant

This sit has many great visuals that related to so many different aspect of the geography curriculum.  Two are highlighted below.

http://climate.nasa.gov/state_of_flux#Topaz-Solar-Farm-930px-57.jpg

Great slides of Then and Now dealing with Climate Change.

Concepts of Geographic Perspective: Spatial Significance, Patterns and Trends, Interrelationships

http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=4257&button=recent

IMERG Global Precipitation RatesThis visual shows the process of precipitation around the world

Visualizations by Horace Mitchell on February 26, 2015

Concepts of Geographic Perspective: Spatial Significance, Patterns and Trends

Wind Power Around the World

Here is a great graphic showing the amount of energy generated from wind around the world.

http://tinyurl.com/windenergygraphic

Concepts of Geographic Thinking: Spatial Significance, Patterns and Trends

Suggested use: Have students create a spatial journal using ArcGIS on line.

Below are two websites dealing with climate and climate change.  There are several interesting links associated with these sites.

http://www.education.noaa.gov/

This website has a variety of resources relating to different aspects of the water cycle. 

 

http://climate.nasa.gov/news/2218/

Global is the new local: Pollution changes clouds, climate downstream

Roam the World in (Almost) Real Time

It's always summer on Google Earth. But a landmark Mapbox project uses satellite imagery to show the planet as it is now.

Launched Thursday, a landmark project from Mapbox has changed the summertime paradigm for online cartography. Landsat-live reveals the planet's surface in real time and in stunning resolution, fed by a constant stream of public-domain imagery from NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite. Above is an embedded version you can explore.

http://tinyurl.com/realtimemap

Concepts of Thinking: Geographic Perspective, Spatial Significance

Florida banned state workers from using term 'climate change' – report

Global warming’ and ‘sustainability’ among phrases allegedly barred at state’s Department of Environmental Protection, investigative report finds

 Florida is threatened by climate change, according to the 2014 US national climate assessment. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex/Sipa Press/Rex

Geographic Concepts of Thinking: Geographic Perspective, Spatial Significance

AQUEDUCT  World Resource Institute

http://www.wri.org/applications/maps/agriculturemap/#x=-131.35&y=2.42&l=2&v=home&d=gmia

A great resource for World Issues

Concepts of Thinking: Spatial Significance, Patterns and Trends, Interrelationships

The Shocking Truth About What It Would Cost Walmart If It Paid a Living Wage.

In two minutes, economist Robert Reich completely destroys every possible excuse for Walmart’s low wages…

Click on the link: http://tinyurl.com/qaksn92

Concepts of Thinking: Geographic Perspective, Interrelationships, Patterns and Trends, 

The Haiti earthquake five years on - then and now

On 12 January 2010, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti with more than 50 aftershocks following over the next 12 days. The disaster left more than 220,000 people dead and over 300,000 injured and resulted in a humanitarian crisis

• Click each image to show the same location, five years on

http://tinyurl.com/Haiti-5-years-ago

Concepts of Geographic Thinking: Patterns and Trends

This Is What A World Map Looks Like When Scaled According To Population Size

February 1, 2015 | by Kristy Hamilton

Concepts of Thinking: Geographic Perspective, Spatial Significance,

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/world-map-scaled-population-size  

Where in the world did Australia go?! A new cartogram by Redditer TeaDranks rescales the world’s countries according to population size instead of geographic area. 

Julia Roberts Tells Everyone In the World to Stop Pretending Like Facts Don’t Exist.

Julia is speaking, as nature. “I have fed species greater than you. I have starved species greater than you…”

http://tinyurl.com/pucaw36

This is a good clip to show the Gaia Hypothesis.

A nice Minds On Activity.

Concepts of Thinking: Geographic Perspective, Interrelationships

This is a nice video as a minds on activity.

Some Strange Things Are Happening to Astronauts Returning to Earth.

They’re seeing our world as it really is…

http://omeleto.com/192379/

The video deals with Geographic Perspective

Malawi floods leave grim legacy of death, destruction and devastation

World's cities experiencing more heatwaves, study shows

Number of extremely hot days a year has increased in hundreds of cities since the 1970s years, with frequencies peaking in the last five years

http://tinyurl.com/Cities-Heating-Up

More extreme heat, less cold spells and less high winds is the weather trend for many of the world’s cities, a new study shows. Photograph: Richard Baker/Corbis

Concepts of Thinking: Geographic Perspective, Spatial Significance, Patterns and Trends, Interrelationships

The aerial delivery of relief supplies has revealed the tragic human and environmental cost of the floods that hit Malawi following torrential rains

http://tinyurl.com/Malawi-flooding

The floods in Malawi have displaced at least 174,000 people, sweeping away homes and claiming untold lives. Photograph: Shiraaz Mohamed/AP

22 Maps of Caanada as you’ve never seen it before

Presenting a whole new way of looking at Canada and its people 

macleans.ca June 27, 2014

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/putting-canada-on-the-map/ 

Beijing smog makes city unliveable, says mayor

Polluting factories and skyrocketing vehicle ownership blamed as report finds tourism to Chinese city falls 10% on year before

http://tinyurl.com/smog-in-the-city

 

A child wears a face mask while walking along a street in Beijing. Photograph: Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images

Climate change responsible for super-charging winter storms, scientists say

Researchers say heavier storms of recent years such as current blizzard bearing down on US north-east – carry imprints of climate change.

http://tinyurl.com/Climate-Change-Storm

Concepts of Thinking: Geographic Perspectives, Spatial Significance, Patterns and Trends

The link below has several articles relating to Oil and the Environment from around the world.  The Concepts of Thinking addressed through the link are: Geographic Perspective, Spatial Significance, Interrelationships.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/oil

White House unveils plan to open Atlantic waters to offshore oil drilling

Move to lease large swaths of ocean along east coast and double down in Gulf of Mexico oddly comes in wake of attacks against right for climate change denial

http://tinyurl.com/Atlantic-Offshore-Drilling

 

This could be a common sight along the Atlantic coast horizon after the Obama administration moved to open a large swath of the Atlantic seaboard to oil drilling. Photograph: Cristobal Garcia/EPA

Concepts of Thinking: Spatial Significance, Geographic Prespective

US Senate refuses to accept humanity's role in global climate change, again

Senators accept global warming is not a hoax but fail to recognise human activity is to blame, nearly 27 years after scientists laid out man’s role.

http://tinyurl.com/Senates-View-Climate-Change

Concepts of Thinking: Geographic Perspective, Interrelationships

An Esri activity that deals with the effects of Climate Change can be found by clicking on the link below:

http://edcommunity.esri.com/Resources/Collections/mapping-our-world 

(this site has several good activities for ArcGIS On Line)

Mapping Our World for ArcGIS Online 

Module 3, Lesson 1

Running hot and cold

The link below that ranks countries on different characteristics.  Spatial Journals could be created using ArcGIS On Line or My Maps (Google).

Concepts of Thinking: Geographic Perspective, Spatial Significance, Patterns and Trends, Interrelationships.

http://popcornews.com/top-10-most-unemployed-countries-in-the-world/