My Disastrous Playlist

In my Geography course GGR378 Natural Disasters: Risk and Vulnerability, I have started using music to welcome students at the beginning of the class, and during the lecture breaks (it is a two-hour class session with a 10- to 15-minute break).

A fair bit of research has been done on the use of music in the classroom. Most of the published research is in educational/pedagogical and psychological journals. Much of it focuses on children, adolescents, and special-needs learners (see, for example, Hallam and Price, 1998). The adult-centered research tends to focus on the role of music in memory, skills acquisition, or test performance (see, for example, Furnham and Bradley, 1997). Another area of interest, for both children and adults, has been the use of music to create a setting that is conducive to learning, and to establish the mood of the classroom.

To that end, I started to keep my eye out for “disaster-themed” songs – earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, tsunamis, storms, floods, fires, even pest infestations – to fit the themes of my course. I was surprised to discover how many disaster songs there are out there. I’ve been collecting them on a separate playlist on my iPod.

Some disaster songs are obvious right from the title: “New Orleans is Sinking” by The Tragically Hip, or “Los Angeles is Burning” by Bad Religion, for example. Some are obvious, but metaphorical: “Hurricane” by Bob Dylan, “I Feel the Earth Move” by Carole King, or “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac or the Dixie Chicks (I’ve got both versions on my playlist). Others are more subtle; can you find the disaster references in songs like “Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)” by Arcade Fire, “Warning” by Green Day, or “Decatur (or, Round of Applause for Your Step-Mother)” by Sufjan Stevens?

You need to use a bit of caution and set ground rules for the language and even the type of music you want to permit in the classroom; these are adults, but it is an academic setting, after all. I also find that you either need to present a wide diversity of music or be prepared for students to be somewhat disdainful of your choices. If you are going to play the Spice Girls, for example, you should probably do it with a certain amount of irony, or students will find you hopelessly out of date. You can expect that students will come up with suggestions to add to your playlist, once you tell them what you are up to.

Does anyone have any disaster-themed songs I could add to my playlist?

References:

Hallam, S., and Price, J. (1998) Can the use of background music improve the behavior and academic performance of children with emotional and behavioral difficulties? British Journal of Special Education 25, 2:88-91.

Furnham, A., and Bradley, A., (1997) Music while you work: The differential distraction of background music on the cognitive test performance of introverts and extraverts, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 11:445-455.

Barbara Murck is a Geologist and Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science at the University of Toronto, Mississauga as well as a Wiley author.

Concept Caching: Soybean Agriculture in Presho, South Dakota

From our Concept Caching image cache that hopes to promote student spatial awareness by relating specific features on the Earth’s surface with their visual character and GPS coordinates. Through the site photographs and GPS coordinates demonstrate core concepts in geography.  Images are “cached” for viewing by core concept and by region.  Images are certainly useful for introducing visual content to students in all  Geography classes.

This image submitted by Erin Fouberg provides a visualization of the scale and landscapes of crop agriculture in the United States.  The companion image description offers insight into this landscape and details over the two types of crop agriculture in this region.  It is also an interesting visual companion to some of the issues raised in the post, “Geographies of Green Diets.”

“Driving across the semiarid ranchlands of western South Dakota, I noticed the presence of a crop in the landscape that was recently found only in the eastern, moister region of the state: soybeans.

I called a colleague who works in agriculture at South Dakota State University to ask, “When did the cattle ranchers of western South Dakota start growing soybeans?” He replied, “When the soy biodiesel plants started popping up in Nebraska and Kansas and when genetically modified soybeans made it possible to grow the crop here.” He explained the development of Roundup Ready soybeans, a particular genetically modified soybean that can grow in more arid regions of the country. First, you plant the soybean; then you use an airplane to spray Roundup, a common weed killer that is manufactured by the company that produces the Roundup Ready soybeans, over the field. The application of Roundup over the entire field saves a lot of time and energy for the farmers because the genetically modified soybeans are resistant to the Roundup, but the weeds are killed. Monsanto, the company that produces Roundup, has developed soybeans, corn, cotton, and other crops that are resistant to Roundup.

Counter to the genetically modified Roundup Ready crops, organic agriculture —the production of crops without the use of synthetic or industrially produced pesticides and fertilizers—is also on the rise in North America. In wealthier parts of the world, the demand for organic products has risen exponentially in recent years. Sales of organic food in the United States, for example, went from under $200 million in 1980 to $1.5 billion by the early 1990s to over $10 billion by 2003 and $17.8 billion in 2007. Organic foods are now about 3 percent of all food sales in the country. The growth rate is so strong that some predict organic sales will approach 10 percent of total U.S. food sales within a decade. Parts of western Europe are already approaching that figure—notably Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and parts of Germany.”

To continue reading the cache description visit the Concept Caching website.

Geographies of Green Diets

With the discursive onset of “global warming” in the global lexicon, seemingly inconsequential personal choices are subject to questions of ‘Greenness’ (Green indicating an alternative that is better for the environment than the status quo).  In a world that is increasingly linked technologically, economically, and culturally in a complicated web of globalization, your diet (what you eat, not your weight loss plan) raises convoluted issues of scale, politics and environment that are not always so easy to comprehend.

Perhaps the most interesting characteristic of the questions behind a “Green Diet” is how geography is implicated in all aspects.  Whether this is a question of agricultural and land-use practices, of environmental problems or solutions, of scale from the local to global, or of socio-economic, culture or politics, each has a spatial component and consequence.

The United Nations International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management argues in a June 2010 report that, “Current patterns of production and consumption of both fossil fuels and food are draining freshwater supplies; triggering losses of economically-important ecosystems such as forests; intensifying disease and death rates and raising levels of pollution to unsustainable levels.”  The report calls for a controversial shift in global diets to reduce such environmental pressures.  This shift would be away from those including a large amount of animal-based products to those including more vegetable-based foods.  This report was certainly not the first to call for such a dietary shift, another contribution came from well-known author and activist, Michael Pollan who challenged readers to eat whole fresh foods, a little meat, and avoid processed foods.

Yet, after the UN-backed report, there seems to be a resurgence of dialogue over the greenness of our diets.  An author from the Atlantic asks, “Can Meat Eaters be environmentalists?” arguing that the two are not a contradiction.  She has also authored the New York Times article “The Carnivore’s Dilemma” researching the connection between meat and global warming.  An excellent Mother Jones article tackles the “merits of vegetarianism” by taking the question to a panel of experts and to readers, cheekily poised as “Bacon Lovers vs. Soy Huggers.”  This article is an outstanding source for both sides of the debate and includes plenty of interesting, albeit covert, geographical references from trophic structures to cultural preferences.  Another aspect of greening diets comes from the Local Foods movement, dubbed by the USDA as “Know your Farmer, Know your food”, which focuses more on where your food comes from rather that what you eat.  An NPR program and article offers a very interesting once over of the movement, but also of the economic and logistical challenges, combined with the overall reluctance of food distributors to make the change.

Overall, the underlying issues behind these questions have to do with various ‘costs’:  energy costs, food supply costs, economic costs, and environmental costs.  Each of these costs indicates difficulties that can be best understood in a holistic, interconnected way.  Indeed, geographers best understand the human-environment connections behind our diets:

-  How fossil fuel use may be translating into warmer climates;

-  How most crop agriculture is devoted to animal agriculture, creating fossil fuel and economic entanglements in between, and then topping it all off with the addition of more heat-trapping methane into the atmosphere;

-  How the economic networks associated with status quo crop and animal agriculture mean jobs, taxes, and livelihoods to large populations of Midwestern and Central United States;

-  How environmentally costly, both looking back and forward, commercial agriculture has been for native grassland ecosystems and rainforest ecosystems, freshwater supplies, and perhaps for climates throughout the globe.

Discussion Questions:

1. Do you know where your food comes from or how it is produced?  When you are out at your local grocery store, favorite restaurant, school cafeteria, café, farmer’s market, etc. look for clues about where food products come from, how they are produced, and how they are delivered.
2. What do you think about the arguments made in the “Bacon Lovers vs. Soy Huggers” article?  What conclusions can you draw about which diet is greener?  What are some further questions you might have?
3. Think about the connection between food production (meat, vegetables, and processed foods) and climate.  List the various ways that production, distribution, and consumption contribute or neutralize effects on climate.

Sarah Goggin

Mato Grosso: The Future of Food

Paul Ehrlich’s publication of The Population Bomb in 1968 explained why human population growth was accelerating, and touched off serious debate about whether enough food could be produced to feed ever-more billions of people. Even as many have faced malnutrition and even starvation, however, total food production has tended to keep pace.

For the foreseeable future, population will continue to grow, albeit it at a decreasing rate. Over the next half-century, the question seems not to be whether humans will produce enough food, but rather how that food will be produced. The human population is passing through what E.O. Wilson has called the bottleneck, and by the middle of the twenty-first century, it is likely to level off at somewhere between 8 and 9 billion people.

Overall food production can be achieved in just a few ways:

• Distribute food more equitably by curtailing over-consumption and reducing the production of meat
• Increase crop yields
• Increase the land area under cultivation

Each of these broad strategies involves a lot of possible specific cases and a number of complicated trade-offs. The story of soybeans in Brazil — particularly in the huge, interior state of Mato Grosso — illustrates several of the complications associated with the second and third options.

I took these photographs of Cargill’s riverfront terminal just downstream from Porto Velho, Rondônia in 2003. Much of the soy grown in the center-west portion of the country is brought by road to this break-in-bulk point, where it is transfered to barges that can take it all the way to Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon River, for export.

For many years, agricultural production in Brazil increased slowly, if at all, and sometimes not fast enough to keep up with domestic population growth. What little increase did occur was strictly the result of increases in the amount of land being cultivated. Even though considerable efforts were made to increase yields, improvements in technology did little more than offset the poor quality of the new lands being cultivated.

The twentieth-century experience of Brazil is hardly surprising; humans farm about 1/8 of the earth’s land surface and almost by definition this is the most productive 1/8. Any new areas brought into production are likely to be marginal lands in both senses of the word: in peripheral locations relative to existing human settlement and of lower quality relative to already-settled lands.

By the close of the twentieth century, however, something clearly had changed, as Brazil’s agricultural output — particularly of soybeans — began to challenge the role of the United States as the dominant producer in the Western hemisphere. Reporting for the radio program Living on Earth, Bruce Gellerman has described this transition beautifully in Magic Seeds and the Miracle Crop. (His report is available as an mp3 and as text with some excellent photographs.)

The report describes how Mato Grosso has become such a large and still-growing producer of soybeans, despite the unsuitable soil conditions. It then goes on to describe the consequences associated with such success: increased reliance on pesticides, the tendency of crop pests to develop pesticide resistance, and the great loss of habitat in the savanna, known in Brazil as cerrado, or “closed” for its traditional inaccessibility.

Brazil is advancing on its frontier just as the United States did more than a century ago. A decade ago, I wrote  comparison of the two frontier experiences: that of the United States in the 19th-century West and that of Brazil in the 20th-century Amazon. According to Gellerman’s report, the process continues in the 21st-century cerrado, but with more than one biome at stake and with the potential for much more substantial clearing. With the techniques currently being employed, the area remaining to be cultivated in Brazil might be greater than the area currently cultivated in the entire United States.

Sandy Beach, Oahu, On Location with Chip Fletcher

Learn about the Geology of Sandy Beaches in Oahu with Wiley author and University of Hawaii Professor Chip Fletcher.

Running Time: 3:46

Video created by Sufiya Mohamed Ismail and Chip Fletcher.

Waves Photos

Clark Little is a nationally recognized photographer of waves from the North Shore, Hawaii. His photographs have garnered praise from Geo Magazine, The Discovery Channel/TreeHhugger.com, and Kahala Magazine.

His gallery of photographs let you enjoy a different view of the fluid dynamics of waves.

To view his photographs please visit his website – http://www.clarklittlephotography.com.

Hoover Dam, On Location with Alan Arbogast

Learn about the Geography of the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead with Wiley author and MSU Professor Alan Arbogast.

Running Time: 7:08

Concept Caching: Energy Needs in Japan

From our Concept Caching image cache that hopes to promote student spatial awareness by relating specific features on the Earth’s surface with their visual character and GPS coordinates. Through the site photographs and GPS coordinates demonstrate core concepts in geography.  Images are “cached” for viewing by core concept and by region.  Images are certainly useful for introducing visual content to students in all  Geography classes.

This image submitted by H.J. de Blij, exemplifies the great technological, economic, and environmental investment and consideration of global energy security.  A fitting complement to the news stories and Geography Compass article discussed in the post Geography Directions: Energy security.

Geography Directions: Energy Security

From our Geography Directions site reviewing Wiley-Blackwell’s Geography Compass review journal covering the entire discipline.  Keep up with cutting edge academic geography.  These articles may be useful for introducing students to the discipline or may be appropriate for upper division Geography classes.

Our dependence on energy is increasingly fragile. In the US, oil companies are drilling deeper and taking more risks in response to the demand for cheap oil. In April, a Transocean/BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded and sank, resulting in a massive oil spill. Regardless of how the situation has been managed, it was the demand for oil that meant that the oil rig, with all its associated risks, was there in the first place. Energy supplied by fossil fuel is becoming more risky to obtain.

Meanwhile, on the Isle of Eigg, off the west coast of Scotland, residents have been urged to use household appliances less as a lack of rain has reduced the amount of electricity generated through hydro-power schemes. Energy supplies are becoming more difficult to sustain.

In Belarus recently, piped gas supplies from Russia were reduced in response to a disagreement over payment for gas and the use of transit pipelines. Energy security is therefore not just a case of the geographical distribution of supply and demand, but is also dependant on complex social processes and international relations.

Michael Bradshaw deals with these themes in an article in Geography Compass, published in 2009. Bradshaw illustrates the multidimensional nature of energy security. For example, climate change policy is driving a reduction in reliance on carbon-based fossil fuels. At the same time, China and India’s rapidly developing economies are increasing their demand for energy, reshaping the challenges of energy security as they add their voices to the debate.

Geographers are well placed to understand the interface of the physical and political drivers of changing energy supply and demand. A key challenge remains in translating this into an understanding of energy security and the policies needed to sustain affordable and sufficient energy supplies.

By I-Hsien Porter
To view the original article please visit the Geography Directions Blog.

Interrogating cleanup solutions for the Gulf oil spill

Much of the media focus has been on the plugging of the oil geyser on the ocean floor, and on the politics between BP, the national government, and local governments.  What information has been reported on the cleanup has been framed through its trials and tribulations, setbacks and sorrows.  Yet, there are some interesting proposed and enacted solutions that are not getting as much attention beyond harmful dispersants, futile shovels, soapy birdbaths and exorbitant Costner solutions.

These solution examples, one propositioned and one executed, offer very interesting critical thinking discussion topics for geography classes.  Inherent behind these contributions to aid the cleanup efforts are general questions of scale, place, diffusion/movement, and environment.  Not to mention, the countless specific questions that can be formulated regarding biogeography, marine and wetland ecosystems, ocean geographies, human-environment, political geographies, economic geographies, and more.

The first solution example is offered in a recorded demonstration that presents an ingenious, yet simple proposal for soaking up oil using innocuous, abundant hay, or dried grasses.

Discussion Questions:

1)  What are some challenges that this demonstration might have in the actual environment?  Think about diffusion both in the open ocean and on the shore.

2)  Following a refresher on the concept of scale – What are the various scale considerations in implementing this demonstration?  In particular, think of the experimental scale of the demonstration and then to its enactment at the regional scale.  Focus on the extent and degree of the oil spill, the supply and availability of the grasses/hay in the demonstration, the logistical needs of implementation, etc.

3)  Why do you think it is important that the grasses they use in the demonstration do not have any seeds?  Focus on possible environmental impacts.

A second solution is one that illustrates not only inventiveness, but decisive implementation by a small coastal town in Alabama in the face of waiting for BP’s “unified command structure” and federal government bureaucracy.

Discussion Questions:

1)  Following a refresher on the concept of scale – What are the various scale considerations that have been negotiated or considered by the actors in this article?  How are the institutions and actors at various scales portrayed and for what reasons?  Think about the political, economic and logistical arguments.

2)  What is an estuary?  What types of environmental interactions in estuaries contribute to the biodiversity found in a place like Weeks Bay?  What could oil do to such wetland ecosystems?

3)  How has wave action impeded the functioning of the BP unified command’s strand of booms?  What do you think about the possible environmental consequences of single strands of booms being the generally accepted plan?

4)  What are the two main parts of the Weeks Bay solution?  What do you think of this as an alternative solution?  Think about possible environmental, and even economic, consequences for the estuary that could accompany the semi-permanent wall of barges at the mouth of the bay, and for the possibility of closing off the bay completely if called for.

For more solutions topics, refer to the many idea articles and videos compiled by the Huffington Post.