Sinkholes: Illinois vs. Florida

Recent sinkhole events in both Illinois and Florida made national news and highlighted a little-known geohazard, raising many questions and concerns of property damage and safety. Sinkholes are a common surface expression found mostly in regions of karst topography. Karst is a Slavic word for a large, flat field, which is typical of the landforms in Slovenia that contributed the name. The presence of sinkholes tells the geologist that a particular type of geology, hydrology, and environmental impacts can be expected. Most sinkholes are formed by the dissolution of calcite-bearing rocks. As precipitation (H₂0) makes its way through the hydrologic cycle, it picks up carbon in the atmosphere, soils, and rocks in dissolved form (CO₂). This creates a mild corrosive known as Carbonic Acid (H₂CO₃), which can dissolve the mineral calcite found in limestone (CaCO₃) and dolomite {CaMg(CO₃)₂}. Other sinkholes are formed by the dissolution of evaporites or anhydrites of copper (CuSO₄), calcium (CaSO₄), and gypsum {CaSO₄ (2H₂O)}. Regardless of their formation, the hazard exists when this process leaves a cavity beneath a thin soil or rock covering. The cavity continues to grow until a critical mass is reached where the roof can no longer hold the weight and it collapses. Likewise, this can occur when weight is added by someone or something (cars, infrastructure, golfers, etc.).

There are several types of sinkholes but most occur as either solution sinks, where rock is slowly dissolved but there is no connection to the subsurface, or collapse sinks, which overly cave systems and transport material to the subsurface creating an excavation with a throat. The former are prevalent in karst but are relatively harmless, while the latter are more rare but far more costly and dangerous, since they can extend several hundred feet vertically and spread laterally for hundreds of feet. The sinkhole that caused the death of Jeff Bush in Hillsborough County was of the collapse variety, slowly forming over hundreds or thousands of years, culminating in a brief collapse event. This sink was 20-30 feet wide and 30 feet deep. Unfortunately for residents, this is a common part of the landscape there, as much of Florida has karst topography. The limestones in Florida are porous and the water table is high, creating much dissolution that forms thousands of sinkholes and caves. Many of these will have a thin rock or soil mantle, which enhances the hazard, as we are often unaware of their presence until collapse initiates.

The Illinois event represents another type of sinkhole, known as suffosion or soil-piping. This occurs when water transports soil and overburden to the subsurface creating a cavity. While these occur naturally, they are aggravated by human influences in the watershed that change hydrology and drainage, such as pavement, rooftops, and other impervious surfaces. These runoff modifications can cause excessive soil and substrate to be transported to the subsurface, creating a sinkhole. Likewise, this process occurs when there are leaks or breaks in water pipes. Fortunately, Mark Mihal suffered only a dislocated shoulder when a suffosion sink opened up under his feet on the golf course. The most likely culprit is a leaking irrigation pipe commonly used to water the green.

So what can we do to prepare and mitigate damages and loss of life from sinkholes without expensive and technical seismic and geophysical equipment? Primarily you should be aware of where you live and the range of local geologic hazards. Those living in earthquake country have management and emergency preparedness plans. Living in karst similarly requires knowledge of human impacts and geohazards found there. Hazard mapping of these features in karst can offer awareness and contribute to local management and best practice plans to help mitigate property damage and loss of life. Potential hazard zones can be established to restrict or regulate development in high-risk areas. Only active awareness and participation within an integrated management plan in karst topography will help avoid future loss of life and property damage.

Latitude by the Glass

In his recent article Chardonnay with Latitude, Boston Globe wine and food writer Stephen Meuse draws attention to the geography of wine. As with anything that varies spatially (such as coffee), geography can be used to learn about wine, just as wine can be used to learn about geography. The clever title of Meuse’s article reflects his decision to write about several wines whose common characteristic is particularly geographic: they are all made from grapes of the Chardonnay variety, but from the northernmost extremity of that grape’s geographic range.

Meuse describes the influence of both soil mineralogy and climate on grapes, and then provides tasting notes and retail information for a number of wines from close to 50 degrees North latitude. All of these wines are found in Europe, five degrees or more north of the northernmost wines in the Americas, though Meuse does not explain this difference, which has to do with the directions of currents in the north Atlantic Ocean. Northwestern Europe is warmed by the Gulf Stream, just as northeastern North America is cooled by the Labrador Current.

In his book The Geography of Wine, geographer Brian Sommers explains not only the geographic factors underlying terroir; he also examines the economic and social geographies of wine consumption and distribution. Wine, in fact, is of such interest to geographers that an entire specialty group of the Association of American Geographers is dedicated to wine scholarship.

Suggested activity:

Working as individuals or small groups in a class, identify common food or beverage items. What ingredients are required to produce each item? What factors determine where those ingredients can be produced? To what extent has human geography — such as patterns of trade or migration — influenced the location of these ingredients? What patterns of transportation are involved in producing the ingredients, processing the food or beverage, and delivering the product to consumers?

Climate Change in the Pacific: State of Emergency

As outlined in a previous post, “Climate Change in the Pacific:  Help we’re drowning,” Pacific islands are bearing the first clear environmental shifts of global climate change.  Not only are the islands being threatened by rising sea levels, their territory and societies ‘drowning’ in the process; but, climate change is combining with other environmental conditions to jeopardize the essential fresh water sources that these insular societies depend on.

On October 2011, the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu declared a national state of emergency.   The emergency is that the country’s fresh water sources are running out and others are unfit for consumption.  Some areas of the island were projected to completely run out of potable, fresh water within two days of the declaration.  The conditions that led to the state of emergency are related to the longer term climate changes, but also to seasonal shifts.  A seasonal, La Niña weather pattern has been causing drought in Tuvalu.  Below-average rainfall has been experienced since June or at least and is projected to continue into December.  Most of the country’s fresh water supply comes from collected rainwater.  Another source of freshwater lies under the ground.  Yet, this source is limited.  Tuvalu is a series of low-lying coral atolls.  The geology of coral atolls does not support deep groundwater sources.  Further, the shallow groundwater that is found on these islands is being compromised by rising sea levels as salt water infiltrates the groundwater supply.  A reporting of animals deaths leads Tuvaluan Red Cross officials to question the safety of the groundwater supply for consumption.  Considering the nature of groundwater recharge, and most acute in Tuvalu, the lack of rainfall is accelerating the infiltration of seawater into subterranean water features.  The impacts of water shortages are felt in the islands’ traditional subsistence agriculture activities as well as water rationing affecting basic water services.  Tuvalu’s neighbor and New Zealand territory, Tokelau followed up soon after with its own state of emergency declaration.

The relief is coming from international organizations like the Red Cross as well as from the government of New Zealand.  The people of Tuvalu and Tokelau are being aided with water collection supplies, desalinization units and plenty of bottled water.  The larger affects are still yet to come.  In particular, questions about the long-term settlement of many low-lying Pacific islands have implications for nationhood, cultural traditions, economic rights, and logistics of mass migration.

 

Bluebird Hero

“His Blue Heaven” is an encouraging story about the recovery of a bird species previously in decline. Never listed as a Federal endangered species, the Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) was nonetheless in serious decline through the middle of the twentieth century, and was listed as a rare or threatened species on some state lists.

Writing for the Boston Globe, Carly Gelsinger describes Robert Benson’s lifelong commitment to the songbirds. A retiree living south of Boston in the town of Stoughton, he has been enamored of bluebirds since he was a child, and was delighted when their recovery began in the 1970s. Since then, he has done whatever he can to improve their chances for survival. Finding areas with generally supportive habitat, his main focus has been to design, build, and maintain nesting boxes that provide safety for the birds.

The natural range of Eastern Bluebirds is the entire eastern portion of North America, yet another example of a pattern associated with the well-known 100th meridian phenomenon. It entered decline throughout that region for a variety of reasons, the most important of which was pesticides, particularly the chlorinated hydrocarbons that were the subject of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.  Hampering the recovery has been competition for habitat with such introduced species as sparrows and starlings.

Bluebirds are worth saving, not only for the beauty of their plumage and their song, but also because of their direct benefits to humans. For example, bluebirds can contribute to the production of environmentally sustainable wine grapes. As part of a program of integrated pest management, bluebirds can reduce or eliminate the need for insecticides. In recent visits to South Coast vineyards in Massachusetts, I have enjoyed observing these benefits directly!

In his journals, Henry David Thoreau demonstrated the value of prolonged, careful observation as the key to understanding the complex relationships within natural communities.  Similarly, Mr. Benson’s decades of careful observation allows him to understand bluebirds so profoundly that he has been able to design a variety of nesting boxes that are attractive to bluebirds but not to the sparrows or starlings that would occupy homes that would look very similar to most people.

Suggested activities:

1. Read the His Blue Heaven article carefully, and identify key geographic and ecological concepts beyond those mentioned above. Write an essay that describes how this story could compare to efforts to restore species or habitat local to your area.

2. Work with the North American Bluebird Society or similar organization to develop a project that would encourage species recovery on your campus or in your community.

What’s That Got to Do with the Price of Coffee Beans?

I give a lot of public presentations about coffee, usually focused on the millions of farmers around the world who are reliant on this commodity for an often meager livelihood. My talks may also cover the proper preparation of coffee, my regular travel with students to Nicaragua, and even the development of a sense of place at the corner café.

During the question and answer period at the end of each talk, I usually get asked one of two questions: “What do you think of Starbucks?” and “What do you think of Dunkin’ Donuts?” The polite answer is the former appears slightly more concerned about the lives of farmers than the latter, and the only large, conventional farm I have been allowed to visit was a Starbucks “Cafe Practice” farm.

When the retail price of coffee is rising — as it is now — price becomes the main area of curiosity. To the question of why prices are rising, my initial inclination has been to answer “I don’t care,” because it usually is not very important. A 10 or 20 percent increase in the wholesale price of coffee would not make a significant difference in the household budget of even the most avid coffee drinker, and the chances of such an increase being transferred to a farm family (where it actually would make a difference) are nil.

So the topic did not interest me until late 2010, when the price increases at the wholesale level became substantial enough that some farmers did start to know about it. The first thing I noticed was that the price was rising so rapidly that some “coyotes” — often unscrupulous middlemen who tend to control local coffee markets — were often able to exceed fair-trade prices.  What could be a very good bargain for farmers in the short term, however, was starting to undermine cooperatives that had taken years to establish. When the price of coffee falls in the future, the farmers may be without an organization to secure prices that meet the costs of production.

In the dominant free-trade model, commodity prices tend to fluctuate, as high prices draw producers and low prices draw consumers in a perpetual see-saw of demand and supply. Conventionally economists recognize the risk inherent in reliance on commodity income in such a circumstance, but it was the distinct contribution of Raúl Prebisch to demonstrate the dependency that arises from the secular decline of commodity prices relative to the prices of manufactured goods over the long term. The “earnings” line in the hypothetical cartoon below models the random fluctuation predicted by conventional economics; the “purchasing power” line models the combination of short-term random fluctuations and long-term decline that dependency theory predicts for commodity producers.

The combination of volatility, long-term decline in terms of trade, and specific historic circumstances led to the severe 1999 coffee crisis, which displaced many thousands of farm families. Some are calling the current, rapid price increases a “second coffee crisis,” because of the dynamic mentioned above that threatens the cohesion of local cooperatives.

California coffee buyer Max Nicholas-Fulmer offers the clearest explanation I have seen for the quick run-up in coffee prices. His January 2011 post on the Royal Coffee blog has, in fact, been republished widely, including on Coffee Buzz and in The Specialty Coffee Chronicle (2011n3).

The article offers several reasons for the increase in the price of coffee futures. The first is that single-origin specialty coffees are beginning to command substantial premiums that in turn are bringing up prices for futures on all Arabica coffees. Second, coffee yields and coffee quality are greatly dependent on consistent climate conditions, and for those conditions to be found in the same locations as specific properties of soil and topography. Nicholas-Fulmer gives several examples of the uncertainty in rainfall and its timing that are resulting from climate change. Finally, he describes the impact of suburban sprawl, which is no longer limited to industrial countries. Even in many coffee-producing countries of the global south, automobile-dependent growth puts farmland in direct competition with suburban land markets, enticing many to leave what has become an unprofitable land use.

As he wrote in January, coffee Certified Stocks (the “C” Market) were trading at $2.45 in New York, the highest it had been since the 1997 bubble, when it had reached $3.20. As I write today, it is even higher, at $2.70, so Nicholas-Fulmer’s observations appear to be relevant for the foreseeable future.

Suggested activities:

1. To learn about the relative prices of coffee at each stage of the commodity chain,  play Kelly Whalen’s game Your Coffee Dollar, which is on the web site for the PBS-Frontline program on coffee in Mexico and Guatemala. The low values the game ascribes to coffee growers are actually optimistic — close to 97 percent of coffee is sold in conventional markets that tend to pay growers even less that the amounts suggested in this exercise.

2. Visit a local, independent coffee shop and inquire about where the coffee comes from, whether price fluctuations are affecting the shop, and how much the staff knows about the production areas of the coffee.

Geo-STEM

Although education reform efforts in the United States have focused on basic writing and math literacy, many leaders are increasingly concerned about the erosion of the country’s leadership in the STEM disciplines:  Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. For this reason, STEM education is increasingly the focus of education reformers and stakeholders from regional business groups to state governments to the White House science advisors.

In my own outreach work with K-12 students (mainly at the middle school level), the relationship between geography education and STEM education is increasingly clear. Because geography is both a social science and a physical science, the relationships between geography and STEM are sometimes less than clear.

In a recent letter to Dr. John Holdren, one of President Obama’s top science advisors, a coalition of geography organizations makes a strong case for geography and geospatial education as part of a national STEM-education policy. The Coalition of Geospatial Organizations (COGO) includes both the Association of American Geographers and many organizations with more specific, technical missions, such as the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.

All of the groups agree that the current state of thinking on STEM is too narrow in its exclusion of geography. Specifically, they make the case for geographic education, which they note is missing from the PCAST report Prepare and Inspire: K-12 STEM Education for the Future. They make the following arguments for its inclusion:

• A 2009 White House budget calls for placed-based policies and programs
• A 2006 Department of Labor report identified geospatial technologies as one of twelve New and Emerging Occupations
• In 2010, the Department of Labor identified geography as a Knowledge and Skill Area central to employment involving the geospatial technologies it had previously identified
• The National Science Foundation provided $7 million in funding to geography research projects in 2009-2010
• National Geospatial Technology Center for Excellence is funded in part by NSF for the purpose of improving university-level geography education; strong geography education in the K-12 sector is a prerequisite for success in these efforts
• President Obama has said, “We must educate our children to compete in an age where knowledge is capital, and the marketplace is global.”
• The PCAST report itself warns that methods for teaching STEM disciplines must be developed that allows students to apply what they learn to real-world problems. Geography is an integrative discipline that is well-suited to this critical need.

The case for geographic education is not limited to careers and technology, of course; as I have argued before my own state government’s education officials, geography is an essential foundation for cultural literacy and public diplomacy as well, and are good preparation for a wide range of both STEM and non-STEM careers.

Suggested activities

1. Contact education leaders in your state – perhaps starting with the state’s Geographic Alliance – to learn the current status of geographic education in the state.
2. Review the 18 standards for geography education identified in the Geography for Life project. Which of these are most relevant to the geospatial careers for which the COGO group advocates?
3. Make a list of the geospatial technologies on which you rely – directly or indirectly – each day. How many e-commerce web sites, for example, employ Geographic Information Systems as part of their interface with potential customers?

It’s Carmageddon!?

Is everything in LA so over-dramatized?  Uh, yes.  Even a two-day 10 mile closure of the 405 freeway connecting the South Bay, Westside and Valley on July 15-18 for about 50 hours is big, big, everyday news in the Southland.  There have been billboards, announcements, television and radio programs, websites, apps, and nearly everything you can imagine to prepare, navigate, and well, survive this weekend.

Here’s a screenshot of a typical 9am weekday look of LA area freeways:

This is an interesting phenomenon to a Geographer because of the intersections of the material infrastructure with the culturally ingrained car society.  Remember Missing Persons’ song, “Walking in LA”?  Well, according to that tune, “Nobody walks in LA,” and it’s pretty true.  Southern Californians are all driving the freeways to get around or they are jamming up the main city arteries alone in their cars or on the notoriously inefficient bus system.  Los Angeles’s urban development was historically driven by real estate and transportation (and water, too).  Early on, there was a prescient design for freeways and boulevards to connect the suburban sprawl.  Resultantly, the LA transportation network is denser than any other US city.  This is confirmed in a 2009 article published by the University of California’s Transportation Center that delves into the problem of traffic congestion in Los Angeles.  The area’s nearly endless freeways, all conspicuously titled as the one and only, The 5, The 101, The 10 and so on reveal the centrality of transportation in Southern California Life.

So, it is no wonder that Carmageddon is such a big deal.  Caltrans, the State of California’s Transportation Department, launched a public relations campaign that started months out.  Prominent figures, from local politicians to celebrities, have been doing their part to remind Southern Californians to plan ahead, stay away, or better yet, stay home.  But, can Southern Californians really stay away?  According to some of the dialog outside of the official PR campaign, they might not be able to.  One commentator on a local network news website blatantly said, “I know myself and a lot of people from the San Gabriel Valley, and the Inland Empire, are planning on driving into L.A. to witness this spectacle and simply add to the chaotic fray.”  Other exchanges illustrate the car-centric navigational-hubris of Los Angelinos.  Some think they know the secret routes, that they own the freeways (if you’ve ever driven here, you’ve seen them charging up your rear view mirror, gesturing wildly at you, driving in service lanes, etc.).  They have created apps to show real-time traffic on those supposed secret, alternate routes.  Some of these alternate routes will not be found on the ground, and hook up with another high-in-the-sky transportation network: air.  The airline JetBlue is selling $4 one-way fares as their “Over-the-405” special going from Long Beach in the South Bay to Burbank in the east Valley.  The 600 seats sold out in a matter of hours.  Another Southern California entrepreneur will be taking up patrons in a helicopter for a bird’s-eye view of the closure.  If anything, the high-fliers seem to be more interested in seeing a vacant freeway, a blue-moon, hell-froze-over type of experience.

As for me, I’ll be staying at home in North Orange County observing; ready to capture an epic screenshot of a clogged Southland.  Check back to find out if Southern California, “Survived Carmageddon.”

Geography Directions: Permafrost, carbon and thermokarsts: the Arctic importance

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.

The Arctic covers 5% of the total land mass of the earth and reaches across every longitude: it is important. It is estimated that 1.4 times more carbon is stored in permafrost than is currently circulating in the atmosphere, and there is 1.5 times more carbon in permafrost than is currently being stored in all the earth’s vegetation. William Bowden (2010) outlines this in a Geography Compass article, and explains the relationships between permafrost, thermokarsts and climate change.

Permafrost is soil or rock which remains below 0^oC for at least 2-3 years at a time. When permafrost thaws it loses its internal structure and subsides unevenly, and the resulting formation is called thermokarst. The transition from permafrost to thermokarst has important hydrological, geomorphological, biogeochemical and ecological importance to arctic landscapes. Globally, this transition may also release the stored carbon which, due to microbial processes, may be released as carbon dioxide or methane.

In April, a special edition on climate change was published by the journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. It outlined key research questions required to better understand the impact of greenhouse gases on climate change. The arctic was prominently featured, and in particular the concern over permafrost melt and potential methane release. Scientists seem to agree that research is needed to understand the transitional process from permafrost to thermokarsts and the possible implications on the global climate.

By Caitlin Douglas

To view the original article please visit the Geography Directions Blog.

 

Investigating the geographies of the Arab Spring

The Arab uprisings in Southwest Asia/Middle East and North Africa offer an excellent example in lower division undergraduate Geography courses for modeling the investigation of geographic context and processes.  There have been many exceptional sources covering the so-called, “Arab Spring” that provide relatively simple and direct explanations of various background geographies.  Reviewing these sources along with the textbook is an exemplary exercise for ‘doing’ geography.

An introductory exercise can be completed by analyzing an outstanding graphic from Slate Magazine.  The flash media graphic marries time and space by chronicling events in various countries of the region as a timeline in the format of a choropleth map with labeled boxes.  By either navigating by clicking day-by-day or as an automatic animation, each country that had a major event is highlighted and labeled with a brief explanation of the event.  By moving from December to April (and perhaps beyond, as the map is occasionally updated), we “relived” the events.  It became an exercise when the students were asked to identify context themes by using simple investigation questions, like Who, Where and Why.  They collected context information about who was protesting (youth, women, etc.), who was being protested against (dictators, presidents, kings/princes, etc.).  They collected context information about where protests were located (i.e. urban, universities, public squares).  They collected context information about why people were protesting (i.e. unemployment, rising food prices, political oppression, etc.).  This information can be used in a variety of ways: as content for exams or papers; as information to connect to other news sources; or as discussion points that can take the class to a variety of ‘places’.

Another exercise combined assigned current event articles with a World Regional textbook to fill out some of the geographies behind the events.  Students used their textbooks to investigate the human-environment background by connecting the geographies of climate/aridity, water resources, and resulting human settlement.  By understanding the patterns of settlement as an overlapping of climate and hydro- geographies, students can then further discuss resulting patterns of urban geographies.  Students can review the terms and statistics for the region of urbanization, urbanized population, and population density.  These urban dynamics are described in an article titled, “How Cities Stir Revolution” in the Atlantic Monthly.  The article does begin to speak broadly about cities as the historical site of revolution, but it offers specific statistics, maps and graphics about the urban character of the region; tying in nicely to population and urban geography concepts from World Regional textbooks.  Another topic that students investigate is the population geographies that have contributed to the Arab Spring.  NPR’s All Things Considered provides an audio interview and transcript that describes the “youth bulge” that exists in many Arab countries.  This “youth bulge” concept can then be connected to the tenants of the demographic transition model and further evaluated using demographic indicators.  A Guardian graphic is also helpful in the investigation of the demographic background of the region’s countries, as it provides visual comparisons of the total population, percent under 30 years of age (effectively, the “youth bulge”), and the total unemployment.  The role of unemployment is also discussed in a Guardian article, titled “Young Arabs who can’t wait to throw off shackles of tradition.” The article provides some powerful anecdotes for the political economy geographies in the region as the major catalysts for protest, namely the intersection of un- and under- employment, political oppression and ‘traditional’ political-economic cultures.  Further, this article creates a moment of reflexivity for students in the United States (and other similar societies) as it narrates more accounts of Arab Youth and Facebook, rap music, and managing idleness.

These events not only illustrate the fairly simple, introductory-level application of key terms, but it also provides students with an opportunity to think critically about contemporary, “21st century” politics.  They are able to internalize and reflect on the concerns that these youth from thousands of miles away have and to connect them to their own.  They are able to evaluate the current state of affairs in the United States (and, again, in other developed/affluent societies) by using the Arab Spring as a lens from which to compare and contrast.  Reflecting on the event by this way left my students feeling empowered and activated.

No Yard Is Too Small

Landscape ecology describes how habitat fragmentation can limit biodiversity in several ways.  Small fragments may mean small breeding populations, in turn limiting genetic variety within a species. In small fragments, the relative importance of edge effects is increased, and these effects often include light, noise, or pollutants.

For these reasons, it is surprising how much avian biodiversity can be encouraged on very small patches of land. NPR reporter and bird lover Melissa Block learned this when she invited Bill Thompson, the editor of Bird Watcher’s Digest, to her backyard in Washington, D.C. Although her property measures less than 1/100 of an acre, Thompson helps her to identify ways of attracting a greater variety of birds. His technique relies on a combination of carefully-chosen

As he mentions, outside domestic cats impede efforts to attract birds. On my family’s 0.31 acre in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, our wildlife efforts compete with the well-meaning efforts of a person who maintains feral cats in the adjacent woods. We have overcome the resultant predation (and intimidation) of birds by providing a combination of feed and habitat very similar to what Thompson prescribed.

1. In most parts of the world, the use of metric units means that people can readily make comparisons that are difficult in the United States, where the old English units are still used. For example, 1/100 of a hectare is 100 square meters, whereas 1/100 of an acre is 435.6 square feet. Ten thousand square meters to the hectare and one hundred hectares to the square kilometer; these are quite easy, compared to 43,560 square feet per acre and 640 acres per square mile. For geographers working in the United States, it is worth taking the time to memorize some of the conversions related to area or distance.

2. The National Wildlife Federation offers guidance to people wishing to improve conditions for wildlife on their own property, offering certification for gardens and backyards that provide a combination of water, habitat, and food sources for wildlife. Choose a piece of property — perhaps your own, that of a family member, or part of your school campus. Identify the boundaries of the property and its size, then visit the NWF backyard wildlife page to see whether conditions on the property are favorable for wildlife. Prepare a site map that shows the resources that are present, and write a brief description of how the site compares to the certification standards. If it is suitable for certification — or can be made so — consider applying to NWF for formal certification.

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