Geomorphology and Archeology

Archaeology is a fascinating discipline that allows scientists to visualize how people lived in the past. Although such investigations are usually associated in most people’s minds with Native American sites, they can also tell us a lot about overall American history. Because archeological sites are most commonly found buried in Earth, geomorphologists often assist with site interpretation to understand the depositional environment associated with the site. The following video demonstrates this interrelationship at Michigan State University where a team of scientists were given access to what was thought to be a sand dune on the campus to test its age. The accompanying photo shows this feature, which is covered with pine trees planted in 1913 to protect it from the wind. Apparently, blowing sand was a problem in the early days of the university. Given my interests in sand dunes, I had long been interested in the age and formation of this landform. It sure looked like a stabilized sand dune, but its location in the middle of the MSU campus was weird. What are the odds that an old sand dune was in the middle of the MSU campus? I needed to look inside the landform, and collect samples for dating, but was unable to gain access to the feature until the campus archaeologist was told some new trees would be planted. What we learned surprised all of us. The video also discusses the campus archaeology program at the university and it has contributed to our understanding of MSU’s past.

Have a look at the video at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fDDhp4DWgU&feature=related

I can be followed on twitter at: www.twitter.com/ArbogastDPG

Posted by: Alan Arbogast, Michigan State University

Japan’s Tsunami

The most active tectonic boundary on earth is the Pacific Ring of fire. This boundary occurs along the edge of the Pacific tectonic plate and ranges from western South America, west to New Zealand, north through the Philippines and Japan, across the northern rim of the Pacific Ocean into Alaska, and southward along the West Coast of North America. The vast majority of earthquakes and volcanoes on Earth occur along this very active tectonic boundary. The largest earthquake in recorded history was a magnitude 9.5 quake that struck Chile in 1960. A similar devastating earthquake (magnitude 9.4) occurred in Alaska in 1964. In 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake struck Indonesia and generated a powerful tsunami that devastated numerous coastal locations along the Indian Ocean. In February of this year a magnitude 6.3 earthquake shook the South Island of New Zealand and was the strongest quake reported in that country for 80 years.

The active nature of the Pacific Ring of fire was observed again today (Friday, 3/11/11) when a magnitude 8.9 earthquake rocked Japan. The epicenter for this earthquake was located offshore, approximately 230 miles northeast of Tokyo. This earthquake is the strongest in recorded Japanese history and aftershocks continue, the strongest of which were magnitude 7.1. In addition to the destruction caused by the earthquake itself, a massive tsunami was generated that crashed into the shore of Japan. The highest wave associated with this surge was measured at 30 feet. In a manner very consistent with the 2004 tsunami, surging water along the coast of Japan devastated coastal communities and spread with incredible power as far as 6 miles inland. Many scores of people likely perished in the disaster and the extent of loss is currently undetermined.

Although the tsunami is certainly a catastrophic disaster in Japan, this situation demonstrates the benefits of the tsunami warning system that was installed in the Pacific Ocean basin in 1949. As a result of the system, a tsunami warning was rapidly given and no doubt saved some lives in Japan. A warning was also generated for Hawaii, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and the West Coast of the United States. Coastal communities in these locations thus had ample time to prepare and move people out of potential danger. In stark contrast, no such warning system existed in the Indian Ocean basin at the time of the Indonesian earthquake. As a result, people in coastal communities far away from the earthquake epicenter were unaware of the approaching tsunami and over 250,000 deaths occurred. This contrast demonstrates why it is necessary to understand natural hazards and plan effectively for them.

Submitted by: Alan Arbogast, Michigan State University

Concept Caching: Hydrothermal features in Iceland

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.

The Icelandic landscape is one of the most unique and interesting on Earth.  One of the few land-based rift zones, it is a standard discussion in any Physical Geography or Geology course.  Geothermal features are not only observed and studied, but they are harnessed for energy.  These geothermal features have also proved a “harsh reminder” for the power of the Earth, as discussed in the post, Geography Directions: Eyjafjallajökull: Geography’s Harsh Reminder. The March 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano had upset the operation of transportation and economic networks that bridged the Atlantic.  The costs, in time and money, were staggering.  Even more unnerving is the nature of such a geologic event, as it was virtually impossible to predict and to mitigate.

Geography Directions: Eyjafjallajökull: Geography’s Harsh Reminder

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 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull on 20 March 2010 caught Europe dangerously off-guard. For two months, waves of ash closed some of the world’s busiest airspace. An estimated ten million passengers were left stranded, international train services collapsed under the heightened strain of people seeking alternate transportation, and governments were left to deal with angered airlines seeking to regain some portion of lost revenue. In total, over one hundred thousand flights were cancelled. The legal and political fallout of Eyjafjallajökull’s eruption continues today. A fundamental questions lies at the heart of this debate: why wasn’t Europe better warned or prepared? Amy R Donovan and Clive Oppenheimer (University of Cambridge) highlighted this problem in their March 2011 Geographical Journal commentary. The danger such natural events as Eyjafjallajökull pose, as Donovan and Oppenheimer argue, is that they lie outside the traditional realm of managerial governance.

Many natural events, however dangerous, lend governments two favours: first, relatively ample warning; second, comparatively localised impact. Hurricanes are an excellent case-in-point. Every summer NOAA, the United States’s oceanographic and atmospheric monitoring agency, continuously tracks existing storms and recalculates their future projectories. Excepting such hurricanes as Andrew and Katrina–most hurricanes cause damage across a limited geographic expanse before weakening significantly in strength. The snowstorms that rack the American northeast are similarly tracked in advance so that appropriate precautions can be taken (even if, in the event, those precautions prove inadequate).

The Eyjafjallajökull eruption, much like the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, presents a very different scenario. Such events are difficult to forecast, even more difficult to contain, and–like other natural events–impossible to prevent. But, as The Geographical Journal commentary noted, preventative steps could have been taken. Although the Met Office’sVolcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC), clearly noted the airspace risks posed by Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull and Mýrdalsjökull volcanoes, this information was not included in the annual National Risk Register, nor did it predicate the implementation of ‘sophisticated, integrated UK or EU policy in advance of the recent volcanic activity’ (p. 2). One hopes that the Eyjafjallajökull airspace fiasco will serve as a reminder of our inability to tame the extremes of physical geography.

By Benjamin Sacks

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

Concept Caching: El Salvador Pan American Highway Virtual Field Trip

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.

The link between food and land has been a crux of human-environment interaction.  Today that relationship is increasingly complex and abstract with many modern humans having no direct experience or conception of the land from which their food came.  The post Geography Directions: Eat to be healthy and save the planet provides an example of that disconnect.  Increasingly, the food we eat (recognizably that “we” is not an even, inclusive global “we”) is affecting many diverse environments across the globe, which aggregates into a significant scale global environmental problem.  Also in the post is the world’s development divide.  Increasingly, it is the diets of the developed world that ruin the environments in developing world or in emerging economies.  This image of the El Salvador environment reveals such an example as the legacy of global coffee demand among other globalized connections is evident on the landscape.  However, with the rise of truly global-scale environmental problems, like climate change, the world’s affluent are eating away (yes, pun intended) at their own future.  For starters, we should reconsider the phrase, “You are what you eat,” accounting for the indirect environmental consequences.

Geography Directions: Eat to be healthy and save the planet

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.

It is well documented that around the world pristine environments are being destroyed to produce some of the food that we eat in the United Kingdom. For instance, the Brazilian savannah or Cerrado is currently being destroyed faster than the Amazon; this is largely due to soy production (most of which is fed to the animals we eat), beef and other agriculture. A further example is that of Borneo whose tropical forests are being cleared to plant palm trees to produce palm oil for biscuits and fish fingers. If everyone in the world lived as we do in the UK we would require two planets by 2030. But now we may be able to save the planet over lunch. Researchers believe that we can and they say that if we all ate what they would like to see on our plates, Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions could be cut by a quarter, our meat consumption would be reduced drastically and we would be a lot healthier at the same time.  All this comes in the guise of the Livewell Diet, which is a weekly menu assembled by nutritionists, which sets out the best ingredients to balance healthy eating with sustainable food production. The average weekly cost of the diet would be £29 per person.

At present an estimated 79kg of meat a year are consumed by the average UK resident and the Livewell 2020 diet is expected to reduce this to 10kg a year; thus reducing the pressure on natural resources.  Scientists from the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health at Aberdeen University have produced the diet commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) which is designed to be familiar and normal. The diet is based on nutritional guidelines from the government for eating healthily. It will also help us meet the 2020 targets for greenhouse gas reductions, as laid out the in UK Climate Change Act by steering away from processed food (whose environmental impacts are due to their extra production, packaging, transportation and energy consumption) and meat.

For a more complete discussion and explanation of the complicated interplay between  human diet, energy, climate change, the financial crisis and the socially and environmentally unsustainable grain–livestock relationship it is recommended to read, Energy, Climate Change, Meat, and Markets: Mapping the Coordinates of the Current World Food Crisis in the Geography Compassjournal. In the meantime the WWF will lobby the government and the food industry to use the Livewell diet as a blueprint and if we just adapt our diets slightly by eating less meat and fewer processed foods, and replacing them with more fruit, vegetables and grains, we’ll be making a positive difference for ourselves and the planet.

By Paulette Cully

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

Earthquakes and Plate Boundaries Virtual Tour

The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program offers up to the minute updates on the earthquakes around the globe.  This data has been used to create a real-time Google Earth(tm) tour of earthquakes that occurred in the past 7 days.  The tour includes layers to show plate boundaries such as continental convergent, continental rift boundary, continental transform fault, oceanic convergent boundary, oceanic spreading rift, oceanic transform fault, and subduction zones.

To download and take the tour go to http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ and click on the ”Google Earth KML” link.

Arbogast WileyPLUS Demo

Click the link below to view a demo of the WileyPLUS course that accompanies ”Discovering Physical Geography” by Alan Arbogast.

Arbogast WileyPLUS Demo

Nature Iraq

For 35 years, both the people and the land of Iraq have suffered from varying combinations of dictatorship, war, and sanctions. Nature Iraq is an active consortium of scientists and other experts who are dedicated to assessing the current state of the environment in Iraq. Operating at great risk to themselves, they are documenting the consequences of civil strife on water resources, cultural adaptations, biodiversity, and soils.

Working under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Nature Iraq has the short-term goal of assessing current conditions, with longer-term commitments to resource protection and environmental restoration. The Nature Iraq web site provides reports on the group’s many projects, quarterly newsletters, and opportunities to support this work.

As detailed on the site’s What We Do page, Nature Iraq recognizes that environmental problems such as desertification and climate change are not constrained by political boundaries, but it also recognizes that localized conditions can have a tremendous influence on the precise ways in which such global processes unfold.

Concept Caching: Zebras in South Africa, Thornbrush Savanna

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.

It is images such as these that make up the geographical imaginations of Africa as mentioned in the post, The Conservation Balance in Sub-Saharan Africa.  The African savanna is home to its “big-game” and thus, to it’s major tourism industry.  The creation of National Parks, like Kruger, can be seen as partnerships made between conservation, government and tourism.  It is the indigenous people, however, that rely on the virtue of that partnership, as they can either be included in conservation efforts or excluded/displaced from their land altogether.  Ultimately, that decision seems to depend on economic, not social, accounting.

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