GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — South American engineers are trying to tackle one of the continent’s greatest natural challenges: the towering Andes mountain chain that creates a costly physical barrier for…

At the NCGE conference, noted author Harm De Blij mentioned a daring project that would link Eastern South America with the Pacific as engineers were planning to tunnel under the Andes mountains.  Here is a link to an article on this intermodal transportation project that would lower the shipping costs from East Asia to the Southern Atlantic.  Government officials in both Argentina and Brazil have described the  project as a matter of “national interest.”  

Tags: transportation, LatinAmerica, globalization, industry, economic, development, unit 6 industry.

See on www.usatoday.com

Over a bottle of vodka and a traditional Russian salad of pickles, sausage and potatoes tossed in mayonnaise, a group of friends raised their glasses and wished Igor Irtenyev and his family a happy journey to Israel.

My regional class has been learning about Russia this week and when I first started teaching a few years ago, I would teach that Russia had a population of 145 million.  Today it is 141 million and part of that is due to migrants leaving a country that they see as lacking in economic opportunities and political freedoms (another part of the story is that birth rates plummeted after the collapse of the Soviet Union in what demographers have called the “Russian Cross“).  In the last few years the population appears to have stabilized, but there are still many who do not see a vibrant future from themselves within Russia.  

Tags: Russia, migration, Demographics, immigration, unit 2 population.

See on www.latimes.com

Workers at an ailing paper mill in Siberia are clinging to their jobs in the face of financial pressure and criticism from environmentalists.

The environment, industry and politics play key roles in this story of an old style Soviet mono-town on Lake Baikal.  Monotowns had planned economies that revolved around one industry and today many of these are struggling in the post-Soviet era.  While the particulars of the political situation are a bit dated, the overall issue is still quite relevant to understanding Russia today.   

Tags: Russia, industry, labor, environment, economic, water, pollution, environment modify, unit 6 industry.

See on www.nytimes.com

Video. Cartographers at National Geographic discuss how they select an appropriate map projection for the September 2012 magazine map supplement.

There is no one perfect map projection that fits all circumstances and situations. Think a situation in which this map projection would be an ideal way to represent the Earth and another situation where it is an incredibly limited perspective. 

Tags: cartography, K12, geospatial, NationalGeographic, water. 

See on education.nationalgeographic.com

A professor criticizes the “culture of quantification,” (in the journal cultural geographies) arguing that we don’t do enough with the data we collect.  If all we do is count (or attempt to count the homeless), does that help them in any way or change the realities that lead to homelessness?  Are we counting them just to give us the numbers to receive credit that may help other programs but not help the homeless?  Is data for data’s sake of any value?

Tags: statistics, class, census, socioeconomic, housing, poverty.

See on www.theatlanticcities.com

Home page of USGS Topographic Maps…

The last paper editions of USGS topographic masp came out in 1973 and 1992.  If you are waiting for the next print edition, you’ll be waiting a long time.  Like so many other agencies with information distribution, the USGS topo maps have gone digital.  In 2001 the USGS announced the production of a current, seamless digital National Map.  You can still quadrangle chunks of the National map and download them for free as PDFs (with geospatial extensions for measuring). 

Tags: mapping, cartography, geospatial.

See on nationalmap.gov

Learn more: http://www.khanacademy.org/video?v=r1ywppAJ1xs Thomas Malthus’s views on population. Malthusian limits.

This is a succinct (but not perfect) summary of Malthusian ideas on population.  What do you think of his ideas?  Any specific parts of his theory that you agree with?  Do you disagree with some of his ideas?  What did history have to say about it?

Tags: Demographics, population, models, APHG,  unit 2 population.

See on www.youtube.com