GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

While there are wildfires raging in northern San Diego county (see interactive map), my heart goes out to family and friends there.  The recent drought in California makes the condition perfect for wildfires to spread.  This video is a nice glimpse of San Diego during better times.  

Tags:  weather and climate, California, water, environment, urban ecology.

They eyes of the world will be turning to Brazil next month as the World Cup will be played in this South American country.  This is a perfect opportunity to pounce on student interest and teach them about Brazil, the urban geography and politics of hosting a major event such as this.  Follow the link for some lessons bound to garner student interest.  

Tags: sport, Brazil, South America.

Redistricting today has become a common tool in American politics.  Every ten years with the new census, political parties seize the opportunity to maximize their political influence by trying to minimize the ‘demographic and spatial limitations’ of their particular voting bloc.      

Tags: gerrymandering, political, mapping, census, unit 4 political.

Much like the Power of Place resources were created by Annenberg Learner to share World Regional Geography videos, the Habitable Planet has diverse resources for Physical Geography and Environmental Science.  In essence, it is an excellent free online textbook.   

Tags: textbook, environment, physical.

Spatial thinking needs to be infused into many of our public conversations, and geographers collectively need to find ways to be a part of them.

This is an interesting concept that shows the divergence between national and regional identities.  68% of French citizens recognize that consolidating regional administration will be economically more efficient at the national level; however 77% don’t want to see the elimination of their own local region.   The formation of place-based identities operate an multiple scales.  How would you feel if your state was absorbed by a neighboring state?  How come? 

Tags: community, place, governance, France.

In dry areas of interior drainage (such as Central Asia and the Great Basin in the U.S.), the human settlements are often clustered along the foothills of the mountains near landforms called alluvial fans.  Take time to analyze this image (and this one as well); in alluvial fans and the agricultural patterns that people create on them, we can see some striking geometric and spatial configurations that show how human settlements are highly dependent of the physical environment.   

Tags: spatial, remote sensing, geospatial, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, landscape.

Many of the geopolitical conflicts in the East Pacific have their roots in the territorial disputes over islands that at first glance seem as if they wouldn’t be worth the trouble.  However, since the the UNCLOS agreement gives countries 200 nautical miles off their coasts to be an Exclusive Economic Zone, that greatly enhanced the strategic value of controlling these islands.  This interactive map briefly highlights some of the details behind the conflicts with links for further readings.  

Questions to Ponder: Why do countries care so much about some minor islands?  Why would other countries not want to accept China’s territorial assertions?  Experts are saying that Chinese-Japanese relations are as bad as they’ve been since the end of World War II–Why all the commotion? 

Tags: borders, political, conflict, China, East Asia.