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By Neal Lineback and Mandy Lineback Gritzner, Geography in the NewsTM and Maps.com KEYSTONE PIPELINE AND CANADIAN TAR SANDS CONTROVERSY Supporters and protesters continue to lobby both the White House and U.S.
Via Neal G. Lineback
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Africa may have achieved independence, but the old colonial ties are still important as France’s decision to send troops to Mali to fight Islamist extremists shows.
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Thousands of workers have flooded into the town. But they're reluctant to call it home.
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A new study using data from a pair of gravity-measuring NASA satellites finds that large parts of the arid Middle East region lost freshwater reserves rapidly during the past decade.
"[This] data show an alarming rate of decrease in total water storage in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins, which currently have the second fastest rate of groundwater storage loss on Earth, after India," said Jay Famiglietti, principal investigator of the study and a hydrologist and professor at UC Irvine. "The rate was especially striking after the 2007 drought. Meanwhile, demand for freshwater continues to rise, and the region does not coordinate its water management because of different interpretations of international laws."
Tags: water, environment, consumption, resources, environment depend, Middle East, Iraq.
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Oil-rich, velvet-rope-poor Azerbaijan, a country about the size of South Carolina on the Caspian Sea, would very much like to be the world’s next party capital.
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If you are up in space looking down on America west of the Mississippi, one of the brightest patches of light at night is on the Great Plains in North Dakota. It's not a city, not a town, not a military installation.
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Jeffrey Gettleman, The Times’s Nairobi bureau chief, reports on how Kenya’s wildlife conservation corps is learning from a reformed poacher how to counter the growing threat to elephants.
Energy conservation starts at home....
This interesting National Geographic article emphasizes how consumption patterns in the home are connected to some of the serious global issues that we currently face. This article becomes an exploration into how to go about creating a more environmentally sustainable home.
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This interactive map documents where 443 million people around the world get there water (although the United States data is by far the most extensive). Most people can't answer this question. A recent poll by The Nature Conservancy discoverd that 77% of Americans (not on private well water) don't know where their water comes from, they just drink it. This link has videos, infographics and suggestions to promote cleaner water. This is also a fabulous example of an embedded map using ArcGIS Online to share geospatial data with a wider audience. Tags: GIS, water, fluvial, environment, ESRI, pollution, development, consumption, resources, mapping, environment depend, cartography, geospatial.
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Many experts see water scarcity as a potential looming crisis. Water scarcity, pollution and mismanagement are going to become increasingly important as the global population continues to rise farther above 7 billion. AlertNet has put together a dynamic special feature on water with videos, infographics and interactive maps in addition to the following articles: --Water scarcity – Conflicts of interests --How much “virtual water” do you use every day? --Water maps spark concern about "liquid gold rush" --Myanmar in the dark over hydropower for Asia --Thirsty South Asia's river rifts threaten "water wars" --EXPERT VIEWS: New water policies are key to tackling scarcity This is a must-see resource with multiple regional (South Asia, Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, etc.) applications and thematic (political, environmental, resource management, development, etc.) strands as well.
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For years, China claimed to hold an estimated 50000 rivers within its borders. Now, more than half of them have abruptly vanished.
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An arid region grew even drier between 2003 and 2009 due to human consumption of water for drinking and agriculture.
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PULL a spring, let it go, and it will snap back into shape. Pull it further and yet further and it will go on springing back until, quite suddenly, it won't....
Via Joel Barker
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While city lights at night serve as a good proxy for population density, North Korea provides a dark exception.
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CFR experts examine the science and foreign policy surrounding climate change, energy, and nuclear security.
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In an impoverished country, elephant poaching is a quick way to make big money. A pair of poachers explain how they track and kill elephants in one of Africa's top game reserves.
The illegal sale of ivory in places such as Asia drive the elephant poachers to prey on Elephants in protected game reserves and national parks. The Selous Game Reserve is larger than Switzerland and yet they only have 10 rangers to protect and patrol the wildlife.
Tags: biogeography, poverty, globalization, Africa, consumption, resources, ecology, podcast.
Today, a country’s marine economic area is defined by its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), a 200-nautical mile-wide (370 km) strip of sea along the country’s national coast line (hi-res image). This regulation, which was installed by the ‘UN Convention on the Law of the Sea’ in 1982, grants a state special rights to exploit natural (such as oil) and marine (for instance fish) resources, including scientific research and energy production (wind-parks, for example).
Questions to ponder: how does this series of buffer zones around the Earth's land masses impact politics, the environment and local economies? Where might the EEZs be more important to the success of a country/territory than other regions?
Tags: economic, environment, political, resources, water, sovereignty, coastal, environment depend, territoriality, states, conflict, unit 4 political.
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Tara Cohen
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Steel is strong, versatile and 100% recyclable. Learn how old steel shipping containers are given a new lease on life as liveable spaces. Reusing resources is a critical part of sustainability. This video looks at the recycling of steel including the creating of container homes.
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