Turkey earthquake

On Sunday 23rd October, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake hit eastern Turkey. The epicentre of the quake was near the city of Van and Ercis.

Useful links (particularly for Unit 4 A2 Geographers!)...
Turkey earthquake death toll passes 500 The Telegraph, 27th October 2011
Turkey earthquake: Teenage boy found after four days BBC News, 28th October 2011
Boy Pulled Uninjured From Turkey's Quake Wreckage NYTimes, 28th October 2011
Turkey Earthquake: building negligence amounts to murder The Guardian, 26th October 2011 (excellent evaluative article - useful for analysis!)
Turkey Earthquake: Government will accept foreign aid BBC News, 26th October 2011
Photographs from National GeographicTurkey earthquake: Death toll passes 430 BBC News, 25th October 2011
Earthquake Adds Even More Pressure to relations between Turks, Kurds Voice of America, 27th October 2011 (good for Unit 4 'values and attitudes' part of the mark scheme!)
Timeline: major earthquakes in Turkey Reuters, 27th October 2011
A Geoglogist's Eye View of Van Earthquake Scientific American, 27th October 2011 (good explanation of tectonics and causes)
New Insights into the October 2011 Van Earthquake Earthquake-Report (CEDIM), 25th October 2011
Turkey Quake casts spotlight on political fault lines Monsters & Critics, 27th October 2011
After quake, Turkey has proven it can get by on its own Haaretz.com, 29th October 2011
Turkey still not ready for next big one The National, 17th August 2009
The Next Big Quake? Foreign Policy, 21st January 2010

Don't forget to check out the 'related articles' that feature in some of the links above. This will broaden your research, whilst still keeping it focused on the Turkey earthquake.

7 billion people and you: What's your number?

Use this excellent resource from the BBC called 7 billion people and you: What's your number? to calculate where you fit into the world's population. Simply add your data of birth and it will tell you what your number is! Mine is the 4,658,544,579th person alive on Earth! What's your number?

Frozen Planet

Tonight sees the start 'Frozen Planet', a seven-part series, on BBC1 at 9pm. Frozen Planet takes you on the ultimate polar expedition. This landmark series brings to the screen the frozen wildernesses of the Arctic and Antarctic as you have never seen them before, and may never see them again...

Mount Everest: Impacts of tourism

"The committee says it brought back 25 tonnes of rubbish from Everest last spring – including 12,000kg of paper and plastic and 11,250kg of human waste."

Useful sources for Edexcel A2 Unit 4 Consuming the Rural Landscape
The Mission to clean up Mount Everest The Guardian
Calls for long term Everest waste management plan - starting with toilets The Guardian

How big was the world's population when you were born?

As the world population fast approaches 7 billion, The Guardian has published this excellent resource where you can enter your date of birth to find out what the world's population was on that date, as well as information on how different countries were growing at that time.

Check it out here! This is what the world population was on my date of birth...

Climate change in Africa

This is one of the compulsory case studies for Unit 1 Global Challenges. The following articles are particularly useful!

BBC News Climate change 'hitting Africa' 28th October 2006
Christian Aid The economic cost of climate change
The Independent Climate change will be catastrophe for Africa 16th May 2006
World Wildlife Fund Impact of Climate Change
The Guardian Climate change will devastate Africa 28th October 2009
Oxfam Horn of Africa drought: Climate change and future impacts on food security
BBC News Climate change 'will dry Africa' 29th November 2005