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?

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...

Geography in the News: Haiti Earthquake lesson

The first of two lessons learning about the earthquake in Haiti. Note: The YouTube logo is hyperlinked to the videos!

Haiti Earthquake KS3 Lesson

View more presentations from JoBlack.

Little Britain: If the UK was a village of 100 people...

If England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were condensed to a single community of 100 people, what would that community look like?

The Daily Mail has trawled acres of spreadsheets and data-sets published by government and other statistical authorities to produce a snapshot of Britain in the 21st century. Here are just a few statistics:

• EACH person would generate 495kg of waste every year. The village would generate 163kg of waste every day, of which just 47kg would be put out for recycling.
• THE villagers would have 118 mobile phones among them (66 of which would be pay-as-you-go).
• TWENTY-ONE villagers would have watched Andy Murray beat Stanislas Wawrinka at Wimbledon this year; 32 people would have watched Susan Boyle lose Britain's Got Talent.
• THIRTY people would have a Facebook account.
• THERE would be a total of 74 voters, but only 26 of them would have gone to the polls at this year's European elections.

To see the rest of the statistics, click here.

New Zealand moves closer to Australia!

A massive earthquake last week has brought New Zealand closer to Australia, scientists say. The 7.8 magnitude quake in the Tasman Sea has expanded New Zealand's South Island westwards by about 30cm (12in). New Zealand frequently suffers earthquakes because it sits on the meeting point of the Australian and Pacific continental plates.



See the full BBC report here.

Glacier melt changes Italian border

The border between Italy and Switzerland is being redrawn as glaciers along the frontier melt. The border was last changed in 1861 when Italy became a unified state, but this time the shift is being blamed on climate change.

There be pirates...

On our return to school next week, year 8 and 9 will be having a lesson on the recent spate of ship hijackings by Somali pirates. The lesson has been produced and kindly shared by Tony Cassidy here.

I have made a movie to go with the lesson.



Some useful BBC News clips...
Somali pirates seize another boat
Pirates continue to hold hostages
On the trail of Somali pirates

Geography in the News: How did the snow affect the south west of the UK?

Most classes in years 7-9 had this second lesson about some of the impacts the snow had on our region. Just sharing for the teachers that use this blog...

How did the snow affect the south west of the UK?

View more presentations from JoBlack.

I'm afraid it was a very quick effort as I was running out of steam near the end of the half term, but it seemed to work fairly well.

Geography in the News: Let it Snow!

This is the first of two lessons in relation to the recent extreme weather events affecting the UK. It is tenuously linked to students personal geography - but bearing in mind that many students will still find themselves snowed in tomorrow, it should do just fine!

Let it Snow! Geography in the News lesson

View more presentations from JoBlack.

And here's the Snow in Okehampton movie that features in the PowerPoint!

Telegraph TV: Britain's week of snow

A useful report that tracks the story of the snow throughout last week...

Primark hits the news again!

It was a wonderful moment in 9y1's lesson today when lots of you asked me if I had seen the news about Primark after we used it as an example of a company that has connections with sweatshops in the developing world in the Global Fashion Industry unit.
Primark featured on the BBC News earlier this week for once again being involved in the use of sweatshops, but this time here in the UK! Supplier TNS Knitwear, who supply Primark, was found to be employing illegal workers in poor conditions at its Manchester factory. Factory workers were found to be working 12 hours a day for £3.50 per hour. Primark is best known for its cheap fashion clothing and bucked the trend on Britain's high street last year to make a £233m profit.

To see the BBC News stories connected to this, click here.

20/20/20

Some useful geography in the news today on the issue of global warming. EU leaders have reached a deal to cut carbon emissions by 20% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels. Take a look at the BBC article here.

Whilst you are on that BBC page, check out some of the other links, especially with reference to the IPCC. There's also an animated guide to the greenhouse effect and a great link to 'state of the planet, in graphics'.

Seeing this in the news reminded me of one of my favourite images...

Why could Miss Blackmore's dad not get to work today?

You all know I'm a fan of mysteries in Geography!

The town of Ottery St Mary, east Devon, was cut off this morning by torrential overnight storms which caused 6ft high drifts of hailstones! More than 3 inches of rain and hail fell between 6pm on Wednesday and 8am this morning. More than 100 people had to be evacuated from their homes. Cars were buried up to their roofs in hasilstones. It is thought that the situation became so severe because hailstones blocked drains and caused serious flooding as more rain fell.

Click on the map above to see it in more detail!



To find out more, check out these articles...
October's weird weather continues as village is inundated by 6ft drifts of hailstones
'Freak' hail causes flood chaos (includes video)
Freak storm leaves Devon town like 'lunar landscape' under 2ft of hail (includes video)
Arborfield blog (look at the amazing pictures on this blog!)

Not forgetting the mystery question, my dad couldn't get to work today because he works in the town of Ottery St Mary, which was this morning under as much as 6ft of hailstones and floodwater!