Let the Geography Begin

On to Monday 1 July 2013, my online course in Physical Geography will start.  So I hope to include lots of good physical things on the blog, should any of the students make their way to this site.

I'll have a boatload of cool pics from Iceland to share, and some are already online at Panoramio.

In a country that has steam venting from hillsides north of Hveragerð , this is one exciting place.

ISSRM 2014

While I missed ISSRM 2013 in Colorado earlier this month (I was in Iceland for NGM 2013)
the ISSRM 2014 meeting is set.  I will put it on my timeline.

Iceland 2013

For the next week or so I am going to write about this place called Iceland.  A surreal landscape greeted us at KEF airport last night (early this morning) and then a drive downtown.  Took a round about way to get to the hotel, but finally found the place.  Local time 1 am, my time 9 pm.  I can't imagine making this drive after a red eye.

The airport was hopping and many hit the duty free shops upon arrival to buy booze.  We just wanted to find the car rental.

GeoCube

Geocube, a European way of looking at Geography is found at this site.

They note:

Geocube is an attractive online resource about Geography. Geocube is based on the principle of the Rubik Cube with six faces and 54 topics. It is a virtual and easily accessible website which is available online for free. Move the Geocube around with your mouse and explore the faces and topics. Geocube provides an accessible way to read, see and watch what Geography is and geographers do. This is a European initiative developed by HERODOT, the European Network for Geography in Higher Education and is available to anyone who is interested in Geography.

Looks like a real find for geography education!

Nordic Geographers Meeting 2013

The NGM is a biennial meeting of Nordic geographers, taking place in turn in one of the Nordic Countries.

The 5th Nordic Geographers Meeting will be held in Reykjavík, Iceland, at the University of Iceland, 11 – 14 June 2013. Previous meetings include: Lund, Sweden (2005); Bergen, Norway (2007); Turku, Finland (2009); Roskilde, Denmark (2011).

The theme of the NGM 2013 is Responsible Geographies.

We are presenting research on the carbon impacts of the Westfield River Canoe Races.

While most people think that a canoe race does not significantly to carbon emissions, especially when compared to auto racing, air travel or just about any motorized event, our research found about 33.6 pounds of carbon were emitted per vehicle in 2012 and 32.5 pounds in 2013.  From our group sample over the two years (n=142), this meant that each group having 2 or more cars to shuttle the canoes the average emissions per group was closer to 62.6 pounds in 2012 and 66.2 pounds in 2013.

Research has found that tourism activities contribute about 5% of the global emissions and of that figure 75% is from transport costs.

So a little canoe race in Western Mass, does have an impact.  See the abstract in the Nature Conservation and Tourism session.

Here we are navigating through Hill and Dale Rapids!

Tornado Chasing .... for fun?

The Midwest has been getting hammered with severe weather over the past few weeks, and even the weather stars from the Weather Channel may be over their heads.

We wrote a paper on recreational storm chasing a while back that might be of interest.  http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/19699

Tours devoted to tornado storm chasing have become popular in recent years, especially with the emergence of many profit and non-profit storm chasing organizations. While most literature in risk recreation has been directed toward rock climbing or other high-risk outdoor recreation activities, tours devoted to storm chasing are quite unlike these traditional activities. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of these organizations from information collected in a mailed survey. Areas to be discussed are specific tour details for each company, basic demographics of tour attendees, and other areas of tour requirements.

My hope that the tourists don't get in the way of public safety!