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!

Bangkok tourism

The AAG sent out this feed and it is pretty interesting.  Check out tourism info.

Note the quote "A map of global tourism spending is really a map of people and money."

Memorial Day 2013

Let's not forget our canine vets out there.  After all, dogs have been our companions for thousands of years.  Here is a shot of Biscuit who, between begging for scraps at the picnic yesterday, wants to honor our canine vets around the world.

Hurricane Season for Atlantic predicted to be big

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, the Atlantic Ocean is expected to have a busy Hurricane Season this year.   The Pacific is expected to be more calm.

On a related note especially since Super Storm Sandy slammed the east coast last fall, Tornado victims in Oklahoma may not get the badly needed help since their own representatives believe the US should not help victims from disasters.

From the Washington Post:

Oklahoma has one of the most conservative congressional delegations of any state: seven Republican men, including fierce advocates for cutting federal spending.

Five of those seven voted no in January on a bill to provide $50 billion in disaster funding for states hit by Hurricane Sandy.

On Tuesday, the disaster was Oklahoma’s instead, a deadly tornado that swept through the town of Moore on Monday afternoon. So those representing Oklahoma all faced the same question: Would they support an influx of new funding — if necessary — for disaster relief efforts in Oklahoma?

Weather sites for travel

I have my favorites around here, you know wunderground.com, intellicast.com and the old standby weather.gov (not the commercial one).

But what about overseas?  Sure you can select one of the others, but usually better info can be had from the government sponsored site, like this one for Iceland (http://en.vedur.is/).  Even if in a foreign language, Chrome can translate the pages.

Always check to see if one is local at your travel destination!