East side of Timpanogos, by the Heber Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau:
Timpanogos from the east – replacement for photo that originally nested here. Utah.com image
Mt. Timpanogos, east side. Heber Valley CVB photo. Click image for larger view.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Susan Reeve Lewis.
Leave a Comment » | 
Geography - Physical, geology, photography, Travel, Utah | Tagged: geography, geology, Mt. Timpanogos, photography, Travel, Utah | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Contrary to popular rural and redneck legend, Caddo Lake is not Texas’s only natural* lake. There’s also Big Lake, near the town of Big Lake.
Problem being, of course, that Big Lake’s water sources these days generally don’t flow. So Big Lake is often dry.
Which produces a further problem for site like Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub: If Big Lake is really a lake, why are there no photos of the lake with water in it?
A comment at AustinBassFishing.com got me thinking about this again, no photos of Big Lake as a Lake. In the previous post here, we featured a photo of Big Lake Playa, sans water. I searched the internet at the time and found no photos showing water in the lake. My authority on Big Lake, Brad Wachsmann, swore that he had recently seen water in the thing (“recent” being “in the last decade or so”).
So, sorta good news: A few photos of Big Lake, with water, plopped onto the internet since our last search. Here are a couple from Panaramio:
Water in Big Lake, near the city of Big Lake, Texas, laps at the State Highway 137 passing nearby. This photo comes from 2004, by doning.
Photo of water in Big Lake from June 2005. Photo by evansjohnc. This photo appears to be about midway along the intersection of the lake with State Highway 137.
Big Lake in its dry phase, from looking north from the southern end of State Highway 137’s transection of the lake. Photo by cwoods.
Non-historic marker for Big Lake, also along State Highway 137, looking west. Photo by cwoods. Photo taken during Big Lake’s dry humor phase.
Now: Can we track down the rumors of other natural lakes in Texas? Sabine Lake? Green Lake? Natural Dam Lake?
And, Dear Reader, can you find good photos of Big Lake with, you know, water in it?
_____________
* Is Caddo Lake a natural lake? Originally, the lake seems to have been formed by an enormous blowdown of trees, probably during a hurricane, well over 400 years ago. In that sense, it was a natural lake when European explorers first found it, and during all of Texas’s “six flags” historic periods. Or, what is known as the Great Raft, a log jam, dammed up the Red River near the confluence of the Big Cypress Bayou, in about 1799. By 1800, Caddo Lake was wet all year-round, and deep enough for shallow boat navigation. In 1835, Capt. Henry Shreve blew up enough of the logjam that steamboat traffic could get past (the guy after whom Shreveport, Louisiana, is named). After the Civil War, locals tried to expand boat traffic by completely removing the logjam. Instead of making traffic easier, this removal led shrinking water levels in the lake, and it destroyed navigation farther up the Red River. Several efforts to restore higher water levels achieved some success by about 1915. When oil was discovered under the swamp, pressures came from oil companies to make drilling easier — travel in the mud was difficult. After the invention of the Hughes drill bit (by Howard Hughes‘s father, the founder of Hughes Tool Co.) to allow drilling through water and mud into oil-bearing rock, a dam was built near where the logjam had been, to raise the level of what is known today as Caddo Lake. What is seen today is a human-enhanced version of the Caddo Lake known by the Caddo Tribe. This is all preface to the current Texas water wars.
More:
5 Comments | Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Natural history, Texas, Texas history, Water | Tagged: Big Cypress Bayou, Caddo Lake, geography, History, Natural history, Natural resources, Texas, Water | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
. . . would still be a Texas town.
(This is an encore post of a piece that is five years old, and borrowed from a kid who has since graduated from Texas schools on gone on to Princeton; see bottom for additional, updated information.)
But Texas towns have some of the best names of towns in the U.S. Plus, there are a lot of Texas towns, plus 254 Texas counties.
Freckles Cassie at Political Teen Tidbits has a great list:
Need to be cheered up?
Happy, Texas 79042
Pep, Texas 79353
Smiley, Texas 78159
Paradise, Texas 76073
Rainbow, Texas 76077
Sweet Home, Texas 77987
Comfort, Texas 78013
Friendship, Texas 76530
- Click thumbnail map above for a larger map of Texas with many cities named, from Tripinfo.com.
Go see the entire list — and maybe add a few of your favorites in the comments. An ambitious geography teacher could make a couple of great exercises out of those lists. “What’s the shortest distance one would have to drive to visit Paris, Italy, Athens and Santa Fe? How many could you visit in the shortest time?”
Texas counties, all 254 of ’em, from Geography.com
More, and updated information:
9 Comments | Geography - Political, History, Maps, Place Names, Texas, Travel | Tagged: geography, History, Maps, Place Names, Texas, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
1 Comment | Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, National Parks, Travel | Tagged: geography, History, National Park Service, Travel, Washington D.C. | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It’s not exactly a hoax. It started out as just bad reporting of history.
In his search for an easier route from Spain to China, in which he stumbled into the Americas, Christopher Columbus knew with certainty the Earth is a round ball. The story that he proved the Earth round, or rather than he laid the foundations for Magellan to prove the Earth round, is only a story, mostly devoid of fact. Sailors knew something was up just from their having watched things while sailing on the ocean. One can deduce the ball shape of the planet by watching other ships as they sail away, and sink below the horizon. Were sailors of a more scientific bent, they could have made much of the fact that the guy in the crow’s nest could see a ship moving away — or an island or a continent — for a time longer than those a few dozen feet below, on the deck of the ship.
Long before that a Greek librarian and polymath, Eratosthenes, figured out that the surface of the Earth is curved, deduced that the planet is basically a ball, and calculated very closely how big the ball is, merely by noting the different shadows cast by the sun at the Spring/Vernal Equinox. Carl Sagan used this story way back in his famous PBS series, Cosmos. It’s still interesting, informative and instructive today (surely Texas 9th grade geography teachers use this example all the time, no? 9th grade math teachers? Say, what?).
You can find this and more Sagan videos at the Carl Sagan Portal on YouTube.
How did he do it? Wikipedia — as usual — has a good, relatively lay explanation:
Bathtub Art Figure 1: Eratosthenes’ measurement of the Earth’s circumference.
Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth without leaving Egypt. Eratosthenes knew that, on the summer solstice, at local noon in the Ancient Egyptian city of Swenet (known in Greek as Syene, and in the modern day as Aswan) on the Tropic of Cancer, the sun would appear at the zenith, directly overhead (he had been told that the shadow of someone looking down a deep well would block the reflection of the Sun at noon). Using a gnomon, he measured the sun’s angle of elevation at noon on the solstice in his hometown of Alexandria, and found it to be 1/50th of a circle (7°12′) south of the zenith. Assuming that the Earth was spherical (360°), and that Alexandria was due north of Syene, he concluded that the meridian arc distance from Alexandria to Syene must therefore be 1/50 = 7°12’/360°, and was therefore 1/50 of the total circumference of the Earth. His knowledge of the size of Egypt after many generations of surveying trips for the Pharaonic bookkeepers gave a distance between the cities of 5,000 stadia (about 500 geographical miles or 927.7 km). This distance was corroborated by inquiring about the time that it takes to travel from Syene to Alexandria by camel. He rounded the result to a final value of 700 stadia per degree, which implies a circumference of 252,000 stadia. The exact size of the stadion he used is frequently argued. The common Attic stadion was about 185 m,[9] which would imply a circumference of 46,620 km, which is off the actual circumference by 16.3%; too large an error to be considered as ‘accurate’. However, if we assume that Eratosthenes used the “Egyptian stadion”[10] of about 157.5 m, his measurement turns out to be 39,690 km, an error of less than 2%.[11]
Description of Bathtub Art Figure 1:
Syene (
) is located on the Tropic of Cancer, so that at summer solstice the sun appears at the zenith, directly overhead. In Alexandria (
) the sun is
south of the zenith at the same time. So the circumference of earth can be calculated being
times the distance
between
Erastothenes measured the angle
Tropic of Cancer sign in Western Sahara, placed by trans-Sahara racers, in English and Hungarian Photo: Wikipedia
A fun little exercise, but a remarkable achievement for anyone about 240 years before the birth of of the Biblical Jesus. Syene, now known as Aswan, is on what we now call the Tropic of Cancer (the “tropics” were named by the Greeks, but I am uncertain whether the line had that name in Eratosthenes’s time). The date is probably not important, so much as the observation that the sun was vertical at noon on a given date — and then Eratosthenes’s experiment to see whether that were true in Alexandria, and then his understanding of what that might mean and his work to assemble the data to make the calculations. High school students — heck, junior high school students — should be able to figure all that out today, if they had the basics down. I suspect that knowing this story would be a spur to students to learn the elements of the mystery and how it was solved, and what it might mean for later navigators of the oceans, land and air, for astronomers, for farmers and for mathematics.
I also like this story because it presents a strange conundrum, a paradox about what people know, and what they may reason from the foundation of what they know. Our friend and frequent commenter Morgan, whose blog he calls the House of Eratosthenes. I suspect he thinks himself some latter-day Eratosthenian (“Latter-day Erats?”). He says as much in his blog FAQ:
I’m just like Eratosthenes peeking into a well here, and I don’t know what it means yet.
It’s an entertaining read and more enlightening that one might think from his forays here, so you probably ought to go read the FAQ and the reasons Morgan misbelieves liberals miss out on Eratosthenes’s wisdom. Morgan has an explanation of Eratosthenes and his discoveries which I find too brief to be accurate (and I’m not sure why Morgan finds the name “Beta” to be dubious; being a polymath was not a small thing then, or now; second best in everything means one is first in the All-Around, first in the academic centathlon or millathlon — no mean set of feats at all). I find that funny because, while he makes a pretense and some effort to following Eratosthenes and scientific methods, to me he seems to find science and logic things to run away from, as in our recent discussion where he ends up defending Anthony Watts’s erroneous views because Watts’s critics didn’t link to Watts (see comments in “It’s raining crazy,” and see also Morgan’s own post, which defies explanation). Eratosthenes would find that funny, too, I hope, but not a demonstration of Eratosthenian logic and calculation.
Does anyone doubt where Carl Sagan would be in the debate between the dozen serious scientists and hundreds of political wankers who deny climate change, and the thousands of scientists and good citizens who recognize that it occurs and think we should get on with saving the future?
(Did James Burke cover Eratosthenes in his brilliant series Connections? Which episode?)
Tip of the old scrub brush to Fred Clark at Slacktivist, whose compilation posts often overflow with stuff you ought to know or see, and whose post today sent me to Joe at It’s Okay to Be Smart and “Top 10 Reasons We Know The Earth Is Round.”
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4 Comments | Christopher Columbus, Geography - Physical, History, Libraries, Science | Tagged: Carl Sagan, Christopher Columbus, Cosmos, Earth, Eratosthenes, geography, History, Librarians, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Caption from the NPS crew at Canyonlands National Park: View from the Maze: Millard Canyon’s winter mood. We are looking north. Note how the heat from the east to southeast facing cliffs has melted the snow below – even in this ultra-frigid time. Taking a break under a southeast facing cliff is a good way to warm up while on a Canyonlands hike. (GC) (via Facebook)
In a state where they once named the proposed state capital “Fillmore,” and the county in which that town sat, “Millard,” to try to curry favor with President Millard Fillmore for the state’s petition to gain statehood, one might logically think that a spectacular desert canyon not far away called Millard Canyon might also be named in honor of our 13th president.
Location map, Canyonlands National Park, image from Wikipedia
Not so, in this case. According to John W. van Cott’s Utah Place Names (University of Utah Press, 1990):
MILLARD CANYON (Garfield County) originates at French Springs southeast of Hans Flat. The canyon drains north northeast into the Green River at Queen Anne Bottom. According to Baker, “They learned later that they had misunderstood this name; instead of honoring a president, it was named for an undistinguished `Miller’ who did nothing more than leave this small, mistaken mark on the map” (Baker, Pearl. Robbers Roost Recollections. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1976, p. 33). The name was even misspelled Millard.
Millard Fillmore is off the hook on this one.
Garfield County, Utah, was named after President James Garfield.
So, who was this “Miller” guy?
(Post inspired by image from the Canyonlands NP Facebook site; temperature at the time of the photo was near 0°F.)
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1 Comment | Geography - Physical, geology, Millard Fillmore, National Parks, Travel, Utah | Tagged: Canyonlands National Park, geography, geology, Millard Fillmore, photography, Travel, Utah | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
News from the Texas Alliance for Geography Education — read the whole newsletter, I’ve copied it all without cutting:
TAGE Blast for 4 January 2013
http://www.geo.txstate.edu/tage/
Overview
- New Teacher Resources
- How to Track a Bill
- Upcoming Workshops and TAGE Events
- Webinar Series on Southeast Asia
- TAGE Awarded Two New Grants
*********************************************
To read more, visit http://www.geo.txstate.edu/tage/New Teacher Resources
Thanks to generous support from the National Geographic Education Foundation, TAGE has created new resources for geography teachers. A huge thank you to Dr. Brock Brown, Dr. Jeff Lash, Linda Hammon, and our Teacher Consultants for their help with creating these resources. Visit our new Teacher Materials page at http://www.geo.txstate.edu/tage/resources/teacher-materials.html, for videos, podcasts, new eoc sample questions, teaching handbooks, and lesson plans.
83rd Texas Legislature – How to Track a Bill
You can create a personal bill list and receive e-mail notification as the status changes on bills you chose to watch.
Visit http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/MnuMyTLO.aspx and create a log-in.
After you have logged-in, you can either choose Bill Lists or Alerts, and add the bill to track. For example, “HB 85” and click Add Bill.
Read more about HB 85 in the December newsletter.
TAGE will continue to track education legislation, and work in support of geographic education in Texas.
Upcoming Workshops
January 26, Region 4, 6th Annual Social Studies Conference, 8:30-3:30 pm, http://www.esc4.net/default.aspx?name=ss.events
February 7-8, Huntsville, Geography Conference: Bridging World Geography, http://www.escweb.net/tx_esc_06/catalog/calendar.aspx?date=2/1/2013
April 6, San Marcos, The Geography of Southeast Asia, more information coming soon on the TAGE websiteJune 11-13, San Marcos, Social Studies Supervisors Summer Institute: Teaching Geography Concepts, more information coming soon on the TAGE website
Webinar Series on Southeast Asia
Did you know that Southeast Asia has a population over 600 milion? This culturally diverse region encompasses a pivotal position in the world economy. Join Dr. Frederick Day in exploring various geographic issues related to Southeast Asia in TAGE’s new, free webinar series featuring this interesting and diverse region.
February 5th, 4:15-4:45: Physical Geography of Southeast Asia
February 12th, 4:15-4:45: Economic Development in Southeast Asia
February 26th, 4:15-4:45: Environmental Degradation in Southeast Asia
TAGE Awarded Two New Grants
TAGE is pleased to announce that we have recently received two grants to create a World Geography curricula unit focusing on Southeast Asia. Grants have been awarded by the National Geographic Education Foundation and a second grant by Humanities Texas. TAGE will create an online teaching unit complemented by videos and professional development webinars. Keep an eye on our calendar to learn more about the new and exciting opportunities related to teaching geography and Southeast Asia in the coming months.2013 Grosvenor Teacher Fellow program – Deadline January 8th
National Geographic Education Programs and Lindblad Expeditions are pleased to announce the 2013 Grosvenor Teacher Fellow program. This professional development opportunity is named in honor of Gilbert M. Grosvenor, Chairman Emeritus National Geographic Society and Education Foundation. The program is designed to give current K-12 classroom teachers and informal educators from the 50 U.S. states, Canada, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico the opportunity to extend Grosvenor’s legacy of excellence in geographic education. Selected educators will travel aboard the ship National Geographic Explorer in June, July or August 2013 to Norway, Arctic Svalbard, Iceland, Greenland or the Canadian High Arctic. While aboard, Fellows will share the importance of geo-literacy with fellow travelers, develop activities to bring back to their classrooms, and have an adventure of a lifetime. Prior to the expedition, all 2013 Grosvenor Teacher Fellows will travel to Washington, D.C. on April 25-28th with all expenses covered to participate in a pre-trip workshop sponsored by Google, National Geographic, and Lindblad Expeditions. Check out the Grosvenor Teacher Fellow Program application, which is now live on our website:
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/program/grosvenor-teacher-fellow/?ar_a=1.Worried about the World and U.S. History STAAR™ Exams?
Refresh your content knowledge of World and U.S. History … in 15 Minutes!15 Minute History is a FREE podcast—with supplementary resources and primary documents—about World and U.S. History. 15 Minute History is a collaboration between Hemispheres, the international outreach consortium at the University of Texas at Austin, and Not Even Past, an outreach project of the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin.
Featuring the minds and talent of the award-winning faculty and graduate students of the University of Texas at Austin, the topic of each episode is drawn directly from the World History and U.S. History TEKS, and contains background information and a quick primer on the subject.Each episode is accompanied by primary documents to analyze with your students, and suggested resources for further reading and research. In just 15 minutes, you can refresh your knowledge of World and U.S. History—for FREE!
Children’s Map Competition Opportunity – Deadline February 15
Entries in the U.S. are not due until February 15, but it might be a good holiday-time project for classrooms to get started on. All of the instructions for participation can be accessed in this post from the NG Education blog.NGS: New AP Human Geography Portal
National Geographic Education has created a portal on the NatGeoEd.org website for AP Human Geography teachers to visit for teaching and learning resources, including classroom activities, videos, maps, background reading material, and more. The new portal organizes content from National Geographic Education by each of the major topics taught in the AP Human Geography course. The collection will grow over time as new content aligning to the course topics is published online.
If you teach social studies in Texas, you really ought to subscribe to this newsletter.
Texas Alliance for Geographic Education
Department of Geography
Texas State University
601 University Drive
San Marcos, TX 78666
http://www.geo.txstate.edu/tage/
Leave a Comment » | Education, Teachers, Teaching, Teaching Resources, Texas | Tagged: Education, geography, National Geographic Society, Social Studies, TAGE, Teacher Resources, Teaching, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Wikipedia description: Standing sixty feet (18.3 meters) tall and perched atop a ninety foot (27.4 meters) stabilized sand dune known as Kill Devil Hill, this monument towers over Wright Brothers National Memorial Park in Kill Devil Hills, NC. The park commemorates and preserves the site where the Wright brothers launched the world’s first successful sustained, powered flights in a heavier-than-air machine. The inscription that wraps around the base of the monument states “In commemoration of the conquest of the air by the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright. Conceived by genius, achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith.” Photo by Ken Thomas, taken with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50 in Dare County, NC, USA.
At this site, on December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright first achieved flight in a heavier-than-air machine.
Leave a Comment » | Airplanes, History, Invention, National Parks, Technology | Tagged: Airplanes, flight, geography, History, Invention, National Park Service, North Carolina, Technology, Wright Brothers, Wright Flyer | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ten feet in altitude, 120 feet traveled, 12 seconds long. That was the first flight in a heavier-than-air machine achieved by Orville and Wilbur Wright of Dayton, Ohio, at Kittyhawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903.
Few witnesses observed the flight. Though the brothers Wright fully understood the potential of the machine they had created, even they waited before revealing to their supporters, and then the world, what they had accomplished.
On the morning of December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright took turns piloting and monitoring their flying machine in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Orville piloted the first flight that lasted just twelve seconds. On the fourth and final flight of the day, Wilbur traveled 852 feet, remaining airborne for 57 seconds. That morning the brothers became the first people to demonstrate sustained flight of a heavier-than-air machine under the complete control of the pilot.
No lost luggage, no coffee, no tea, no meal in a basket, either. No ATC (Air Traffic Control) delays. Neither brother endured a TSA screening.
Resources on the Wright Brothers’ first flight:
(I almost always forget the big dates until the end of the day. This is mostly an encore post.)
8 Comments | Heroes, History, History images, Technology | Tagged: Airplanes, flight, geography, History, Science, Technology, Wright Brothers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Take a look at this sunset shot:
Sunset on BLM land near the Little Snake River, in northwest Colorado. Photo by Shannon Diszmang, via Royal Gorge National Recreation Area.
Note from America’s Great Outdoors blog:
Earlier this year, the Royal Gorge Recreation Area staff had a photo contest on their Facebook page and here is one of the great photos that was submitted. Here’s what photographer, Shannon Diszmang, had to say about it.
“This is BLM land in Northwest Colorado (Little Snake River district). I fell in love with this place. The red haze in this photo is the smoke coming from the wildfires on the west coast at the time. This is one of the lowest light pollution spots in our state which makes star gazing the absolute best.”
So, if you’re nearby, and you want a good place to look at the Geminid meteor shower tonight, odds are high there will be little light pollution here. If there aren’t many clouds, you’re in luck.
More:
P.S.: The stunningly beautiful photo above is NOT the winner of the photo contest(!). BLM wrote in a November press release:
CAÑON CITY, Colo. – Today the BLM Royal Gorge Field Office announced the winners of its BLM-sponsored photo contest. The two winners were decided by the public via the RGFO’s Facebook page: one winner is based on the most “likes” and the other is based on the most “shares.” Only those “likes” and “shares” that originated from the Royal Gorge Facebook page were tallied towards a winner.
Chris Nelson’s photo was the most “liked” and is a scenic shot taken from Chaffee County Road 175 between Cañon City and Salida. Nelson’s photo received 64 “likes.”
The most “shared” photo was submitted by David Madone and portrayed several deer in an alfalfa field near Cañon City. Madone’s photo received 20 shares.
Both photos will be featured on the RGFO’s Facebook page throughout November and may be featured in future BLM Colorado publications and social media sites.
The photo contest began Oct. 2 and ended Nov. 4 with more than 60 photos submitted. All the photos that were entered into the contest may be viewed via the “Photo Contest” album on the RGFO’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/BLMRoyalGorge
Yeah, were I you, I’d go see what the winners looked like.
4 Comments | Astronomy, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Geography - Physical, Outdoor Recreation, photography, Public Lands, Travel | Tagged: Astronomy, BLM, Bureau of Land Management, Colorado, geography, Outdoor Recreation, photography, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Here’s a good demonstration of why you don’t need PhotoShop, but a decent camera and a steady hand instead.
Utah’s Mt. Timpanogos in snow, by Craig Clyde, 2012 (rights probably reserved). Click for larger version.
Craig Clyde took this photo of Utah Valley‘s Mt. Timpanogos, probably from Saratoga Springs, on the west side of Utah Lake, after one of the first snows of 2012. (This area had a few farm fields when I grew up there.) It’s a great photo for several reasons.
It’s a formerly unusual view, there being so few people on the west side of the lake until recent development. It pictures all of Timpanogos, with American Fork Canyon on the left, Mahogany Mountain, Big Baldy, and Provo Canyon on the right. It’s an afternoon shot, you can tell from the angle of the sun (the mountain runs on a north-south axis), and the darkness on the lower mountains may be caused by the Sun’s setting behind the mountain range on the west side of the lake. Timpanogos in white, in the afternoon sunshine, is one of the greatest images of a mountain you’ll ever see.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Craig Clyde. Mr. Clyde and I attended high school together — haven’t seen him in more than 30 years; not sure, but I don’t think he’s the same Craig Clyde in the movie business.
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1 Comment | Geography - Physical, geology, Nature, photography, Travel, Utah | Tagged: American Fork Canyon, Craig Clyde, geography, geology, Mount Timpanogos, Mt. Timpanogos, Nature, photography, Provo Canyon, Travel, Utah Valley | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Long-time Scout friend Hal Rosen said he caught some good photos here, too — but none at this precise moment:
Temple of the Sun, Capitol Reef NP, photo by Mike Saemisch, October 29, 2012
First you must get to Capitol Reef National Park, in Utah — one of Utah’s unfairly large number of five National Parks. Then you take your “high-clearance vehicle” (not necessarily 4-wheel drive) out on the dirt roads in Cathedral Valley, and you hope for a crystal blue sky like this one. Then you happen to get there just as the sun is right at the peak of the formation . . .
You had to be there. Mike Saemisch was there just over a week ago, on October 29, 2012, and fortunately caught this photograph with the Sun as part of a sparkling spire on a sandstone formation known as the Temple of the Sun.
Digital photography changes the way one tours these places. Fortunately. Take the kids, and make sure they find it on a map so they can use your trip as fodder for their 9th grade geography class.
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Leave a Comment » | Geography - Physical, geology, National Parks, Natural history, Outdoor Recreation, photography, Travel, Utah | Tagged: Capitol Reef National Park, geography, geology, Kodachrome Basin State Park, Outdoor Recreation, photography, Travel, Utah | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You got the Tweet?
Miter Basin, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, California; photo by Kristin Glover, NPS (public domain)
Photo from NPS employee Kristin Glover, at Miter Basin.
We should go see for ourselves, no?
If you go today, vote before you go. This is one of the areas to be opened to energy exploration — oil and gas drilling or other mining — under Mitt Romney’s “energy plan” and the GOP National Platform.
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Leave a Comment » | Geography - Physical, geology, National Parks, Natural history, Nature, photography, Travel | Tagged: environment, geography, National Parks, Natural history, Nature, Outdoor Recreation, photography, Sequoia & Kings Canyon NPs, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Note today in Al Gore’s Journal:
Flooding Costs October 1, 2012 : 10:32 AM
Time Magazine cover for April 28, 2008 – How to Win the War On Global Warming
A new report from Swiss Re finds that the financial impact of flooding has doubled in the past decade – climate is a major driver:
“Flood losses are increasing at an alarming rate while the insurability of floods provides unique challenges for the industry, according Swiss Re’s latest report, “Flood – an underestimated risk: Inspect, inform, insure”.” …
“No other natural catastrophe impacts as many people as flooding with an estimated 500 million people affected every year. Insured flood losses are also increasing significantly; 1970’s annual claims were between USD 1–2 billion, whereas insured flood losses amounted to USD 15 billion in 2011. Recent flood events in Thailand, Australia and the Philippines have shown that floods are now rivalling earthquakes and hurricanes in terms of economic losses.” …
“Population growth, demographic change, a higher concentration of assets in exposed areas, greater vulnerability of insured objects and climate change are all contributing to the increasing costs of flood damage. The rising costs of floods are creating challenges for the insurance industry and the economic viability of flood insurance is currently an issue under scrutiny.”
More:
20 Comments | Business, Climate change, climate_change, Disasters, Geography - Physical, Global warming, History, Politics | Tagged: Al Gore, Business, Climate change, Disasters, geography, Global warming, History, Politics, Science, Swiss Re | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Press release from the Texas Alliance for Geographic Education (TAGE):
This year’s Geography Awareness Week theme is Declare Your Interdependence! Geographers around the nation will celebrate our interconnectedness November 11-17, 2012!
To celebrate, TAGE is sponsoring the 25th Annual Poster Contest
How are you connected to the rest of the globe on a daily basis? What images demonstrate interdependence for you? This year’s posters should illustrate different forms and examples of interdependence. Focus on the physical and cultural processes that keep you connected around the globe, and how this shapes your daily life.More information on the Poster Contest, including rules, registration, and resources at http://www.geo.txstate.edu/tage/geography-awareness-week.html
Poster Contest Registration: Deadline October 19; Posters due to the TAGE office by October 25Information on National Geographic’s Geography Awareness Week, http://www.geographyawarenessweek.org
Please contact us if you have any questions, and feel free to share with us new resources or ideas that you may have. We will continue to add resources and links as we find them to help you demonstrate interdependence to your classroom.
Let’s make this the best poster contest yet!
Maggie Hutchins
—
Texas Alliance for Geographic Education
Department of Geography
Texas State University
601 University Drive
San Marcos, TX 78666
http://www.geo.txstate.edu/tage/
phone: (512) 245-3827
fax: (512) 245-1653
Related Articles and Resources:
Leave a Comment » | Education, Education quality, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political | Tagged: Education, geography, Geography Awareness Week, National Geographic Society, TAGE, Texas Alliance for Geographic Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 