Monday, January 6. 2020

Welcome back family and Happy New Year!

Today's schedule is A-AG-BCD

A Block Physical Geography - Today we are going to take a look at climatology and climate types on the planet. We will make sense of the Koppen climate classification system and today you'll need to explain in your own words the following climates: Af, Am, Aw, Cfb, Cfa, Dfb, Dwb, Dfc, Dwc, ET (don't say it!), Bw, and Bs (Many thanks to Michael Ritter for his on line Physical Environment textbook!).  You'll also need to complete question  9 in your Geosystems text. For help with Köppen - Geiger see:

Blue Planet Biomes - World Climates
Physicalgeography.net - Climate classification
About.com - Koppen chart 
For help on how to draw climate graphs see:
BBC Climate Graphs
Interpreting Climate Graphs

B Block Human Geography - Today we'll look at the key question "Why Do Farmers Face Economic Difficulties"? Commercial and subsistence farmers face comparable challenges. Both commercial and subsistence farmers have difficulty generating enough income to continue farming.

Rice farmers of the Philippines from Dan Chung on Vimeo.



The underlying reasons, though, are different. Commercial farmers can produce a surplus of food (as we saw last week), whereas many subsistence farmers are barely able to produce enough food to survive. Because the purpose of commercial farming is to sell produce off the farm, the distance from the farm to the market influences the farmer’s choice of crop to plant. A commercial farmer initially considers which crops to cultivate and which animals to raise based on market location and the von Thünen model tries to help explain this.

Answer the following questions about von Thünen’s model:

Who was von Thünen?
According to this model, what two factors does a farmer consider when deciding what to plant?
How does cost determine what farmers grow?
How does transportation cost influence profitability of growing wheat?
How could von Thünen's model be applied at a global scale?

C/D Blocks Environmental and Social Sciences - Today is another check in day for your Inquiry project. Benton and I will need you to show us the research you've conducted connected to the question that you've narrowed your topic into. We need you to develop a plan (road map) for your inquiry. What do you need to do? How do you plan to go about doing it? When do you plan on getting it done.  Don't forget this is an active research project and we expect you'll need to go out into the community to interview people so who do you need to talk to and when will you talk with them? How can Benton and I facilitate this process? You have 13 classes remaining so where are you at?