Thursday, January 9. 2020

Today's schedule is DCBA

D & C Blocks Environmental and Social Sciences - Today we have the learning commons/library booked for you to continue work on your Inquiry however please remember that if you are going out of the building (for action research or interviews) you'll need to let us know where, when, and with whom. Don't forget that there are only 10 double blocks left (actually only 8 because on the 15th Courtenay-Alberni MP Gord Johns is coming to respond to the letters you wrote to him and on the 22nd we're off for a snow study on the road up to Mount Washington). Workworkwork...

B Block Human Geography - Today we'll finish the movie FOOD, INC.

After the video we should have a good conversation about the questions I've asked you to look at while watching the movie.

A Block Physical Geography - Today we'll look at the “Tragedy of the Commons”, popularized by Garret Hardin, in terms of resource use and management. We'll look at renewable and non-renewable resources along with the four ethical views on resource use (economic/exploitation; preservationist; balanced-multiple use; and ecological or sustainable). We'll talk about over-consumption and unsustainable resource use practices using the example of water consumption connected to both the Aral Sea and the Colorado River. From National Geographic:

Actually a freshwater lake, the Aral Sea once had a surface area of 26,000 square miles (67,300 square kilometers). It had long been ringed with prosperous towns and supported a lucrative muskrat pelt industry and thriving fishery, providing 40,000 jobs and supplying the Soviet Union with a sixth of its fish catch...The Aral Sea was fed by two of Central Asia's mightiest rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. But in the 1960s, Soviet engineers decided to make the vast steppes bloom. They built an enormous irrigation network, including 20,000 miles of canals, 45 dams, and more than 80 reservoirs, all to irrigate sprawling fields of cotton and wheat in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In the decades that followed, the Aral Sea was reduced to a handful of small lakes, with a combined volume that was one-tenth the original lake's size and that had much higher salinity, due to all the evaporation. As a result of the drying over the past decades, millions of fish died, coastlines receded miles from towns, and those few people who remained were plagued by dust storms that contained the toxic residue of industrial agriculture and weapons testing in the area.








The Colorado River —The Most Endangered River in America 2013 from Pete McBride on Vimeo.

For the Aral Sea please check out the following:
Aral Sea Foundation
National Geographic News Aral Sea
NASA World of Change Aral Sea
The Aral Sea Crisis at Columbia University

I need you to track your family's water consumption for the week and you can use the water footprint calculator at the H20 Conserve website. For more on water as a resource please check out:

Ministry of Environment: Water for British Columbia
United Nations: Water Topics
Encyclopedia of Earth: Water

And from TIME...After three years of unprecedented drought, the South African city of Cape Town had less than 90 days worth of water in its reservoirs two years ago, putting it on track to be the first major city in the world to run out of water. Read the article Cape Town Is 90 Days Away From Running Out of Water