Tuesday, September 24. 2019

Today's schedule is CDAB

C & D Blocks Environmental and Social Sciences - In C (with Benton in 145) we'll look at how water is managed in the Colorado River. User priority on the Colorado River is determined by the first "useful purposing" of the water. For example, the irrigated agriculture in California has priority over some municipal water supplies for Phoenix, Ariz. You'll look at hydrograph analysis and calculations around volume loss in reservoirs. Before the advent of Bureau of Reclamation dams - Hoover and Glen Canyon - the Colorado River flowed freely to the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez). In 1920, a stream gage near Yuma, Arizona recorded ~129,000 cubic feet per second (~3,600 cubic meters per second). After Hoover Dam was constructed, flow near Yuma fell below ~ 500 cms. Maximum flow declined further after Glen Canyon Dam came on line, to below ~ 100 cms. The units of this historical hydrograph are cubic meters per second on the y-axis and years on the x-axis. These data show that annual floods on the Colorado River are a pale shadow of the pre-dam period.

https://azgs.arizona.edu/photo/taming-colorado-river-20th-century

Colorado River Supply and Use

In D with Young...what kind of agriculture is practiced in the Colorado Basin? There are Six Types of Commercial Agriculture in MDC's (like Canada and the US): Mixed crop and livestock farming; Dairy farming; Grain farming; Livestock ranching; Mediterranean agriculture; and Commercial gardening and fruit farming. So in the Colorado Basin...

Agriculture provides extraordinary benefits for humans and consumes the vast majority of the Colorado River’s water. Diversions from the River for agriculture total about 78% of the River’s entire flow, almost 4 trillion gallons. Water is pumped in tunnels through the Continental Divide in Colorado to the vast irrigated plains of northern Colorado where it grows alfalfa and corn, much of which is used to feed cattle. Conversely, many times more water is pumped to the desert landscapes of southern California where it is used to grow vegetable crops that are shipped to grocery stores and restaurants across the United States.

About 90 percent of the pastureland and harvested cropland in the Colorado River basin is irrigated (NOTE Irrigated land ‐ includes all land watered by any artificial or controlled means, such as sprinklers, flooding, furrows or ditches, sub‐irrigation, and spreader dikes. This includes supplemental, partial, and pre‐planting irrigation).

More than half of the land and water use in the Colorado River basin is dedicated to feeding cattle and horses. Irrigated pasture and forage crops, used primarily to feed beef and dairy cattle and horses, cover about two million acres (60 percent) of the irrigated land in the Colorado River basin. Irrigated pasture and forage in the basin consume more than five million acre-feet of water each year. Alfalfa, vegetables, wheat, and cotton. Nevertheless, Arizona, California, and Mexico’s 750,000 acres of forage crops and pasture in the basin consume roughly three million acre-feet of water each year.
planted extensively from Wyoming to the delta in Mexico, alone covers more than a quarter of the total irrigated acreage in the basin. Arizona, California, and Mexico have more crop diversity than the other states in the basin, with hundreds of thousands of acres in

So what is an acre foot of water? How much water is that really? One acre foot = 325,851 gallons or 1233480.2 liters (one million two hundred thirty-three thousand four hundred and eighty liters) of water

A Block Physical Geography - Today we'll begin the class by working on the Juan de Fuca Plate and Geothermal energy questions that we ended the day off with yesterday. I'll show you some information on geothermal energy plants and you'll get some time to work on the assignment. While you're working, we'll watch the National Geographic Amazing Planet DVD that we didn't finish. The video will help with the Juan de Fuca plate question because there are all three margins (convergent, divergent, and transform) around the plate. For help with the geothermal energy check out:

USGS Other Energy Sources (Geothermal)
Canadian Geothermal Energy Association
US Energy Information Agency Energy Kids Geothermal



B Block Human Geography - Today we'll look at the Key Issue "Why Does Development Vary among Countries"? To do this we'll look at the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI is a composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development:

• a long and healthy life, 
• knowledge and 
• a decent standard of living

Earth’s nearly 200 countries can be classified according to their level of development, which is the process of improving the material conditions of people through diffusion of knowledge and technology. The development process is continuous, involving never-ending actions to constantly improve the health and prosperity of the people. Every place lies at some point along a continuum of development. You'll have two really big thinking questions to work on for me connected to this topic:

1. If you were to create an index of development, what indicators would you use, and why (look at the UN HDI Indicators for Canada in the week 7 booklet)? How would you weigh each indicator? Could your index be used around the world, or would it be mostly relevant to our society?
2. The HDI is used to measure development at a whole-country level. Is it adequate to measure development within a country? Why or why not? (Another way of thinking about this: Are there minority groups that may be “glossed over” by the HDI?