School may may be out but Geography never stops!

I hope you are all enjoying your October break. I've just been looking at the weather forecast for the week and although it is set to be more unsettled from Wednesday onwards, there is no sign yet of the cold weather which would bring some autumn colour to trees which now just look a dingy green! I cannot remember a year when we've had to wait so long for the landscape to look properly autumnal.

School may be on holiday but Geography never stops! You just need to open the newspaper on any day of the week to be reminded of that. In the 'Courier' today three articles have caught my eye.....

"Work to start on largest wind farm"

Construction is starting today at Whitelee Forest south of East Kilbride on what will become Europe's largest wind farm. The 140 turbines will eventually deliver enough electricity to power 200,000 homes or 2% of Scotland's electricity requirements in a year.

If you want to see where Whitelee Forest is, go to http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/getamap and put NS 562441 into the search box. This will 'take' you to the site of the windfarm and you can zoom in and out to see its location more precisely. Click here to read BBC's report and to link to lots of other information about wind energy. Click on the image above to link to a video simulation of the completed wind farm.

"Pakistan marks first anniversary of quake"

A year ago today the remote Kashmir region in northern Pakistan was devasted by a
7.6 magnitude earthquake. Almost 80,000 people died in its aftermath. One year on, the survivors are still struggling to rebuild their lives.

If you are in Form 2, you will be looking at this earthquake in more detail next term. If you click the image above, you will link to a lot of very good information on earthquakes in general and the Kashmir earthquake in particular.

"Mount Tavurvur erupts"

Huge clouds of ash billow from Mt Tavurvur after it erupted yesterday

A volcanic eruption on the Papua New Guinea island of New Britain yesterday caused residents to flee their homes and sent ash plumes 18 kilometres into the air.
Mount Tavurvur on the outskirts of the former provincial capital Rabaul erupted around 8.45 am local time with a blast which shattered windows up to 12 kilometres from the caldera.

In 1994, a large eruption on Mt Tavurvur and the nearby Vulcan peak destroyed much of Rabaul, covering the airport and much of the town with ash, and forcing the construction of a new capital, Kokopo, 20 kilometres away.