ANTARCTICA: an Extreme Environment

An area focus for the PILOT GCSE GEOGRAPHY specification - for teaching from September 2006/7 at KES

The highest, driest, coldest, windiest, most remote continent on the Earth, and one of the last few relatively unspoilt places, but even here the Environment is under threat. Antarctica has seen a recent surge of interest following the 'rediscovery' of the exploits of Sir Ernest Shackleton and others involved in the 'Golden Age' of Polar exploration. See the SHACKLETON page from the Miscellaneous links. This is even adding to the pressure on certain sites such as South Georgia where Shackleton is buried. A selected list of my recent readings on the subject. These all come highly recommended:

'Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard' - Sara Wheeler (Jonathan Cape, 2001)

'An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor' - Michael Smith (Headline, 2000)

'Skating to Antarctica' - Jenny Diski

ANTARCTICA LINKS

START HERE: the British Antarctic Survey. Go to the 'About Antarctica' section. Has pictures of krill and other aspects of living in Antarctica.

• An online exhibition: SECRETS OF THE ICE is here. It has some excellent images and resources. Some relate to the changes in sea level experienced as ice melts. There have also been lots of recent news stories about the breakup of the Larsen B ice shelf, and also ice bergs from other ice shelves in the Weddell Sea.

• Recent (April 2002) story about the arrival of rubbish on the Antarctic shore, and the impact on local marine life. BBC story HERE. (with links to other Antarctic stories)

• British Antarctic Survey (BAS SITE) are an important place to visit of course. They have a scientific presence in the continent, and have a good list of factsheets on various aspects of life in the freezer.

• http://www.secretsoftheice.org/explore/dress.html - good activities

In Cambridge ? Visit the Scott Polar Research Institute. They have a series of summer lectures on Polar themes, and an excellent gift shop.

• South Polar News: an excellent digest of Antarctic news attractively presented - well worth surfing over to.

• The Antarctic Sun: a similar idea

• Could also follow the link to these excellent ILLUSTRATIONS (plus satellite maps and other facts. Well worth a visit!)

• Thinking of questions you could ask people who work in Antarctica - such as 'what clothing do you wear ?', 'where do you go to the toilet ?' then go HERE and see if they've already been answered

There are few places that haven't been touched by tourism, and one of the last areas in the world to succumb is the South Pole. A recent article in the Guardian described the arrival of Tom Avery at the Pole: the 27 year old had just walked 700 miles across the continent to reach the South Pole to find that there was a gift shop there which was having a sale! The USA is now planning to build a road across the continent from McMurdo Sound. The road will inevitably bring tourism and pollution, and will hardly fit in with the exploits of Shackleton and his less illustrious contemporaries. The road is obviously not going to have a tarmac surface but will be snow and ice. There are arguments that the aircraft flying to the Pole have a larger effect already.

Antarctica is protected from exploitation by the Antarctic treaty.

LESSON PLANS

1. Research exercise (no need to click...it's underneath)

In pairs, each group gets a piece of A2 paper (a pale blue would be good...)

Give them a page of headings pre-printed which can be cut out. Need to produce a collage of information about Antarctica. Headings could include:

ANTARCTICA

 LIVING AND WORKING

WILDLIFE

 CLIMATE

THE FUTURE ?

Using the websites, put together some display materials. They could produce their own headings if you prefer. Suggest you limit them to 2 sides of A4 printout maximum: copy and paste any images into word rather than printing straight from the webpages. Credit any sites they've taken materials from. Any text should be typed by themselves so that they are sure that they understand it and it is relevant. Could do a themed display on just one of the headings.

Could also do an e-mail to send to a scientist working at the South Pole base with some questions.

Find the weather at the South Pole at the moment using Wunderground website, or the Antarctica links above. Compare it to the current weather in their home town.

2. TOURISM IN ANTARCTICA

This is one of the few areas that has remained relatively free from tourist development, but not any more. Cruise ships (for those who can afford it) now call on the frozen continent. Why not explore the impact of this. What about the American's plan to build a 'road' to the South Pole ?

The graphic below shows the steady growth of tourism to Antarctica.

Source: http://gridc.org.nz/images/tour.gif

3. Why not check out (on a similar theme) the CAPE FAREWELL pack produced by Fred Martin et al for the GA - more on this on the PILOT GCSE page.

4. LIVE WEB CAM:

http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/obop/spo/livecamera.html

There are some interesting images here: most of the summer shows as black as it's the Antarctic winter.

6. The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2004 by Lloyd Peck - I have these on video - useful website links...

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/A/antarctica/lectures.html - we have the CD ROM which is referred to: it's rather groovy, especially the Race to the Pole game. Book the computer suite and get some headphones and you'll find your students are occupied.

7. PICK UP A PENGUIN

Get a penguin outline. Give each students at least 2.. They need to be labelled up with an effect / impact of tourism or an impact of people on Antarctica, or a reason why Antarctica is like it is, or something about the climate, or... whatever focus you are aiming for. Take some large dark and pale blue display paper, and some white paper. Layer up the blue paper to create an icy landscape, complete with a few white bergy bits, and then stick the penguins on for eternity (or until the glue stick dries out...) and you have an eye-catching display, and a summary of the key issues facing Antarctica. Coming soon: pictures of the results when I did this myself recently...

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