Shanghai os growing at an incredibly rapid rate. As more and more people begin to inhabit the city, the neighboring towns have morphed into one large city. However, the city's amazing population increase has taken a toll on its ecosystem. With the rapid growth, Shanghai's temperature has increased dramatically. Similarly, the wild and plant life has declined in the region as well.
Long before Columbus reached the Americas, Cahokia was the biggest, most cosmopolitan city north of Mexico. Yet by 1350 it had been deserted by its native inhabitants the Mississippians – and no one is sure why
This article is the eighth in the "Lost Cities" series (Babylon, Troy, Pompeii, Angkor, Fordlandia, etc.). The earthen mounds of Cahokia on the flat flood plains must have been the most awe-inspiring demonstration of political power and economic wealth in its day. Like so many other civilizations before them (and many more in the future?), Cahokia probably declined from too many environmental modifications that led to unforeseen consequences.
Why cities are the best cure for our planet's growing pains...
Debate the merits of this quote from Edward Glaeser: "There's no such thing as a poor urbanized country; there's no such thing as a rich rural country." Is this true? Are there exceptions? What explains these geographic patterns? Is there a causal link between urbanization and economic development?
Rapid growth in several cities along the Pearl River Delta has made a Chinese megacity larger and more populous than any other urban area in the world.
Already this image is showing a clear impact that the massive increase in population is having on the landscape. The delata has narrowed and so has the major rivers. As population grows in mega cities like this so doesnt the increase for resources such as water, also when it increases this quickly sanitation practices decrease. One can only imagine the inpact on water quality this is also having.
It is astounding the amount of growth this one city has had in one decade and reminds me of some of the rapid development within the Middle East since the 70s which transformed cities like Dubai. Ecologically like most of what China does it is a disaster but fascinating from a development one. Unfortunately the article doesn't offer a population so that it could be compared to Tokyo's since a size comparison was done in terms of land use. Hopefully China will find a sustainable method of growth because if city continue to grow like this it will be surprising if they could maintain stability. I personally thing this rapid growth is dangerous and like India they likely won't be able to keep up. Additionally since China's economy is very reliant on this type of growth it is concerning to think of what may happen to many of these cities when the growth they rely on stops.
The sunny state of California does in fact get enough rain fall each year but because storm sewers were built after continuous flooding, all of this rainfall is pushed into the Pacific Ocean rather than where it it needed now.
A solution to the insane drought taking California by storm is to use simple rain barrels to collect water at a typical home and a graded lawn to capture and retain water, allowing it to seep into the ground rather than run off into the streets and eventually into the ocean.
The article relates to irrigation and the conservation efforts discussed in Unit 5. Irrigation has a lot to do with the drought in California because massive amounts of water are being used for agriculture in California, which consists of water-needy fruits and vegetables. There are efforts to try to conserve water by installing rainwater collectors to reuse water instead of just draining usable rainwater to the ocean and rivers. There have also been installations of grey water pipes to reuse for irrigation. Grey water is any water that is flushed down the drain that isn't sewage, such as water from showers or water from washing machines. This way water wouldn't have to be wasted and can be reused.
"In the heart of Thailand’s most populous city, an oasis stands out from the urban landscape like a great “green lung.” That’s the nickname given to Bang Kachao—a lush protected area that has escaped the dense development seen elsewhere in Bangkok. The city is built on the alluvial plain of the Chao Phraya River. Toward the southern end, near the Gulf of Thailand, is an old meander that never quite formed an oxbow lake. That meander traces the boundary of Bang Kachao, which TIME magazine once called the 'best urban oasis' in Asia. According to a travel story in The New York Times, Bang Kachao is gaining popularity among tourists lured by bike tours, a floating farmers’ market, and the relaxed atmosphere."
This scoop shows an example of built environmental space. The highly urban and crowded Thailand has little green space. So why is this massive green park looking landmass there? Its a strictly environmental section of land to help water flow into the ocean. The people call it the "green lung" because its plants give off oxygen and provide a contrast from its urban sprawl. This article shows the importance that should be placed on having more strictly environmental places in big cities.
It's interesting to see the mixture of natural and manmade landscapes in this image. Humans have an enormous influence on the world around us- we have moved entire rivers for our own purposes, reshaped entire regions. In China, we have literally made it rain. Therefore, it's nice to see remnants of the rich environments that used to cover the urban sprawls of many of the world's largest cities, like Central Park in New York. Bang Kachao in Bangkok is another example of this, a reminder of the richness of the region before it was overwhelmed by the urban development that has characterized Bangkok over the previous century. The oasis serves as a valuable tourist attraction, as Westerners come to enjoy the bike trails and small farming community within Thailand's green lung. Leave it to hipsters to travel halfway across the globe just to enjoy nature within the confines of one of the world's largest cities.
This showcases how important physical geography is. This "green lung" breaks up the high urbanized Bangkok. This helps the environment thrive and helps to cut down of emissions that affect climate change which is a problem in some areas.
Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo, which provides one third of the countries GPD, is now running low or water due to one of the worst droughts in 8 years. There are more than 21 million people in this city and 13 million of them are facing water outages. If it doesn't rain soon, the city could face a collapse. The city has blamed the drought of lack of water in the vapor clouds that the amazon usually provides to the city. They also blame it on deforestation and global warming. President Dilma Rousseff has questioned the cities misusage of their water supply, claiming that the city mismanaged their water supply.
This shows just how important water is the human race. It also shows how humans have no sense of urgency in conserving water until it's too late. The saying "you never know a good thing until it's gone" applies in this case. The Brazilian government did not take any sufficient measures to conserve water until it realized how depleted the reservoir is. This event demonstrates the environmental impact of water depletion on humans, and how humans have such a huge impact on the geographical landscape on Earth. As seen in the picture above, many greens turned yellow as a result of the lowering water levels. The river beds are soon going to be overgrown by shrubbery as water no longer exists there. These are all results of a combination of natural (lack of rain) and human causes of resource depletion.
"Growing Power is a national nonprofit organization and land trust supporting people from diverse backgrounds, and the environments in which they live, by helping to provide equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities. See other videos on this organization here."
With the strong waves of urbanization that the United States has seen in the last 100 years it's interesting to note this desire to return to a rural connection while still maintaining the connection to the city. I can see this causing problems with zoning commissions in the future if too many people start trying to become urban famers.
There has been a revitalization in urban gardening as many city dwellers feel disconnected from their food systems; urban gardening is a way for people to actively control what they are ingesting into their systems many fear some of the modern agricultural methods. Based in Milwaukee, WI, Growing Power has created an interesting combination of vegetable gardening and aquaponics for the urban environment.
"It took the folks at Google to upgrade these choppy visual sequences from crude flip-book quality to true video footage. With the help of massive amounts of computer muscle, they have scrubbed away cloud cover, filled in missing pixels, digitally stitched puzzle-piece pictures together, until the growing, thriving, sometimes dying planet is revealed in all its dynamic churn. The images are striking not just because of their vast sweep of geography and time but also because of their staggering detail."
"The edge of the 4,000 square foot residence on Overlook Court was dangling about 75 feet above the rocky shoreline of Lake Whitney after part it it had already broken off."
"A block-long sinkhole opened up in a residential neighborhood in rain-soaked Baltimore on Wednesday, devouring cars and forcing the evacuation of several houses."
Why have I never heard of this? This is too interesting to have somehow just passed most of us by. The entire time I was reading this, I was hoping that they would offer an image of what the site looks like today, and luckily they did. As a history lover there has always been something so amazing about being able to compare historical sites in their prime vs what they are like now. I tend to look up locations of historic places after, say watching a tv show based there, for this same reason. To think this all was hidden under an old drive in movie theater, it's a little crazy, but then again that is what makes this sort of thing so interesting.
(North America) The common view of Native Americans involve nomads and small villages in the north and technologically advanced cities in Mexico. However, the largest Native American settlement was in modern day Illinois. At the time, Cahokia had a greater population than Paris or London and had huge intricate mounds, plazas, agricultural centers, and, most importantly, places of ritual worship. It's amazing how archaeologists can piece together so much of day to day life. Rooms with bones and pottery are discovered to be centuries old feasting rooms, a place with distinct pottery and mats is deemed to be a ritual burning ground. The fact that the workers can tell if objects were imported from other villages or how fast the city was built allows the ancient Americans to communicate with us over 600 hundred years later, especially on their religious beliefs of the Upper and Under Worlds. Not only are the archaeologists able to see daily life, they can see the changing history of the city through different housing patterns further below the soil.
It is a shame that probably not enough residents of the United States are aware that this wondrous city ever existed. People recognize the name "Manchu Picchu" but not Cahokia. Why is that the case in our American culture? The article reports that this city has been under serious excavation since the 1970s. Cahokia is a First Nations example of highly advanced civilization - something that even overtook medieval European civilization when the city was in its prime (1200 BCE). The hegemonic narrative of white, patriarchal supremacy - a view that is characterized as 'Eurocentric' - still dominates our culture and prevents stories like these from impacting and shaping how Americans view history. This is important because Cahokia is further evidence that no European ever introduced civilization to the First Nations. More accurately stated, Europeans introduced a different kind of civilization to the Indigenous Peoples implying a sense of equality and humanness. The resulting genocide of the First Nations by white Americans is even harder to justify and ignore because "savages" do not build magnificent cities based on complex systems of religion, spirituality, politics, and artistic expression.
"For generations we vultures, armed with our senses, have fought in silence. We’ve waged a battle against garbage, but now we’re losing that battle. We want to help humans, so we’ve launched a movement to help you detect piles of garbage so that you can take action to eliminate them. Join us in this fight. Vultures Warn, you take action!"
An ingenious idea to clean up the environment. This group is based out of Lima, Peru uses the vultures in the city to find the piles of garbage and refuse left by people and set up events to clean up the area. It is an amazing way to utilize nature to help us solve the problems we caused ourselves. They utilize the vultures by putting GPS devices and GoPro cameras on them and wait until they locate large trash piles. The video itself is so well-made and interesting that it almost forces you to learn more by checking out their website and their social media pages. The phrase they use is "Gallinazo Avisa, Tu Actuas" translates to vultures warn, you act.
Rio de Janeiro's bid for the Summer Games featured an official commitment to cleaner waters. But with less than six months to go, trash and contamination continue to lurk.
ESPN is covering this topic only because of the upcoming Olympics, but underneath the veneer of a sports article are some weighty geographic issues that loom large for Brazil.
Geographers make a distinction between site and situation as they consider the underlying foundation of a place. Few cities represent such a wide chasm between these two aspects as does New Orleans. The situation, or the answer to why does a place exist, was imperative. The Mississippi River was a major artery for the North American continent. As first the Europeans and then the Americans assumed control of the area, a port was essential at the mouth of this river. But the site, the response to where a city is placed, continues to confound. Few environments were or are more inhospitable to human habitation. Poor soil, disease, floods, and hurricanes are constant threats that have plagued the city for over three centuries. But the why trumped the where and hence the paradox of New Orleans persists.
Picture this: Tourists visiting one of your city's most prominent attractions are unable to see it because of smog, haze and a bevy of other airborne pollutants. What's the solution?
Major cities in the world should take a deeper look into controlling pollution problems in their cities. At some point, these places will no longer attract people to live in these areas, thus lowering the impact that these industries may have. But as long as people are still living here by the millions and there is tourism, and buisness is booming, nothing will be done about the issue.
Pollution is a huge issue facing both Hong Kong, and the rest of China in general. So far the government has done little to actually combat the problem. The Chinese governments response has been to pretend that the problem does not really exist. A fake skyline can just erase the problem. In reality dealing with the pollution issue would actually help the Chinese economy. When people seek to go on a vacation, they are seeking a destination that is clean and safe. Who wants to visit a place were, you have to ware a mask to prevent the breathing in of armful chemicals. A cleaner less polluted china would lead to an expanded tourism industry.
A punishing drought is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been the state’s engine has run against the limits of nature.
In the 19th century, London was the capital of the largest empire the world had ever known — and it was infamously filthy. It had choking, sooty fogs; the Thames River was thick with human sewage; and the streets were covered with mud. But according to Lee Jackson, author of Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth, mud was actually a euphemism. 'It was essentially composed of horse dung,' he tells Fresh Air's Sam Briger. 'There were tens of thousands of working horses in London [with] inevitable consequences for the streets. And the Victorians never really found an effective way of removing that, unfortunately.'"
London has come a far way from the industrial town it was in the 19th century, and is now cleaner than ever. But pollution led to many issues in London at the time. This is also evident in the developing world today, such as in China, Africa, and South America.
This article is about London, UK during the time of Industrial Revolution. The city of London expanded so rapidly, that there wasn't enough time for urban planning. Factories and houses were going up everywhere, and thousands of people migrated to London for jobs. This led to an influx of filth. The air was polluted and there wasn't adequate irrigation systems or waste systems. Everything dirty could be found on the streets like horse dung, and the water would get polluted and unsanitary.
I liked this article, because it really created an image in my head how terrible and filthy the Industrial Revolution was at the start.
"Pittsburgh, called 'hell with the lid taken off' in the 19th century because of its industrial filth, is now an academic leader in the green movement."
A new analysis of sea levels and flood risk around the world offers more evidence that the brunt of climate change will not be borne equally.
More than a quarter of Vietnam’s residents live in areas likely to be subject to regular floods by the end of the century. Globally, eight of the 10 large countries most at risk are in Asia. These figures are the result of a new analysis of sea levels and flood risk around the world, conducted by Climate Central and based on more detailed sea-level data than has previously been available. The analysis offers more evidence that the countries emitting the most carbon aren’t necessarily the ones that will bear the brunt of climate change.
In this article the author discusses the risk of flooding in many different locations of the world. He claims about 2.6 percent of the world's populations. That's a big percentage considering all the people of the planet.
Flooding is a major risk when it comes to the world we live in especially for Southeast Asia, some areas will be below sea level which shows how the the climate changes are affecting the flood risks caused by global carbon emission. A study from this article shows that eight our of ten of the largest countries will be at the risk of being flooded and below sea level. The major question is how can this carbon emissions be lower? If the carbon is lower then the sea level will rise and less countries will be at risk, this is mainly focusing on Southeast Asia. Yes, we can not change the climate changes but by keeping the land clean and taking care of the environment the flood risk and sea level change could get out of risk level.
If the weather continues at the rate it is at then about 2.6 percent of the global population which is approximately 177 million people will be living in a place at risk of regular flooding. Flooding can cause a lot of damage to homes, crops and people physically because flooding is not just a little amount of water.
The largest country at risk with people in danger from the map is China, I liked the way this map worked because you can see from the boxes how many people are going to be affected by the flooding. Instead of just having numbers, giving a better visual for people with the boxes and their sizes.
It's like watching the land on Earth change right in front of our eyes. According to this map, if global carbon emissions stay as they currently are and sea levels can be affected about as much as expected, 2.6 million people of the global population will live in a high risk flood zone; this wipes out 177 million people!
Scientists have issued a new warning to the world’s coastal megacities that the threat from subsiding land is a more immediate problem than rising sea levels caused by global warming.
A new paper from the Deltares Research Institute in the Netherlands published in April identified regions of the globe where the ground level is falling 10 times faster than water levels are rising - with human activity often to blame.
In Jakarta, Indonesia’s largest city, the population has grown from around half a million in the 1930s to just under 10 million today, with heavily populated areas dropping by as much as six and a half feet as groundwater is pumped up from the Earth to drink.
The same practice led to Tokyo’s ground level falling by two meters before new restrictions were introduced, and in Venice, this sort of extraction has only compounded the effects of natural subsidence caused by long-term geological processes.
Casey Lysdale's curator insight, November 28, 2016 12:43 PM
Could subsistence in megacities becoming a bigger threat than sea level rise? The population rise caused an increase in groundwater extraction practices which made the ground sink over six feet in Indonesia's largest city. The solution is to stop pumping groundwater and seek alternative forms of obtaining drinking water. Effects of land subsistence combined with rising sea levels can leave many coastal cities into project Atlantis.
"California's drought just hit a new milestone: As of this week, 32.98 percent of the state is experiencing "exceptional" drought, making it the worst drought in the 14 years that the Department of Agriculture's Drought Monitor has tracked data."
"When the Minute 319 'pulse flow' began in March 2014, it was not clear whether the effort would be enough to reconnect the Colorado River with the Sea of Cortez. Some hydrologists thought there might be just enough water; others were less optimistic. It turns out the optimists were right, though just barely. For the first time in sixteen years, the Colorado River was reunited with the Sea of Cortez on May 15, 2014."
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