Geographical articles from September 2007

Geographical archives from September 2007

The problem with popularity.(FROM THE EDITOR)
September 1, 2007... Back in 2002, my partner and I visited Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Now, I realise that this is going to sound sacrilegious, but we were a tad underwhelmed by it. Part of the problem was that ten years earlier, we had visited--and been blown away...

Where in the world?(questions on geographical areas)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Identify this country using the following clues: * It's the world's largest producer of legal opiates for the pharmaceutical industry * More than 90 per cent of its population lives in urban areas * Its industrial output is...

World heritage list gets longer.(WORLD WATCH)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Twenty-two new sites have been added to UNESCO's World Heritage list following the World Heritage committee's most recent meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand. The latest additions include the rainforests of Atsinanana in Madagascar, the...

The transport ministers of Germany and Denmark have agreed to build a 20-kilometre bridge over the Baltic Sea by 2018 in order to significantly reduce road and rail transportation times between the cities of Hamburg and Copenhagen.(BALTIC SEA)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... The transport ministers of Germany and Denmark have agreed to build a 20-kilometre bridge over the Baltic Sea by 2018 in order to significantly reduce road and rail transportation times between the cities of Hamburg and Copenhagen. Denmark will...

Archaeologists have unearthed what they believe to be the world's smallest fully intact mammoth carving in a cave in southwest Germany.(GERMANY)
September 1, 2007... Archaeologists have unearthed what they believe to be the world's smallest fully intact mammoth carving in a cave in southwest Germany. The tiny ivory mammoth is just 3.7 centimetres long and is thought to have been a charm designed to be worn...

Coral cordon between China and Japan.(WORLD WATCH)
September 1, 2007... Japan's Fisheries Agency has transplanted six coral colonies onto two tiny coral islets in the Pacific Ocean in a bid to define the maritime boundaries between itself and China more clearly. The two islets, which are barely ten centimetres...

Russia claims additional chunk of Arctic.(WORLD WATCH)
September 1, 2007... An international territorial dispute over the Arctic has erupted after Russian authorities claimed that a 1,190,000-square-kilometre area belonged to them. Following a six-week expedition to the eastern Arctic Ocean on board a nuclear...

Tunguska mystery solved?(WORLD WATCH)
September 1, 2007... A team of Italian researchers working in a remote part of Siberia think that they may have found a crater caused by one of the largest asteroid impacts in modern-day history, known as the Tunguska event. On the morning of 30 June 1908, a...

Ancient agriculture unearthed in Peru.(WORLD WATCH)
September 1, 2007... A group of scientists has discovered evidence that farmers in what is now Peru were cultivating crops as long ago as 8000 BC. Working in the Nanchoc Valley in northern Peru, anthropologist Tom Dillehay and his team, from Vanderbilt University...

Lightning in eastern China has struck and killed 43 people, many of them farmers, following five days of electrical storms during June.(CHINA)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Lightning in eastern China has struck and killed 43 people, many of them farmers, following five days of electrical storms during June. Storms also caused flooding across southern China which resulted in 150 deaths and an estimated ten billion...

Seven sites have been identified as the modern-day wonders of the world following an online poll.(WORLD)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Seven sites have been identified as the modern-day wonders of the world following an online poll. The Great Wall of China, Petra in Jordan, Machu Picchu in Peru, Chichen Itza in Mexico, Italy's Colosseum in Rome, the Taj Mahal in India and the...

Authorities in eastern Indonesia have placed 1,635-metre Mount Gamkunoro on the highest alert level after it began to emit smoke and ash at the beginning of July.(INDONESIA)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Authorities in eastern Indonesia have placed 1,635-metre Mount Gamkunoro on the highest alert level after it began to emit smoke and ash at the beginning of July, prompting the evacuation up to 9,000 people.

An avalanche on Jungfrau mountain in the Swiss Alps claimed the lives of six soldiers on a military exercise in July.(SWITZERLAND)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... An avalanche on Jungfrau mountain in the Swiss Alps claimed the lives of six soldiers on a military exercise in July. Fourteen soldiers from the Swiss Army were undertaking a mountaineering exercise, scaling the southern face of the 4,158-metre...

Top 10 car ownership.(Table)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... TOP 10 CAR OWNERSHIP 1 NEW ZEALAND 619 2 LUXEMBOURG 574 3 CANADA 564 4 ICELAND 557 5 ITALY 547 6 GERMANY 546 7 SWITZERLAND 521 8 MALTA 518 9 AUSTRIA 500 10 FRANCE...

China to build road to Everest.(WORLDWATCH)
September 1, 2007... By November this year, visitors to Mount Everest will be able to cruise effortlessly along a winding tarmac road all the way to Base Camp, 5,200 metres above sea level. According to Xinhua, China's state news agency, work on a new 150...

Evidence of ancient civilisation discovered in Sudan.(WORLDWATCH)
September 1, 2007... Excavations along the banks of the River Nile in northern Sudan have revealed that the ancient Kush civilisation, WhiCh thrived 4,000 years ago, was much larger and more powerful than previously thought. Archaeologists from the University...

Chilean lake disappearance baffles scientists.(WORLDWATCH)(Bernardo O'Higgins National Park)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... The disappearance of an eight-kilometre-long glacial take in the heart of a national park in Patagonia, Chile, has baffled scientists and park rangers. Rangers working at Bernardo O'Higgins National Park, Chile's largest protected area,...

No link between climate change and sun's activity.(CLIMATEWATCH)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... A new study of solar activity has removed the central pillar supporting arguments that human activity isn't responsible for global warming. Climate change sceptics have long argued that the increase in global temperatures is being driven...

Trial to reduce energy consumption.(CLIMATEWATCH)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Forty thousand homes across the UK have been selected to take part in a 20million [pounds sterling] trial aimed at cutting domestic energy use. Rises in the cost of electricity and gas have had little effect on domestic consumption, so the...

Gas emissions from livestock to be addressed.(CLIMATEWATCH)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Scientists from the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research in Aberystwyth have discovered that a carefully controlled diet can significantly reduce emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from cows and sheep. The...

Hurricanes help hindered coral.(CLIMATEWATCH)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Coral under threat from bleaching caused by warming sea temperatures has been found to benefit from an unlikely source--hurricanes. A study conducted by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Washington, USA, found...

World's largest ice sheet stable.(CLIMATEWATCH)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... New research has shown that the world's largest ice sheet isn't currently under threat from global warming and is, in fact, in a relatively stable state. According to Andrew Mackintosh of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, who led...

Tibetan plateau warming rapidly.(CLIMATEWATCH)(Tibet Meteorological Bureau)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... China's Qinghai -- Tibet region is heating up more rapidly than the rest of China, according to the Chinese state news agency, Xinhua. Measurements conducted by the Tibet Meteorological Bureau have shown that the Tibetan plateau is warming at a...

Chip fat to oil McDonald's delivery chain.(CLIMATEWATCH)(alternative fuels for delivery vehicles)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... In a bid to boost its green credentials and reduce its carbon footprint, McDonald's is to run its UK fleet of delivery vehicles largely on old chip fat. Starting with 45 lorries based at its UK headquarters in Hampshire, the fast food...

The shape of things to come: were the devastating floods of June and July the result of climate change? Having shifted the sandbags from his front door.(SPECIAL REPORT)
September 1, 2007... The flooding that hit the UK in June and July was, for some parts of the country, the worst in living memory. Towns and villages were completely cut off, thousands of homes flooded and the total damage bill has been estimated at around 5...

National income: the global wealth gap keeps on growing.(STATE OF THE WORLD)
September 1, 2007... Gross Domestic (or National) Product (GDP/GNP) is the most common way of measuring a country's wealth. It combines the value of goods (the things people make, grow or extract from the ground and then sell) and services (things people do for...

Suffolk Coast and heaths.(NATURAL BEAUTY)(Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty)
September 1, 2007... Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty Threatened by rising sea levels and a growing flood risk, the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB reportedly has one of the UK's driest climates. And although it's home to Britain's newest nuclear plant, it...

Putting geography on the map.(IN SOCIETY)(geography curriculum)
September 1, 2007... With the beginning of the new school year comes inevitable scrutiny over the school curriculum. Once again, the subjects that children are learning in schools, the way in which they are taught, and the standards that they are expected to...

Journeying to far frontiers.(IN SOCIETY)(Royal Geographical Society's Far Frontiers Expeditions)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... One of the things that binds the Society's members and Fellows together is their shared appreciation of the varied world in which we live. With this in mind, Chris Short managing director of Far Frontiers Expeditions and a Fellow of the Society...

Event of the month.(IN SOCIETY)(Sir Ranulph Fiennes)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... 25 September, 7pm Discovering people: Sir Ranulph Fiennes BT OBE (LONDON, LECTURE) As the 'world's greatest living explorer', Sir Ranulph Fiennes has led numerous expeditions over the past three decades, was the first to reach both the...

A selection of September's events.(IN SOCIETY)(Calendar)
September 1, 2007... For details, please contact the Events Office on 020 7591 3100 6 September, 7pm Round Ireland with a fridge (LECTURE, LONDON) TV comedian Tony Hawks returns with his hilarious adventures in Ireland, accompanied by his faithful fridge....

Gertrude Bell's theodelite: the British traveller, archaeologist and spy used this surveying tool to draw up the borders of modern-day Iraq.(FROM THE COLLECTION)
September 1, 2007... Born into a wealthy industrialist family in County Durham in 1868, Gertrude Lowthian Bell was educated at the University of Oxford at a time when women seldom attended university. She became the first woman to read history there, leaving in...

Grappling with change.(Tradional wrestler)(kusti)(Photograph)
September 1, 2007... Harnessing techniques that have been used to train warriors for thousands of years, kusti is a form of traditional Indian wrestling that dates back to the 16th century. It was once considered to be the pursuit of heroes, and at the peak of its...

Trampled temples: tourists visiting the World Heritage-listed ruins of Angkor in northwestern Cambodia bring much-needed foreign cash to one of Southeast Asia s poorest countries. But numbers are growing more rapidly than at any other World Heritage site, putting unprecedented pressure on these important monuments.(Temples of Angkor)(Cover story)
September 1, 2007... While hiding out from Vietnamese forces, Khmer Rouge soldiers used the extraordinary bas-reliefs at Angkor for target practice. The bullet holes are still visible, sitting alongside botched restoration jobs and headless statues of voluptuous...

Hollow world: the mountains of Gunung Mulu National Park in Sarawk in Malaysia Borneo are riddled with immense caverns, including some of the largest ever discovered. Earlier this year, a joint British--Malaysian team headed below ground to explore this vast subterranean labyrinth.(Borneo caves)
September 1, 2007... Towering 20 metres above our heads, the ceiling of the passage presented a wide arc, 35 metres across and thickly coated with delicate formations. Despite the sheer scale of it, a cool breeze beckoned us into the unknown. The flat floor made...

Little Mongolia: transplanted 2,000 kilometres from their native land three quarters of a millennium ago, the Mongolians of Xinmen village in China's Yunnan province have held on tightly to their ancient heritage. But as China's economic boom brings modernity to this remote rural settlement, their grip is beginning to loosen.(Mongolians in China)
September 1, 2007... As the minibus hurtles towards the village of Xinmen across the flat, arable lowlands some 130 kilometres south of Kunming in China's Yunnan province, I can see little out of the ordinary, just row after row of neat farming enclaves. The...

The hell-borbe traffic: William Owen and the African slave trade.(William Owen)
September 1, 2007... As the commemorations of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade draw to a close, Jordan Goodman tells the story of a forgotten hero of the fight to end the trafficking of human beings 1807 was a momentous...

Reinventing the wheel: in Liberia, civil war and economic collapse have seen the humble wheelbarrow become a vital player in the national economy. Popular Josh meets the men who keep monrovia moving.(Liberia's wheelobarrow workers)
September 1, 2007... All day, every day, they come streaming across the Montserrado bridge in both directions, carrying everything from freshly baked goods to soggy trash. Policemen direct the wheelbarrow traffic like they would cars. One wheelbarrow rolls by with...

High hopes: as Lebanon's tourism industry slowly begins to rebuild itself following the recent conflict with Israel, the opening of a new mountain walking trail that follows old paths and tracks that date back to pre-Roman times is bringing hope to remote communities. Nick Haslam was among the first to sample the trail, which offers glimpses of a way of life that has changed little for centuries.(Lebanon trail)
September 1, 2007... We were a mixed group of walkers of varying ages and backgrounds setting out from a scented cedar grove high in the Lebanese mountains. Below, the valleys rang with the song of nightingales, newly arrived from their spring migration from...

A woman's work ...(Geographical archive)(Royal Geographical Society's view of women)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... In addition to fulfilling traditional roles as wives and mothers, women throughout the world make fundamental contributions to the wellbeing and economy of their families, communities and countries. Here, a selection of images drawn from the...

Not-so-happy holidays.(The Final Call: In Search of the True Cost of our Holidays)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Final Call: In Search of the True Cost of our Holidays by Leo Hickman Eden Project Books, pb, pp400, 12.99 [pounds sterling] Skiing and golf are dangerous activities: you can break limbs playing the one, and bore people to death talking...

Top 10 writer's reads.
September 1, 2007... Robert Twigger is an award-winning British writer, adventurer and filmmaker. He is the author of five books, including Voyageur, which recounted his journey across western Canada in a birchbark canoe. His latest book, Lost Oasis, about his...

Exploring the Islands of England and Wales.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... This well-researched and handsomely produced book is essentially a guide to the 36 inhabited islands around the coast of England and Wales (the Channel Islands included). In a book that aims for completeness, some of the places under discussion...

Lipsmacking Backpacking: How to Cook on Your Travels.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Lipsmacking Backpacking: How to Cook on your Travels by Mark Pallis Wooden Books, pb, pp58, 4.99 [pounds sterling] Mark Pallis enjoyed an epiphany on Tiwi Beach in Kenya: halfway through constructing a peanut-butter sandwich, he watched...

Here Be Yaks.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Here be yaks by Manosi Lahiri Stellar, hb, pp286, 9 [pounds sterling] The point of a travelogue, for those attempting the genre, is to entertain. And the art of entertaining writing revolves around the primary engine of all literary...

The Guiana Travels of Robert Schomburgk, 1835-1844.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Guiana Travels of Robert Schomburgk, 1835-1844 edited by Peter Riviera Hakluyt Society, hb, pp266, 50 [pounds sterling] During the mid-19th century, Robert Schomburgk spent an entire decade travelling through Guiana on the north coast...

A Fatal Obsession: The Women of Cho Oyu--A Reporting Saga.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... A Fatal Obsession: The Women of Cho Oyu--A Reporting Saga by Stephen Harper Book Guild, hb, pp 192, 16.99 [pounds sterling] 'I felt myself boiling with impotent rage. "Don't turn back yet," I gasped.' So wrote Claude Hogan, a leading...

The Way of the World.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Way of the World by Nicolas Bouvier Eland, pb, pp326, 12.99 [pounds sterling] The Way of the World is the story of two young men who, during the mid-1950s, travelled from Geneva to the Kyber Pass. Wildly inexperienced in the rigours of...

China Revealed: A Portrait of the Rising Dragon.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... China Revealed: A Portrait of the Rising Dragon by Basil Pao Weidenfeld & Nicolson, hb, pp384, 35 [pounds sterling] China became real for nine-year-old Basil Pao in 1962, when the Great Leap Forward took one step back and Pads uncle took...

A New Green History of the World.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... A New Green History of the World by Clive Ponting Vintage Books, pb, pp452, 8.99 [pounds sterling] In this timely reissue of his 1991 work, Clive Ponting examines our over-use of the Earth's limited resources, and chilling reading it makes...

Saving Planet Earth.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Saving Planet Earth by Tony Juniper Collins, hb, pp256, 20 [pounds sterling] As with so many meditations on the Earth's uncertain future, this book has a rather sermonising tone. In the pulpit is Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the...

Mirror to Damascus.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Mirror to Damascus by Colin Thubron First published in 1967. Currently out of print Damascus is the world's oldest continuously inhabited city, and it's also, says Colin Thubron, the most oriental and least understood of the Levantine...

Sound amazing: thanks to the digital revolution, it's now easier than ever before to record high-quality audio on portable equipment. Tessa McGregor offers her tips on the best kit for capturing the sounds of the wild.(ESSENTIAL GEAR)
September 1, 2007... I was following a tiger trail through dense mangroves. Humidity, heat and biting insects vied with mud and thorns to make progress difficult. My shirt was ripped, my face scratched, but adrenaline and excitement carried me forward. My heart was...

How to grab the moment?(ESSENTIAL GEAR)(capturing disasters on video)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... It was while crossing the Ozerny pass between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan that l realised the importance of grabbing the moment. I was ploughing through soft snow towards the top, waxing lyrical into my microphone about the views opening up...

Ten of the best.(ESSENTIAL GEAR)(recording devices)
September 1, 2007... Recording audio in the field demands gear that combines portability, a robust build, good sound quality, a long recording time and a decent battery life. Here is a selection of items that fit the bill 1 Cassette recorder 200 [pounds...

Merrell gets into clothes.(clothing line)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Renowned footwear designer Merrell has decided to dip its toe into the outdoor clothing market with the launch of the Apparel Collection--a range of technical and sustainable clothing for men and women. The garments feature a number of...

Lonely Planet Pick & Mix.(travel guidebooks)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Travellers can now tailor their travel guides to suit their plans with Lonely Planet's new Pick & Mix scheme, which makes it possible to buy individual guidebook chapters online. Visitors to the Lonely Planet website can select chapters from a...

New travel health guidelines.(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... The UK's Health Protection Agency has just published its latest guidelines on travel health for GPs and health centres. The guidelines now recognise the benefits of treating clothing and nets with pyrethroidcontaining insecticides, which can...

Historical mapping series.(GIVEAWAY!)(geographical maps)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Everyone loves a bit of nostalgia, and there are few better ways of seeing exactly how things use to be than by looking at an old map. Cassini Publishing has delved into the vast archives of the Ordnance Survey in order to create three...

Cardboard camping comes to festivals.(GIVEAWAY!)(disposable tents)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... When young designer James Dunlop heard that 10,000 tents were left behind by revellers at last year's Glastonbury festival, he had an idea. If people find packing up their tents too onerous, why not create a disposable version? And so the...

Heavy-duty illumination.(GIVEAWAY!)(Inova Bolt LED torches)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... The new Inova Bolt series of LED torches, imported from the USA by Whitby & Co, have been designed with durability in mind. The rugged water-resistant outer casing--made from extruded aircraft-grade aluminium--will withstand the toughest...

Sprains and strains in the wilderness: medical advice from Wilderness Medical Training by Dr Lucy Reed and Barry Roberts.(Expedition health)
September 1, 2007... Sprains and strains are common injuries when you're out in the wilderness, typically affecting ankles and knees, Large leg muscles and the back. Leg injuries are probably the most common, and can result from heavy load carrying or through...

Alan Hinkes: first British climber to reach the summits of all of the world's 8,000-metre-plus mountains.(EXPLORER'S ESSENTIALS)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... 1. Ordnance Survey maps. If I'm travelling in Britain, the 1:25,000-and 1:50,000-scale OS maps are great. You can't get a better map anywhere else. * www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk 2. Cafetiere Java Press. An unbreakable mini-cafetiere and...

The geographical good guide guide: helping you choose that vitally important; but often rather confusing, item of kit: the guidebook.(KIT NEWS)(Crossbill Guides)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Crossbill Guides WHAT ARE THEY LIKE? Crossbill's nature guide series are produced by the Crossbill Guides Foundation, a Europe-wide conservation organisation that aims to increase public awareness and appreciation of some of the...

Freeze frames: geo photo: from the Golden Age to the modern day, photography has had a central role to play in polar expeditions.(PHOTOGRAPHY)
September 1, 2007... IT'S ALMOST 100 years since Robert Peary made his disputed conquest of the North Pole in 1909; followed two years later by Roald Amundsen's epic journey to the--South Pole. While the news of the successes was widely celebrated at the time,...

Beating the cold.(PHOTOGRAPHY)(devices for cold regions)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Successful photography in the polar regions requires plenty of forward planning. For his 2006 Adventure Ecology expedition across the frozen Arctic Ocean, photographer Martin Hartley had to ensure that his Nikon D2X digital SLR camera would...

The why of where.(MAILBAG)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... Upon reading your article More than just maps and mountains (August 2007) and the answers provided concerning what geography is, I was reminded of the answer one of my lecturers at the University of St Andrews gave to the university principal...

The challenges of Chagos.(MAILBAG)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... I was pleased to see that you found space in your August edition for a piece on the Chagos Islands (Hotspot). However, it's a pity that the article focused almost exclusively on the Chagos Islanders' legal battle to return. The challenges...

Adventure for all.(LETTER OF THE MONTH)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... In reference to Tony Button's letter in the August issue about Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's latest journey, people undertake adventures for reasons that haven't changed for generations, nor are they likely to change. Some go for vanity,...

Why so little for Wally?(MAILBAG)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... Wally Herbert was surely one of the finest scientific explorers of our time. Did his obituary really only merit four centimetres by 12 centimetres in the August edition of Geographical? Thomas Bourne, Totnes, Devon Ed replies: The sad...

Error is blowing in the wind.(MAILBAG)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... Congratulations on the magazine, which goes from strength to strength. However, 'oddities' do inevitably creep in. Having spent a good number of years in Kenya, I was fascinated by the article on butterfly farming in the Eastern Arc...

Return of the rains.(MAILBAG)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... The Australian government should give Geographical some sort of medal. Surely there's no other explanation for the sudden return of wet weather after six years of drought than the publication of August's Dossier on the country's ongoing water...

Rebecca Hosking.(IN CONVERSATION ...)(wildlife filmmaker)(Interview)
September 1, 2007... Rebecca Hosking, 33, a freelance wildlife producer and camerawoman, recently led a campaign to rid the shops in Modbury, a small town in Devon, of all plastic bags. She was driven to take action after spending more than a year witnessing and...