ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS

EarthView is on display at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in the historic Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC.
38° 55' 30" N
77° 03' 18" W
Thanks to Steve Morse for his wonderful lat/long finder!

EarthView team member Dr. Vernon Domingo is shown just a bit to the west of his native South Africa in the lobby of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. EarthView is at the AAG meeting as part of our effort to encourage geographic education at all levels in the United States.

Students from the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica point to their homes in Jamaica and Trinidad.

AAG Executive Director Doug Richardson with EarthView.

AAG senior staff member Susan Gallagher played a key role in arranging for EarthView's arrival at the annual meeting.

The EarthView team poses with Wilbur Zelinksy, a world leader in cultural geography scholarship. (L to R: Vernon Domingo, Dr. Zelinsky, James Hayes-Bohanan, and Natalie Regan)

Dr. Michal LeVasseur, a leading geography educator and author who has worked with both National Geographic and the National Council for Geographic Education, points to the Andes Mountains.

Dr. Rick Bein of Indiana University and James Hayes-Bohanan pose in front of Brazil with Rodrigo Capelani, who was one of the first participants in BSC's US-Brazil Consortium on Urban Development (CAPES/FIPSE). Rodrigo completed a semester in Bridgewater before graduating from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. In May of this year, he will receive his master's degree from Miami University in Ohio, where Dr. Hayes-Bohanan received his master's in 1989.

Vernon Domingo (l) and James Hayes-Bohanan enjoyed showing EarthView to Kristin Alvarez, president of the National Council for Geographic Education and University of Redlands, California.

National Geographic intern Sarah Evans, who writes for the My Wonderful World blog, poses with EarthView team member James Hayes-Bohanan. My Wonderful World is an outreach program that -- thanks to creative geographers such as Sarah -- is doing a lot to build interest and enthusiasm around geography. Visit the My Wonderful World blog to find games, photos, maps, and videos that bring geography to life, and to participate in a nation-wide movement to expand geographic literacy. (Dr. Hayes-Bohanan first learned of the blog when it included a story about his teaching geography with coffee in 2008.)

Throughout the conference, geographers -- such as Christopher Shearer of National Geographic -- were encouraging each other to SPEAK UP for their discipline. At a time when the need to understand both human and physical geography could not be greater, the legislative and executive branches have failed to embrace geography as a key component of education. Meeting participants wrote letters urging the inclusion of geography in the reauthorized version of "No Child Left Behind" legislation. Without geography, many children will be left behind their peers in the rest of the world!

Along with a strong Geography Bowl appearance by student Kim Kirkwood and a number of research presentations by faculty members, EarthView ensured that the contribution of Bridgewater State College to the 2010 Annual Meeting will not soon be forgotten!

The perfect conclusion to a day of showing EarthView to thousands of geographers was being on hand when the AAG presented its first-ever Atlas Award to Dr. Jane Goodall. Her reflections on a lifetime of scholarship and humanitarian endeavors were deeply moving.

Oct. 23: Baker School, Brockton

See the Math? Baker School is at
42° 5' 49 N
70° 59' 24 W
Find the latitude and longitude of other places on your globe, in your atlas, or at Steve Morse. Then do some math!


On October 23, we visited the Baker School Elementary in Brockton, Massachusetts. Teachers and students are invited to use the "comment" link below to post questions for the EarthView Team. We are especially glad to be visiting this GREEN building, which is similar to the new GREEN science building where EarthView will be kept at Bridgewater State College.

We are also delighted that geography professors from Brazil joined us for part of our visit at Baker School.

Dr. Hayes-Bohanan told some classes about the "wedding of the waters" in Manaus, Brazil. Explore the area on Google Maps to see where Manaus is, relative to the rest of the continent. This is a false-color image, typical of many satellite images. Tan is shown as blue and urban areas as pink. Geographers learn how to use satellite data to get information about places that is more detailed than what we see in photographs; false-color images are one example.

See the Rio Negro entering from the WNW and the Rio Solimões entering from the West and WSW. As they continue past Manaus, the tea-like water of the Rio Negro remains along the left bank (north side) of the Amazon -- which is officially formed at this confluence -- for many miles. Use the scale on Google Maps to figure out how far. Visit Dr. Hayes-boh's Rondonia Web for stories about his time in the Amazon.


View Larger Map




Our visit on this day also coincides with a great number of geographically significant anniversaries and birthdays, including:

1989 Hungary proclaims itself a republic and declares communist rule ended
1978 China and Japan formally end 4 decades of dissension
1977 Panamanians vote 2:1 to approve new Canal treaties
1975 Battle between Cuba and South Africa troops in Angol
1954 Britain, England, France and U.S.S.R. agree to end occupation of Germany
1954 West Germany joins NATO
1953 France grants sovereignty to Laos
1956 Revolt against Stalinist policies begins in Hungary
787 Byzantine empress Irene recovers Iconclastic cult at Nicaea

BIRTHDATES:
1922 Stuart Sloan, war hero/test pilot
1905 Felix Bloch, Swiss/U.S. nuclear physicist, Nobel 1952
1868 Rama V, [Chulalongkorn], leader of Thailand, -1910

Eliot School in Needham -- May 14

42º 18' 23" N
71º 14' 19" W
Thanks to Steve Morse for his wonderful lat/long finder! Use it to find the angular distance from the Eliot School to your house or to any place on earth. Use it with a globe to find the school's antipode -- the place on the exact opposite side of the earth.


You can also use the latitude and longitude of the school to calculate the angular distances (that is, how many degrees of latitude north or south and how many degrees of longitude east or west) the school is from the oil well that is currently leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. On the map below, the well is shown as a red X at "Mississippi Canyon 252" and the grid shows latitudes and longitudes. (Click the map to enlarge, see the complete map here, or see all of the maps from the incident here.) This is a forecast map -- it was made yesterday, but shows where geographers and other scientists expect the oil to be today. How can they make predictions like that?

The name of the Eliot School has an interesting history. John Eliot translated the Bible into the Algonquin language, which was remarkable for several reasons. First, to do so he had to create a written version of what had been a spoken language. Second, the printing itself came more than a century ahead of any other Bible printed in North America.


EarthView team member Dr. Hayes-Bohanan has actually met missionaries in the Amazon rain forest of Brazil who do similar work. The Summer Institute of Linguistics studies the languages of indigenous people in order to create written versions of their languages, so that they can then teach them to read in their own languages. They then publish Bibles and other materials in those languages. Today, the work of such scholar/missionaries is controversial. What could be some reasons in favor of and against doing such work?

Largest Countries

Although the EarthView globe does not show political boundaries, we often discuss the locations of countries, especially those with the largest populations. As of 2010, the ten most populous countries are those listed above. The U.S. Census Bureau's country rankings page allows users to find the rank of any country in any year from 1950 to 2050 (future rankings are estimates, of course).

To make direct comparisons possible, the database shows the ranking of Russia for all years, even though prior to 1991 it was not listed separately and was part of the Soviet Union's number-three ranking. Its first post-Soviet ranking was number six, but it has now fallen to number nine. Use the database to estimate when Russia will drop from the top-ten ranking in population.

Its position as the largest country by land area will not change, of course, as 11.5 percent of the earth's land is in Russia, no matter how many people live there.

COUNTRY OR AREA	POPULATION 2010
China	1,330,141,295
India	1,173,108,018
United States	310,232,863
Indonesia	242,968,342
Brazil	201,103,330
Pakistan	184,404,791
Bangladesh	156,118,464
Nigeria	152,217,341
Russia	139,390,205
Japan	126,804,433

This map was created by the US CIA but is
hosted on the web site of the Embassy of Russia to the UK

Dec 4th: James M. Quinn School

Latitude: 41° 37' 35" N

Longitude: 70° 57' 48" W
For more coordinates, look at an atlas or use Stephen Morse


We look forward to our visit on December 4th, 2009 to the James M. Quinn School in Dartmouth. Our visit coincides with several important historical and geographical events:

1619 America's 1st Thanksgiving Day (Va)
1945 Senate approves U.S. participation in UN
1963 Aldo Moro forms Italian government
1981 According to South Africa, Ciskei gains independence - Not recognized as an independent country outside South Africa
1982 China adopts its constitution

1908 Birth of: Alfred D. Hershey, U.S. scientist, biologist, worked with bacteriophages, Nobel 1969
1905 Birth of: Emilio Medici, president Brazil, 1969-74

1980 Francisco Sa Carneiro, Prime Minister of Portugal 1980, dies in air crash

For more events, check out Brainy History