Why Care About Settlements and the Environment?
W E A T H E R : the state of the atmosphere at a place and time as regards heat, dryness, sunshine, wind, rain, etc. Weather describes the conditions over a short period of time.
C L I M A T E : Climate refers to the average weather of an area over a long period of time.
P H Y S I C A L P R O C E S S E S : No matter where you decided to live, physical processes, or natural changes to the physical environment, such as landslides and volcanoes, would affect you.
C L I M A T E C H A N G E : Changes in long-term weather patterns caused by natural events and human activity--physical processes are expected to change as a result of climate change, or changes in long-term weather patterns.
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? Would you base your decision on the climate or the environment?
The world's most livable cities 2019
1. Vienna, Austria
2. Melbourne, Australia
3. Sydney, Australia
4. Osaka, Japan
5. Calgary, Canada
6. Vancouver, Canada
7. Toronto, Canada
7. Tokyo, Japan
9. Copenhagen, Denmark
10. Adelaide, Australia
The world's least livable cities 2019
1. Damascus, Syria
2. Lagos, Nigeria
3. Dhaka, Bangladesh
4. Tripoli, Libya
5. Karachi, Pakistan
6. Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
7. Harare, Zimbabwe
8. Douala, Cameroon
9. Algiers, Algeria
10. Caracas, Venezuela
During an ice storm in Ontario in December 2013, falling trees and branches damaged man homes and broke hydro lines. The ice was too heavy in some places for the trees to support it.
I wonder how many people were put at risk during this storm?
The Amazon River is the longest and widest river in the world. The rainforest depends on the river, and the people depend on both the river and the rainforest.
This area is generally hot and wet with a lot of annual rainfall. However, rainfall has decreased since the mid-1980s. As a result, there has been less natural flooding, and there have been more water shortages.
Some of the effects of the 2005 drought were a smaller leaf canopy, fewer trees, and a large drop in the water level of the river.
Drought also leads to less water and more fires, meaning more trees die during each drought. Damaged trees are not growing back, even during wetter years.
Geographers studying this area aren't sure whether the drought is a temporary change, or an example of climate change.
Why care about the rainforest?
The rainforest is one of the world's largest carbon sinks (something that absorbs more carbon than it releases). It traps and stores billions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. This makes protection of the rainforest a global and local issue. The clearing of the rainforest has further local significance because there is a suggestion that recent droughts are associated with or deepened by the destruction of the rainforest. Trees release moisture into the air through a process called transpiration. The more forest that a body of air passes over, the more rain that it later releases. This means that forests play a major role in rainfall levels.
