Two more new reservoirs in Singapore

Sunday, July 03, 2011 | Posted by lily_lee68@yahoo.com.sg

Remember what I told the class about the damming of Sungei Serangoon (the river near our school)? It is finally completed! However, the water from the Serangoon reservoir is still undergoing desalting process, and will only be fit for consumption by the end of this year.

Together with the damming of Sungei Punggol, two more reservoirs are created bringing a total of 17 reservoirs in Singapore now, increasing our total water catchment areas from half to two-thirds of Singapore.

This will help Singapore attained self-sufficiency in water supply - a topic which you will be studying in Sec 2.


http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1138608/1/.html

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Uses of River

Saturday, June 25, 2011 | Posted by lily_lee68@yahoo.com.sg

Uses of river- as a tourist attraction and a mode of transport:





Floating market in Bangkok, Thailand




Ferry services along Chao Phraya River, Thailand

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Impact of increase in food prices

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 | Posted by lily_lee68@yahoo.com.sg

How would this impact on the LDCs? Will there be more hungry people? Food availability = Food affordability?



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Use of technology to increase food production

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 | Posted by lily_lee68@yahoo.com.sg

Use of technology to increase food production. To feed more hungry people or the urban affluent?

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Coastal Management

Sunday, April 10, 2011 | Posted by lily_lee68@yahoo.com.sg

As we learn about coastal process and landforms, I hope that you understand the importance of this topic. Being a small island, we cannot afford to lose our land to coastal erosion - much have to be done to protect the coast. We want to live by the sea and not in the sea! Look at the video below on the different coastal management strategies. The advantages and disadvantages of each method are highlighted in the video.



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Earthquakes

Sunday, April 10, 2011 | Posted by lily_lee68@yahoo.com.sg

As you can see below - earthquakes occur mainly at the plate boundaries - note the movement of the plates. The convergent plates (plates moving towards each other) resulting in earthquakes as well as the presence of volcano - e.g. Pacific Ring of Fire.


The latest toll as at 23 March 2011 from the Japan earthquake

The movement of the plates resulting in earthquakes in Indonesia (picture above) and Philippines (picture below).




 Plates sliding past each other - San Andreas Fault.

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Food prices increased

Sunday, April 10, 2011 | Posted by lily_lee68@yahoo.com.sg


THE floods in the south of Thailand have affected the supply of vegetables and fruit to Singapore, causing prices to rise about 20 per cent in wet markets and delaying delivery. Heavy rain hit southern Thailand in March 2011, which led to severe flooding and mudslides in Nakhon Si Thammarat and Krabi provinces.

Whenever there is a flood in a country that supplies Singapore, prices go up. To ensure a steady supply, importers in Singapore would look to other countries like Malaysia and China to make up for the shortfall.


The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) said Singapore imports vegetables from 39 countries, with the largest suppliers being Malaysia, China and India. The three account for 86 per cent of vegetables here.


You can see here how food production and supply is affected by climatic factor and the need to diversify our food source as mentioned in my previous post.

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Geography of Food

Sunday, April 10, 2011 | Posted by lily_lee68@yahoo.com.sg

Attended a Geography seminar on Geography of Food and I must say I learned a lot from it- esp the AVA is doing to ensure food safety and security in Singapore from Mrs Tan-Low Lai Kim.


I was surprised to learn that the consumption of whole fish is actually declining in Singapore. It seems that the youngsters prefer fish in the form of nuggets or fillet as they don't like whole fish with fish bones.


She also highlighted interesting facts such how the chicken rice vendors came to them for help when live chicken imports from Malaysia was banned in 2003 due to the avian flu outbreak. Consumption decreased rapidly then as compared to the outbreak in 2006. The AVA had improved the situation by banning by zones in a country rather than the whole country e.g chicken was supplied from Johor when there was an outbreak in Perak.


Being a country dependent on imports, food security often pose a problem. Emerging economies with increasing affluence might export less as their people become more affluent.


There is also a challenge in declining global food supply with declinging agricultural productivity, competition for essential resoueces such as water, arable land, labour and investment as well as diversion of food crops for biofuel production.


Of course other food security challenges include climatic change, outbreaks, natural disasters, political uncertainties, restrictive trade etc.




Key strategies which Singapore deployed:
1. diversification of food sources
2. stockpiking of essential food stocks
3. enhancing local production through small local farming
$10 million food fund introduced in 2009 - R&D in farming techniques e.g. fish breeding, vertical farming, seed banking
4. Promotion of food substitudes e.g. frozen meat


It really makes us ponder about the food we are eating today. There is quite a good documentary on CNA tomorrow (10th April 2011) at 7pm - a preview of the show below:









No wonder one of the speakers, Dr George Jacobs, became a vegetarian. It seems that more people are becoming vegetarian not because of religion but rather due to health, environment and kindness (towards animals) concerns. It is a fact that much food has gone into feeding animals rather than hungry people - I suppose that's why there is a movement to be vegetarian once a week - www.facebook.com/veggiethursdaysg


Many also debated on the cruelty of factory farming - for my students I am sure you remember the clip I showed you from http://www.themeatrix.com/
There is also another clip from food inc showing a chicken farm:





The last speaker, Dr Pow Choon Piew, talk about the Hungry cities.
click here to see the no. of hungry people in the world
http://www.worldbank.org/foodcrisis/
imagine a billion people still hungry in the world

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Video on Deforestation in Kalimantan

Friday, March 04, 2011 | Posted by lily_lee68@yahoo.com.sg


Illegal Logging in Kalimantan


Saving our forest- The lungs of our planet

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Sec 3 Mid-Year Project 2011

Monday, February 28, 2011 | Posted by lily_lee68@yahoo.com.sg

A very good video clip on how to use window movie maker from Youtube. Pay attention to how you can insert the pictures, music and the titles. You can enhance your video clip with transition effect. Just remember to publish your video by saving it as a movie file as shown in the last part of the video.



A Geography Project Task was given out to the students this year - to submit a 5 min video clip based on the river journey from the source to the mouth. The students also need to submit a short writeup with the synopsis (the content of your video) as well as credits given to your group members and the list of reference for the video.

One example of a video clip can be found @ this link -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjZLAw_lgZ4 which is a similar project done by a group of students.

For sounds of river or waterfall - you might want to download from http://www.jetcityorange.com/SoundFiles/nature-sounds.html Just right click on the icon next to the track and select 'save target as'. Some of you might want to mix the sound with another piece of music which you have - the trick is after you have publish and save the video clip, import it and then add in the new audio track - you can right click on the audio timeline to adjust the volume.

Another tip - some of you might want to insert the explanation on the pictures using powerpont. You can then save as window metafiles (instead of powerpoint presentation) which are actually picture files created in a folder. You can then import these pictures into the movie maker.
As the file size is big - students were advised to make use of http://www.sendspace.com/ - just browse and upload the file and enter the email address of the recipient e.g. lily_lee68@yahoo.com.sg. I can then retrieve the file from sendspace with the link sent. A reminder - DO NOT sent the project file (mmv) send only the movie file (wmv). The project file should be kept by you in case you need to make amendments. If you send us the project file we would not be able to see the video as the pictures and music are actually stored in your computer. We will only be assessing the end product which is movie file (wmv) which you have created.

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