Apr 08 2012
Here is a recent article from BBC regarding the use of biofuel (in this case, cooking oil) as a portion of the fuel for a commercial airplane in England: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-15191275 This type of biofuel is known as biodiesel. As the article mentions, the use of cooking oil as fuel for the plane does reduce the dependence on [...]
Apr 06 2012
Recent NPR Headline: Rejected Pipeline Becomes Hot Button Election Issue. What pipeline? Where? Check out this brief story: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/19/145433937/keystone-pipeline-becomes-hot-button-election-issue Yes, there are some “other” sources of fossil fuels besides coal/oil/natural gas, namely oil (tar) sands and oil shale. Your book briefly mentions oil sands, but not oil shale (which you can read about here). Our [...]
Apr 06 2012
For those who missed the first day of our energy unit, here is the kick off: Mining Practices 2012 View more PowerPoint from Derrick Willard I tried to give you a sense of just how destructive surface mining can be to habitats and biodiversity. I’ve also found a great slideshow by a photographer named Daniel [...]
Jan 10 2012
Check out a slideshow of all the pictures shared of good and bad urban design in Charlotte. The slideshow does not seem to work as well here (and is tiny), so visit our Flickr group pool and click on “slideshow” button above the pool to see all our pics and discussions: http://www.flickr.com/groups/pdsapes12/pool/
Jan 09 2012
On Friday (1/6/12), we kicked off our study of urban planning by playing a simple online game called Urban Plan 2001. Today (1/9/12) we honored the grand champion of both classes, ConnorC. Here is a screenshot of Connor’s city of 2 million plus people: Connor described some of the secrets of his success. He said [...]
Jan 06 2012
Yesterday in class we discussed two different ways of managing forests: even-aged management and uneven-aged management. Even-aged management is basically tree farming, where the trees are cut down all at once after a certain length of time in order to get trees all the same age. It can also be called industrial forestry. Un-even aged [...]
Jan 03 2012
Today in class, we talked about both why we value land and also who manages land. First of all, there are both instrumental and intrinsic reasons why people value land. Instrumental reasons have to do with those that provide use for humans–such as harvesting resources, building, recreation, ecosystem services, and medicine and food. On the [...]
