National Geographic blog about our trip

The amazing Olivia Rees of One More Generation interviewed us and just published this blog post on the National Geographic website.

Glaciers and Climate Change

While our trip is now over and we’re back home in Minneapolis, we are catching up on a final post or two about our experiences in the Arctic, in Svalbard, Norway, where we were about 800 miles from the North Pole.

Here's a post we did on The Wilderness Classroom about glaciers and climate change.  We got to experience glaciers up close while in Svalbard, as you can see from the picture.  We also were lucky enough to have a clear day when flying home over Greenland.  Check out the post for Greenland and Svalbard photos.

The Clever Dutch and How They Manage Water

This is a post we also did for The Wilderness Classroom.

Have you ever tried to build barriers to protect a sandcastle from waves on an ocean beach? At a much bigger scale, this is the same problem The Netherlands faces (The Netherlands is sometimes called Holland and people from the Netherlands are the Dutch).  Almost half the country is either below sea level or less than 3 feet above sea level.  The three largest cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague) are all in these low-lying regions.

Building a sand castle in a flood prone area

While in the Netherlands, we visited the Zuiderzee (pronounced zow-der zay) Museum, to see an exhibit about floods in Dutch history.  We were amazed at the number of serious floods the country has experienced. To protect their country from floods, the Dutch have built many dikes, barriers, and pumps. 

List of serious floods in Dutch history at Zuiderzee Museum

Climate Change's Ominous Secret

This is an article (not for kids) I wrote that was just published on the Mongabay.com site and in their electronic newsletter.

Click here to see the article.

Ningaloo Reef, Coral Bleaching, and Red Kangaroos in Western Australia

Here's a 7 1/2 minute video about our visit to Cape Range National Park and the Ningaloo Reef, in Western Australia.  We had our first exposure to the "outback,"explored some beautiful gorges, saw some really unique wildlife, and did some fabulous snorkeling.  We also learned about the impacts of climate change on coral reefs, and specifically what happened at Ningaloo from some friends we made at Australia's Department of Parks and Wildlife.

Study Guide Questions:

1. What is the difference between a fringing reef and a barrier reef?

2. True or False: Coral is made by a plant.

3. Is white, bleached coral healthy?

4. What causes the bleaching of coral?

5. What is the name of a baby kangaroo?

Galapagos, El Niño, and Climate Change

In our previous post we talked about human impacts on the Galapagos.  There is one more human impact that we’ll discuss in this post on The Wilderness Classroom, and that is climate change.



Other Climate Change Links: Will Steger Foundation
EPA's Climate Change for Kids
Tiki: Climate Change for Kids