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This science bulletin follows scientist/adventurer Lonnie Thompson to the 5,670-meter-high Quelccaya ice cap in Peru's Southern Andes Mountains. Thompson and his team from Ohio State University are racing to core a cylinder of 2,200-year-old ice to unravel the past climate patterns of this region - before our gradually warming climate melts this invaluable record away. By analyzing global ice cores, glaciologists like Thompson now have a well-preserved...
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Bali's iconic rice terraces, clinging to the steep slopes of active volcanoes that dominate the island, are the oldest continuous irrigation system on Earth. This video segment takes a look at the unique combination of religion and rice cultivation that has created a cooperative self-governing water-sharing system that involves tens of thousands of people. While this ancient hydro-culture has weathered natural change for more than a millennium, the...
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Fifty-five million years ago a sudden, enormous influx of carbon flooded the ocean and atmosphere for reasons that are still unclear to scientists. What is clear is that as atmospheric carbon dioxide content increased, the average global surface temperature rose as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), as this global warming event has become known, lasted about 120,000 years and had dramatic impacts on living...
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In response to Australia's extreme drought conditions, Professor Patrick De Deckker and his team spent several decades digging up core samples from the bottom of freshwater lakes and deep-sea canyons. In this video clip, De Deckker and his team reveal the results of their research and are able to contextualize the drought within an understanding of drought cycles reaching back into antiquity - a hundred times further than recorded weather patterns....
11) Drought Culprit
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For many years scientists have turned to the Southern and Pacific Oceans to try to predict when the drought breaking rains will come to Australia, but now they have a different explanation. This video clip investigates whether the Indian Ocean might be the culprit behind the worst drought on record.
14) Extreme Earth
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Contains facts about and photographs of the earth, coveringearthquakes, volcanoes, underground caves and mines, coral reefs and coastlines, coniferous and temperate forests, tropical rain forests, the polar regions, and related topics.
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University College Dublin has created six "weather chambers" which can be used to simulate climate environments from millions of years ago and 50 years into the future. It's the only place in the world where researchers can look at how measuring the responses of living plants to controlled changes in experimental environments (CO2, SO2 and O2 levels) can help make more sense of the fossil record from previous mass extinctions, and possibly identify...
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By building roads, watering crops, and grazing cattle, we are constantly changing the climate. We may also modify the weather by cloud seeding, though there is no scientifically accepted proof that rain or snow would not have occurred naturally in cases where seeding appears to have been successful. This program shows how migration in the Sahel has altered regional climate; examines the tomorrow-be-damned policy of water usage in Arizona; and investigates...
19) Tundra biomes
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About a fifth of the Earth's land surface is tundra: cold, dry, treeless, and home to a diverse range of inhabitants including lichens and lemmings, sedges and snowy owls, and dwarf willow bushes and musk oxen. By viewing this program, students can develop a fundamental appreciation for the world's Arctic and Alpine tundra biomes. The plants and animals that populate tundra environments are clearly identified, along with the adaptations that enable...
20) Grassland biomes
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The prairies of the American west, the pampas of Argentina, the steppes of Russia, and the veldt of South Africa all share at least one thing in common: they are covered with miles upon miles of grass. This program can help students learn to identify the climates, life-forms, and behavioral adaptations that correspond to each type of grassland biome. Factors that threaten the survival of these habitats' distinctive animal communities-and of the ecosystems...