A blog providing ideas and resources for those teachers hoping to teach the new GCSE Specification, first announced in April 2022. Draft subject content released for consultation in June 2026 - for first teaching from 2028 or 2029.
“By making the best use of technology, we are able to bring unseen nature directly into people’s homes, allowing them to witness the secret lives of some of our most iconic wetland birds. Following a wide range of species through the breeding season promises to provide truly compelling viewing.”
Jake Fiennes
Holkham Estate, and the work of Jake Fiennes (as featured in his book 'Land Healer') will be the focus for a resource that I'm planning as part of a suite of resources to support teachers when the draft specification launches.
The estate has a range of habitats and some of those have webcams to track the wildlife.
A framework for nature I came across via a map activity shared by Bob Lang.
It's an evidence-based guideline for how to integrate nature into cities so people actually benefit from trees and green spaces.
The rule of thumb provides clear criteria for the minimum provision of urban trees in our urban communities by setting the following three minimum requirements:
3 mature trees from every home
30 percent tree canopy cover in every neighbourhood
300 metres from the nearest high-quality public park or other green space
Simple. Measurable. Backed by research showing that proximity to nature reduces stress, improves mood, and has genuine health benefits.
How does your neighbourhood score on this measure?
I can see a great many more than 3 mature trees frm my home and am less than 100 metres from green spaces.
Not sure of the overall tree canopy cover, but it's fairly high...
Image: Holkham Meals - Alan Parkinson - shared on Flickr under CC license.
Earth in 100 Seconds is a short film made by Daniel Raven Ellison - with each second revealing 1% of land and how we are using it.
After the premiere last night, the film is now available.
From the film's script:
"What are we using planet Earth for?
Let’s go for a walk to find out.
Each second of our walk reveals 1% of land and how we’re using it.
We spend our first 10 seconds walking across a frozen land of ice.
The next 11 in desert, barren and rocky lands.
14 more seconds of our walk is through ecosystems we minimally use including only 8 seconds of intact forests.
All other land is directly exploited by people.
So that makes just 35% of the Earth's land area is 'natural' - we could debate that.
Just 1% of land is built on
Crops cover 11% of land, nearly half of these are fed to livestock
For 20 seconds, we’re in the woods again These forests are managed for their timber and play a vital role in regulating our climate, air and water Some are great for wildlife, while much are not.
We’ve prioritised over a third of land for producing meat, dairy and animal products.
14 seconds of our walk is on less used wilder grasslands and rangelands As well as cows, sheep and goats, wild animals could graze here Some livestock is managed carefully so other species can flourish, much is not
Our final 19 seconds is through pastures that we mostly use for rearing cows.
Cows now have a collective mass that’s nearly 10 times greater than all wild mammals combined At a time of climate crisis And when a million species are at risk of extinction Why not rethink this mix of lands we have and how we use them I need more trees please I think more nature would be greater So what if we made more space, for nature?"
Dan explains why he made the film:
This is an important little film. It tells the story of how we're using and (mis)using the planet.. all through a humble walk. Earth is vast and complex, making it difficult to fully comprehend its scale, understand how we’re using it, or organise efforts to manage it more effectively.
Thoughtful land use is vital for the survival of humans and countless other species, as well as for creating fair and equitable futures. Access to better data and insights about how we interact with land is crucial - whether it’s choosing what to eat or deciding who to support at the ballot box.
This film draws on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Climate Change and Land. While the report does an excellent job of presenting the facts, its charts and graphs often fail to connect with people on a human level.
Earth in 100 Seconds transforms this data into a relatable journey, using a simple walk to evoke a sense of story, place, and scale.
In just a couple of minutes, it allows viewers not only to see what the data means but also to feel its impact - by sitting through it.
We desperately need to have better relationships with the rest of life on our planet and the land, climate, resources and systems we all depend on - ones that are kinder, healthier and more harmonious.
I hope this short film sparks meaningful conversations that help make that happen more of the time.
The new Living England 2022-23 habitat map is now live! Download freely from https://t.co/rR1gT2IaPl (coming soon on Magic). It’s more reliable & user-friendly than ever - providing essential habitat data for natural capital monitoring across England. pic.twitter.com/5PmDIHjeli
The GI stands for Geography Information - it's a GIS.
There are a series of layers of information which can be added to the base map.
Here's a map made by turning on the Habitats > Coastal > Saltmarshes layer, for example. This is very easy to do and students could be asked to explore the map themselves or be given a step by step guide. It would make sense
This map shows the locations of saltmarshes around the Wash.
Similar maps can be created for a whole range of habitats by changing the overlays.
Thanks to Steve Brace for the link to a new research project making use of Dudley Stamp's Land Utilisation Survey UK project. This involved thousands of school students mapping the area around their school and home.
We scanned Dudley Stamp maps & compared them with modern satellite data to record the extent of land-use change across Britain in mid-20thC. Our map outlines land conversion for every 10km x 10km sq. @andysuggitt & @AGAuffret#geographyteachers#NEAhttps://t.co/UIEk3Sw9Lj
The outcomes are reported in this research paper. (Open Access at the time of posting).
We estimate that roughly 90% of lowland meadow and pasture has been lost. Land was converted either to arable farmland, which saw a 22% increase, or to agriculturally improved grassland, which now occupies 27% of Britain’s land area.
Urbanisation saw the nation’s built area expand from 4% to 5%. And woodland cover doubled from 6% to 12%, largely due to a concerted effort to increase the country’s reserve of timber. For better or worse, the nation’s land use became less mixed and more consolidated.
All of this environmental change is thought to have had a profound effect on biodiversity. According to the recent State of Nature Report, the abundance of UK species has declined by an average of 19% since 1970. Some 1,500 species (or 16% of those analysed) are now threatened with national extinction.
The full piece outlines further changes affecting particular species and how the data can help to identify species at particular risk from climate change.
The UK in 100 Seconds was conceived by Daniel Raven Ellison.
It’s difficult to get a picture of what the United Kingdom really looks like. Imaginations and assumptions can distort decisions that affect our lives. We often hear the idea that there is simply no more room in the country. In reality, just six per cent of the UK is built on.
‘The UK in 100 Seconds’ is a provocative and thought provoking film that rearranges the United Kingdom’s land into 32 categories and divides them over 100 seconds. Each second equates to 1% of what the country looks like from the air.
Made by guerrilla geographer Daniel Raven-Ellison and filmmaker Jack Smith, the film was made by travelling from Tongue in the north of Scotland to the New Forest in the south of England. Each second of the film covers roughly one metre of Raven-Ellison’s walk through moorland and peat bogs, down a runway and over a dump.
Made in collaboration with Friends of the Earth, the film gives an honest reflection of what land looks like and how it is used in the United Kingdom and raises some challenging questions. A major inspiration for Raven-Ellison making the film is the amount of space that is used for feeding livestock and the question – what if we made more space for nature?
This is a cross posting from my GA Presidents blog, which includes a biography of all the GA Presidents. This post is a description of the Land Utilisation Survey of the 1930s, an exercise which was repeated by the GA twice in later decades, involving young people to survey the UK.
The idea of how the land is used, and how that has changed will be important for local field studies, and the idea of citizen science is one that was partially 'created' by this project by the GA President for 1950: Sir Laurence Dudley Stamp.
A reminder that Dudley Stamp was GA President in 1950, well after he started work on the survey. He was also a million selling textbook author.
It outlines the background to the survey:
Sir Dudley Stamp’s aim was to undertake a detailed field-by-field survey of England, Wales and Scotland to find out exactly what the surface of the land was being used for. The idea grew out of his work as Chairman of the Regional Studies Committee of the Geographical Association in the late 1920s. British agriculture had been facing a long and severe depression, mainly because of the increase in world food supplies and competition from cheaper producers. Many towns and cities had been growing at a steady rate since the industrial revolution, with low profits and low wages in the countryside speeding the drift of labour from the land.
Stamp envisaged the Survey as acting as, in his phrase, a “modern Domesday Book”. This comparison caused some confusion at the time, in that it led some people to think that the Survey was part of a large tax-gathering exercise. But in many ways it is very apt: it was a comprehensive national survey that was designed to be of contemporary use as an administrative tool, but it also formed a permanent record of the country’s landscape at a particular time, something that is now of enormous historical value.
Stamp envisaged that much of the field work would be done by volunteers, mainly children from local schools and colleges. He also saw the project as a national educational exercise, an opportunity to interest young people in their local environment, to develop their observational and map reading skills, and to give them what Stamp called “a training in citizenship”, with each region playing its part in a nationwide scheme.
Few people had the profile and the force of will of Stamp to pull off such an ambitious project.
In autumn 1930 he contacted the directors of education in counties across the whole of Britain to explain the project and ask them to coordinate work in their areas. He then spent the next year touring the country to talk to head teachers and education committees and taking out parties to demonstrate field work methods. He estimated that in this first year he covered almost 2,000 miles a month, with his wife acting as chauffeur. By mid-1931, the Survey was underway in most counties in England, and by early 1932 in Wales and Scotland also.
Consider these statistics:
Stamp estimated that there were about 20,000 sheets to cover, with each sheet taking two to three days to complete. Field surveying started in October 1930, but most of the work was done between 1931 and 1934. During this period Stamp continued to tour the country extensively, meeting with local officials and offering encouragement to field workers. The Survey also issued regular bulletins to the volunteers to keep them informed on the progress of the project as a whole and to clarify questions or problems with the surveying.
By January 1932 some 400 sheets had been returned, and by January 1934 this had risen to over 15,000. The bulk of the fieldwork was finished by the end of 1935, with a flying squad of surveyors, mainly geography students or former geography students from London University, finishing off remoter areas that local volunteers could not cover. This stage of the project was clearly an enormous undertaking and by the end Stamp estimated that it had involved about a quarter of a million school children, as well as teachers and other adults.
One of the key people in the survey, and much forgotten is Eunice Wilson.
She is pictured in the blog post.
Eunice Biki Wilson, 1984. IMAGELIBRARY/755. LSE.
She started at the LSE as a cartographic assistant on the LUS. It was an interesting post that soon absorbed her talent and imagination and she rapidly developed skills that made her a pioneer of cartographic illustration. As new applications were found for the LUS in the field of land use planning, and as its work intensified, Biki eventually found herself as Chief Cartographer in charge of a new drawing office attached to the Land Use Division of Ministry of Agriculture
The survey results proved their value during and after the Second World War.
The very last area to be surveyed was part of the Isle of Arran in September 1941, although all other areas were recorded by 1939. The surveys were extensively cross-checked by the team, even including Stamp with his wife as chauffeur: ‘I must have covered thousands of miles myself, often standing up on the front seat of my car with my head through the sunshine roof and a roll of six-inch maps in front of me’ (Stamp, 1948). The maps were also cross-checked with adjacent sheets when reduced to the one-inch scale.
Here's the map that features my village in Norfolk
