Wednesday 15 May 2013

Geographical Conference 2013 Lecture Snipets: Chironomids & Hazards in Kathmandu


Lecture 1: The past is the key to the future for understanding climate change: the importance of chironomids as temperature indicators

In recent years, the use of midges as quantitative indicators of past temperatures has greatly expanded.

Below is a brief summary of Dr Barbara Lang's Lecture on  'Changes in temperature and Society over the last 15,000years' (Edge Hill University):

Favourite line: Need to explore and understand the past in order to see how the system works.

-          Always been natural climate vulnerability; important to look at past to see how system works

-          Chironomids: non-biting midges found in most environments as pioneer species used as evidence

-          Paleo records also used like Pollen and hunan bone/hunting records.

Q: What lessons can we learn from the past for now?

Q: How is climate change going to affect the human population differently (winners & losers)

http://www.ecrc.ucl.ac.uk/?q=courses/chironomids-water-quality-and-climate-change

Lecture 2: Future trends in natural hazard loss


Below is a brief summary of Professor David Petley's Lecture on  'Future Trends in Natural Hazrad Loss' (Durham University)


Favourite line: Geography is the key discipline which integrates the physical and human world.

-          The next big plus 8.0 earthquake - 1million fatality or $1 trillion dollar loss.

-          Regarding unpredictable earthquakes, the future will be the same as past, just more expensive!

-          Increasing vulnerable population with a false sense of security (low hazard perception).

-          There has been a clustering of earthquakes overt time (1950s/60s cluster; now 2005 since Sumatra).

-          Next big one, Kathmandu
Q: Research why Kathmandu is so vulnerable?

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