PREPARING FOR A LEVEL GEOGRAPHY

It’s really tricky for you all with no exams to prepare for however, if you are intending to carry on studying geography at A Level it is a brilliant opportunity to get ahead. Below are three of the topics that I tend to cover in Year 12 and some suggestions/tasks to help you start with building up your knowledge. Keep these in a file for when things are back to normal and we are back in school.

Dynamic Landscapes. Physical Geography. Tectonics.

Tectonics forms a large part of the physical paper and along with knowing the mechanics and theory behind earthquakes; it is vital to be able to back up this knowledge with examples to give it context. Have a go at the following research task.

For any significant (over magnitude 6) earthquake/tsunami in the past 5 years research the following and create a detailed report on it.

● event details - date, magnitude, causes of the event (be specific, plates, type of boundary - how and why it happened), duration, spatial extent of the event (you could include maps etc but make sure you say where you got them from!)

● human geography of the country - population, population density, GDP per capita, HDI, education levels, links with other countries (eg are they a BRIC, part of the commonwealth, EU etc)

● physical geography of the country - geology, terrain, climate etc

● preparation of the country - what warnings did they have, do they have recent experience of similar events, what preparations were in place to protect people &

● impacts - what did the event do (think numbers eg houses destroyed, people injured, types of infrastructure damaged etc)

● immediate rescue response - what did governments, businesses, people, charities etc do during and immediately after the event?

● recovery management - what did governments, businesses, people, charities etc do to clear up and recover from the event to try and return the country/area to normal.

Analysis - this is all YOUR OWN OPINION but must be backed up with facts/figures/evidence

○ how well prepared/resilient do you think the country was? Why?

○ what enabled/prevented them from being this prepared? Think about levels of development, governance, and wealth.

○ how well managed do you think the recovery effort was?

○ could this event have caused more/less damage? Why?

○ what lessons do you think can be learned from this event for the country it affected and for other countries?

Suggested websites:

https://reliefweb.int/disasters

https://www.usgs.gov/natural-hazards/earthquake-hazards/earthquakes

https://maps.mapaction.org/

https://www.dec.org.uk/latest-updates

Local & national government websites for the country

Charities and NGO’s such as Red Cross, Oxfam, CAFOD

Make sure you use reliable websites and always consider the accuracy of the information that you obtain.