Discovering Antarctica is an interactive website and resource developed by the British Antarctic Survey and the Royal Geographical Society. It has a host of features suitable for an introductory level to Antarctica (~11-14 years; UK key stage 3).
Discovering Antarctica
There is a number of resources, including ecosystems and food webs, science and exploration, tourism, challenges, and of course, introducing Antarctica. There are interactive activities designed for individual, group or pair work, many of which are in interactive multimedia format.
The website is not a scheme of work, but is a resource for teachers to dip into depending on their curriculum needs and priorities.
In a new article in the journal Nature, Stephen Rintoul and colleagues present two very different visions of Antarctica’s future, from the perspective of an observer looking back from 2070. In one vision, humanity continues to exploit Earth’s natural resources (such as fossils fuels) and does little to protect the environment, and in the other, there is a global movement towards conservation. The article shows how Antarctica will change over the next 50 years, should either of these two situations occur.
A major new review of the last glaciation of the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet has just been published by Quaternary Science Reviews. The special issue of the journal includes a suite of review papers involving an international team of experts regarding the last glaciation of the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet. This review, which comprises six review papers and an overview paper in a special issue of Quaternary Science Reviews, is now complete and all papers have been accepted for publication. As this is the most important, up to date and inclusive review ever to be attempted for the glaciation and recession of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, it represents a major step forward in our understanding of palaeo ice-sheet dynamics, provides a benchmark against which future research needs can be identified and highlighted, and provides a compilation of data unlike anything seen before, which can be used to test and calibrate numerical ice-sheet models.
You can learn more about Antarctica in the Antarctica StoryMap Series, a collection of four StoryMap Collections that explore Antarctica, it’s ecology and wildlife, how it is impacted by climate change and People in Antarctica.
This introductory lecture (21 minutes) introduces Antarctica, climate change and geopolitics with Dr Bethan Davies and Professor Klaus Dodds. This video is suitable for A-Level and post-16 students. You can also learn more about territorial claims in Antarctica in this excellent ESRI StoryMap.
Here, you can watch a more advanced lecture (1 hr) given by Dr Bethan Davies on climate change and her research in Antarctica. This video is suitable for undergraduate or postgraduate students or researchers.
