Edexcel Unit 2 - Geographical Investigations (Must see information before the exam!)

Ok here's some revision notes from my head, use them if you like!

Physical:

The Associated British Ports (ABP) is for the development of Dibden bay as it offers:

-More money for the economy

-National need for more containerisation capacity

-Southhampton is well situated for container traffic

-Efficient container stacking techniques

The environmental stakeholders include RSPB and English nature. They claim the development of Dibden bay is a threat to the environment due to:

-Destruction of ecosystems and habitats

-It's proximity to the national park

-Dredging to make ports capable of holding container ships

The local stakeholders include The New Forest district council. They claim the development will bring:

-urbanisation of rural areas

-Up to 50% increase in traffic/congestion

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VENICE:

Where: Venice; Italy

Issues: (i) The pumping of methane gas from underneagth the city causes an isostatic change in land movement (ii) When the city was founded 1500 years ago, the Adriatic sea level was 2 metres lower.

Strategies: (i) Impermiable stone foundations (ii) The Moses flood barrier which costs 4.3bn Euro and consists of 79 steel gates to prevent the Adriatic high tide - hard engineering/mitigation strategy (iii) Although local conservationalists claim the development of the flood barrier threatens wild birds in the neighbouring lagoons

COTONOU - not CONTONOU!

Where: Benin; population 1 million

Issues: (i) The shoreline has retreated more than 400 metres within 24 years and 112 hectares of land have been lost to the sea - loss of agriculture (ii) Salinisation of Drinking water - increasing poverty levels and poor healthcare/diseases (iii) Ecosystems threatened

Strategiesi) Water desalinisation - allows the drinking of sea water (ii) Impregnated mostiquito nets (iii) Long term plans could include the disspersion of Cotonou by removing key features such as airports - relocating

Human:

Northern Fells Group (NFG)

-Located in the Lake district
-Aims to target the causes of social inequality
-A small 'bottom up' scheme

How will they target the existing inequality?

-Aim to target the causes of social exclusion
-Aim to map existing support services and identify groups
-Aim to idenity the unmet health and social needs for local residents

Strategies:

-Benefits awarness scheme: assists the elderly and those with disabilities
-Youth Initiative: networking with local/regional/national youth schemes

Technology in the Highlands and Islands

Where: Scottish Highlands; periphary

Why does inequality exist? (i) physical remoteness ; terrainare the main causes of inequality (ii) high cost of upgrading and replacing existing technology (iii) continues reliance on state subsidies

What has been done: (i) virtual Open University courses (ii) ICT-led education at the UHI Millenium institute (iii) rapid growth in community run websites (iv) social - increase in 3000 ICT related jobs

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I've done a Leicester case study for unequal spaces and Holderness for crowded coasts - won't include those notes there's too many!

How to assess schemes in reducing urban inequality:

-Mapping the distribution of CCTV
-Mapping the distribution of neighbourhood watch stickers and evidence of policing
-Street cleanliness survey
-Investigating improvements in accessibility
-Interviewing key players (i) town managers (ii) local charity workers

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Other useful notes to include in the exam:

-What is a shoreline management plan:

A SMP is planning to protect a stretch of coastline through the use of hard and soft engineering and sustainable solutions where possible:

Hard engineering:

Sea wall
Groynes
Gabions
Revetment
Rip-rap
Offshore breakwaters
Embankments

Soft Engineering:

Beach nourishment
Beach reprofiling
Dune replenishment
Development of natural defences
Offshore reefs
Coastal zoning

Advantages of hard engineering:

1) effective on a local scale through both absorbing and reducing wave energy and retaining local structures
2) Protection and reassurance for local residents
3) Increase in land available for human use
4) Maintaining beaches increases tourism, resulting in more money for the economy

Disadvantages:

1) Counter-productive - eg) Groynes stop stip formation and beaches further along the coast due to LSD
2) Requires continual, expensive maintainance - eg) sea walls cost betweeb £3000-£5000 per metre to upgrade
3) Cannot respond to predicted sea level change due to climate change
4) Ecosystems such as mangroves are preveted from responding to sea level change

Differential erosion: Different rates of erosion on glacial till/boulder clay due to wave refraction and subaerial processes; moves joints+geos due to hydraulic action

Wave refraction: The bending of waves; wave energy is dissipated on the side of a headland - 'high enerrgy coastline'

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Fieldwork + Research (Two 15 mark questions) - You can plan what you might get expected to answer. Physical aspects include:

Q) Describe the fieldwork and research you would undertake to investigate the changes in coastal land use ove time:

Primary: Land use maps, questionnaires (random, stratisfied, systematic), oral histories, interviews with focus groups such as town manager, footfalls to calculate how many people visited a shop over x amount of time

Seconday: Historic land use maps (pre 19th century), GIS (the merging of cartography and databse technology) - google earth (layers + ruler tool), local newspaper archives

Q) Describe the fieldwork and research you would undertake to investigate how crowded coasts have developed over time:

Primary: Land use maps, age of building survey, Pedestrian counts, Traffic flow patterns, radiating transect - from the shore inland at systematic intervals to reveal changing patterns, interviews

Secondary: Historical land use maps (pre 19th century), google earth (layers + ruler tool, essentially GIS), photographs and postcards, local newspaper archives

Q) Describe the fieldwork and research you would undertake to investigate environmental and ecologial impacts of coastal development:

Include case study of Mangroves, Salt marshes

Primary: measure water/air quality, environmental impact assessment (EIA), graffiti survey, transect of sand dunes, quadrats of vegetation cover + soil pH, ecological surveys, pollution survey, conflict matrix, traffic flow patterns, biodiversity surveys, cards with Vaseline to collect dust over a week!

Secondary: Land use maps, photographs and postcards, past surveys from RSPB, GIS mapping - google earth

Q) Describe the fieldwork and research you would undertake to investigate coastal management schemes and options :

Include case study on Holderness

Primary: cost benefit analysis (CBA), environmental impact assessment (EIA) - bi-polar indices, beach pollution surveys, environmental quality survey (EQS), trampling surveys, ecological surveys, transect - sample the changing biodiversity of an area (zonation)

Secondary: past visitor surveys, google earth - GIS, planning applications, local newspaper archives - defra.co.uk - ordnancesurvey.co.uk - hull.ac.uk

Q) Describe the fieldwork and research you would undertake to investigate coastal retreat :

Include Holderness case study + Cotonou (contrasting)

Primary: questionnaires (random, stratisfied, structured), evidence of coastal retreat (i) examine the remains of buildings/infrastructure (ii) evidence of cliff face features - rotational slumping (cliff foot features: undercutting, storm beach) (iii) indentifying LSD - wave height + frequency, local museums.

Secondary: Google earth (GIS coastal retreat), DEFRA.gov.uk, universities, local newspaper archives.

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How to structure the essay:

paragraph 1 - discuss question given

paragraph 2 - describe and justify the methods and techniques used to collect the data - "Fieldwork could be a mixture of quantative and qualitative approaches..."

paragraph 3 - describe and justify the techniques chosen to present and analyse findings - "Presentation will be influenced by the data type..."

paragraph 4 - describe and justify the techniques chosen to present the data - "Presentation and analysis could include transects plotted using kite diagrams. Simple statistics using mean/mode/median and Spearman's rank to find the RS valude, Chi-Squared, bi -polar indices.."

paragraph 5 - evaluate the strenths/limitations of the techniques chosen.

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GL with the exam tomorrow. It's afternoon so I'll get up and 5.30am and catch up on some last minute revision. :woo:

Reply 1

Luhin

wow this is great. your a lifesaver :smile:

Reply 2

Luhin

by the way when your answering the field work and research techniques do you say 'Then you can undertake a cost benefit analysis, considering whether the costs outweight the benefits and vice versa' then move on? what else could you say for example..

Reply 3

ajr71292

your the best! this is the extent of my geography revision so far! anyone else freaking out about biology tomorrow?

Reply 4

username337247

Wow, we learned to structure fieldwork questions completely differently.

Introduction
State Hypothesis 1 and write out fieldwork + research methods for it
Same for Hyp 2,3 and 4.
Conclusion

No wonder no one seems to be able to finish the paper in time!!! :frown: