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Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano or Ay-uh-fyoti volcano

THE RGS have collated this Case Study:

A cloud of ash spread across the upper atmosphere creating havoc for those below is something you might expect in regions of volcanic activity, but flights grounded due to volcanic ash is not an announcement usually heard at airports across the UK.

Whilst the UK does have a number of ancient, extinct volcanoes for example Edinburgh is built on an extinct volcano called Arthur's seat and the Lake District was once a landscape of ‘supervolcanoes’, the country is no longer volcanically active and we are far from tectonic plate boundaries or ‘hotspots’.

However the UK is currently in the midst of a travel ‘crisis’. Thousands are stranded across the globe, economies suffering and certain perishable food stocks are running out, all because of a volcanic eruption in Iceland.

For most people in the UK natural hazards of this type are not the norm, but a unique combination of climatic conditions coupled with the volcano Eyjafjallajoekull erupting in Iceland, has brought the consequences of this volcanic eruption to the UK.

The UK and many northern European countries are now experiencing a sixth day of flight cancellations with millions of travellers being affected. Such travel chaos is the focus of much media attention; however there are many other geographical issues emerging, providing geography students with an array of useful material connected to why a relatively small volcanic eruption in one country can have such devastating consequences in others.

The disruption to global air travel has implications beyond the airline and tourist industry, with international trade and business significantly affected, for example the Kenyan flower industry has destroyed over a million roses due to cancelled flights. The export industry of flowers and vegetables represents over 20% of the entire Kenyan economy, so losses on this scale are causing job losses.

Below are some of the consequences of the eruption that can be looked at on a range of scales

• Icelandic impacts - Flooding from glacial meltwater; damage to agricultural land and livestock; health effects
• Travel disruptions – tourism; business; trade
• Economic implications at local, global, national scales – trade / business / workforce

Videos

• Problems being faced in Iceland 20/04/10

Economic impacts:

• Affects across Europe 20/04/10
• How the ash cloud is affecting European airports. Guardian20/04/2010
• Iceland volcano cloud: The economic impact
• Travel companies lose millions of pounds with UK tourism next to suffer. Independent 20/04/10
• Supermarket prices set to rise as business faces supply chain squeeze. 20/04/10
• Kenya's flower industry struggles with ash crisis. BBC19/04/10
• Iceland volcano: Can fruit and vegetable shortages turn us on to local food? Guardian ‘Word of mouth blog’ 19/04/10
• Insurers See Millions in Claims by Travelers. NYTimes19/04/10
• Iceland volcano: Kenya's farmers losing $1.3m a day in flights chaos. Guardian 18/04/10
• Volcanic ash cloud leaves shops facing shortages of fruit, vegetables and medicine. Telegraph 16/04/10

Envirnomental links

• Iceland volcano causes fall in carbon emissions as eruption grounds aircraft. Guardian 19/04/10
• Iceland volcano: imagine a world without planes. Guardian 20/04/10
• CORRECTION & APOLOGY: Planes or Volcano? – graphic to compare CO2 emissions

YEAR 10 REVISION

For each of the themes create a theme poster with something about each of the bullet points

RIVERS

• Explain the processes associated with rivers - three processes of erosion and three processes of transportation
• Identify the landforms that result from these processes - learn the formation of just ONE landform showing how the processes have led to the formation of this landform.
• Show how these landforms and processes affect the lives of people living along rivers
• How successful are different management approaches to the problem of flooding?
• Should we change our approach to river and floodplain management in the future?

CLIMATE CHANGE

• What is the greenhouse effect and how have people’s actions affected this process?
• How conclusive is the range of evidence for climate change?
• What would the possible effects of climate change be in MEDCs and LEDCs?
• How can technology be used and people’s lifestyles changed to reduce the impact of climate change?

TECTONICS

• What are plate margins and how does plate movement generate a variety of landforms? Learn just ONE plate margin to show how these processes generate the landforms at that plate margin.
• What are the primary and secondary hazards associated with volcanoes and earthquake zones?
• Why do people continue to live in hazard zones?
• How are volcanoes monitored and what does this tell us about their state?
• How might the effects of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes be reduced in MEDCs and LEDCs?

CHANGING POPULATIONS

• Where do people live in the world and why do they live there?
• What are the push / pull factors that produce rural – urban migration in LEDCs and urban-rural migration in many MEDCs?
• What are the factors that influence birth and death rates?
• How do differences in birth and death rates affect population numbers and structures in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe?
• How may these differences change in the future?

GLOBALISATION

• What is globalisation?
• How have changes in business and technology allowed increased interdependence between MEDCs and LEDCs?
• What are the benefits of globalisation and why do some see it as a threat?
• What are the impacts of globalisation on countries at different levels of development?
• What have been the social and economic impacts of the enlargement of the EU?
• How have newly industrialised countries such as India and China benefited from globalisation? How have patterns of trade hindered economic progress in the least developed LEDCs?

DEVELOPMENT

• How are global patterns of development identified?
• How is economic and social development measured and what are the global patterns?
• What are the regional patterns of economic and/or social development in one LEDC?
• What are the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and how are governments and nongovernmental organisations addressing them?
• What progress is being made by South Asian countries towards the MDGs?
• What progress is being made by sub-Saharan African countries towards the MDGs?