Snowpatches and satellites

Posted by & filed under Mountains & hills, Science, July 25 2023.

Overview For many years, the extent of snow cover in the Scottish Highlands has been recorded and documented by groups of ground-based observers from a volunteer community of ‘citizen scientists’. This winter snow cover melts in the spring and summer months, leaving behind remnant snowpatches, some of which have shown themselves to be ‘perennial’, lasting… Read more »

What is the “truth” in COVID-19 data?

Posted by & filed under Data, Science, January 19 2022.

1. Truth in Data In a blog posting from April 2020, I discussed the development of a visualisation of data related to the global COVID-19 pandemic. In the comments below the blog posting, I mentioned that there are several issues with the data in terms of accuracy and what the ‘truth’ of the data actually… Read more »

A GIS visualisation of the COVID-19 pandemic

Posted by & filed under IT & the Internet, Science, Software engineering, April 10 2020.

  One thing that has become noticeable in the current COVID-19 pandemic is a plethora of web-based visualisations about the impact of the virus. Most of these are line graphs showing exponential or vaguely bell-shaped curves and peaks typical of mathematical models of the spread of diseases. Many of these visualisations show the spatial, or… Read more »

GIS MSc – part two

Posted by & filed under IT & the Internet, Mountains & hills, Personal, Science, Software engineering, August 24 2017.

The three-year part-time remote learning UNIGIS UK MSc course I recently finished had two very different components – the first two years consisted of teaching modules of learning materials and assessed assignments (see my earlier blog posting about this here), and the third year involved the planning, development and writing of a dissertation, which is… Read more »

Were there glaciers in the mountains of Scotland as recently as the mid-19th century?

Posted by & filed under Mountains & hills, Science, February 25 2014.

New research Two academic papers have been published recently in the journal ‘The Holocene‘: Harrison S, Rowan A V, Glasser N F, Knight J, Plummer M A, Mills S C. 2014. Little Ice Age glaciers in Britain: Glacier-climate modelling in the Cairngorm mountains. The Holocene 24. 135-140. Abstract: http://hol.sagepub.com/content/24/2/135. Full text of paper (PDF; access… Read more »

A Zoologist on Baffin Island, 1953

Posted by & filed under Books, Mountains & hills, Science, September 24 2013.

I have been interested in the Canadian island of Baffin Island since ‘Frozen Fire: a Tale of Courage‘ by James Houston was a set text when I went to school. Baffin Island, which straddles the Arctic Circle in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago is in many ways the archetypal ‘Arctic’ location – it has sea ice,… Read more »

Garbh Choire Mòr

Posted by & filed under Mountains & hills, Science, October 11 2012.

For several years now, there has been a secretive and remote location in the Scottish mountains that I have been trying to get to. This location is Garbh Choire Mòr, a corrie at the western end of the larger An Garbh Choire in the Cairngorm mountains, between Braeriach and Cairn Toul, and it is notable… Read more »

The map is not the territory

Posted by & filed under Books, IT & the Internet, Military/Aircraft, Mountains & hills, Science, January 19 2012.

1. The divide in the discipline of Geography Geography is a somewhat schizophrenic discipline. Is it a ‘social’ science or is it a ‘hard’ science? The two aspects of the discipline have been in conflict since the ‘quantitative revolution‘ of the 1950s and 1960s within Geography, and the ‘hard’ science of Geography is represented in… Read more »

A snow book, northern Scotland

Posted by & filed under Books, Mountains & hills, Science, December 22 2011.

Adam Watson has been continuously observing and collecting data about snow in the north-east of Scotland (and particularly in the Cairngorm mountains) since the 1930s, and this important book represents the culmination of that activity. It will have a strong claim in the future to being the standard reference work in the discipline of research… Read more »