Galapagos Islands

Is an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, 972 km (525 nmi) west of continental Ecuador.
The islands are geologically young and famed for their vast number of endemic species, which were studied by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle. His observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

Geography


Located in the eastern Pacific Ocean, 973 km (525 nmi; 605 mi) off the west coast of South America.

Weather


During the season known as the garua (June to November), the temperature by the sea is 22 °C (72 °F), a steady and cold wind blows from south and southeast, frequent drizzles (garuas) last most of the day, and dense fog conceals the islands. During the warm season (December to May), the average sea and air temperature rises to 25 °C (77 °F), there is no wind at all, there are sporadic, though strong, rains and the sun shines.

History


European discovery of the Galápagos Islands occurred when Spaniard Fray Tomás de Berlanga, the fourth Bishop of Panama, sailed to Peru to settle a dispute between Francisco Pizarro and his lieutenants. De Berlanga's vessel drifted off course when the winds diminished, and his party reached the islands on 10 March 1535. According to a 1952 study by Thor Heyerdahl and Arne Skjølsvold, remains of potsherds and other artifacts from several sites on the islands suggest visitation by South American peoples prior to the arrival of the Spanish. However, no remains of graves, ceremonial vessels and constructions have ever been found, suggesting no permanent settlement occurred at the time.
Over the course of a whole year, from September 1904, an expedition of the Academy of Sciences of California, led by Rollo Beck, stayed in the Galápagos collecting scientific material on geology, entomology, ornithology, botany, zoology and herpetology. Another expedition from that Academy was done in 1932 (Templeton Crocker Expedition) to collect insects, fish,shells, fossils, birds and plants.
The Galápagos became a national park in 1959, and tourism started in the 1960s, imposing several restrictions upon the human population already living on the island. However, opportunities in the tourism, fishing, and farming industries attracted a mass of poor fishermen and farmers from mainland Ecuador. In the 1990s and 2000s, violent confrontations between parts of the local population and the Galapagos National Park Service occurred, including capturing and killing giant tortoises and holding staff of the Galapagos National Park Service hostage to obtain higher annual sea cucumber quotas.

Egypt

Pre-historic Egypt

 In the 10th millennium BC, a culture of hunter-gatherers and fishers replaced a grain-grinding culture. Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 8000 BC began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara. Early tribal peoples migrated to the Nile River where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralized society. By about 6000 BC a Neolithic culture rooted in the Nile Valley. During the Neolithic era, several predynastic cultures developed independently in Upper and Lower Egypt. The Badarianculture and the successor Naqada series are generally regarded as precursors to dynastic Egypt. The earliest known Lower Egyptian site, Merimda, predates the Badarian by about seven hundred years. Contemporaneous Lower Egyptian communities coexisted with their southern counterparts for more than two thousand years, remaining culturally distinct, but maintaining frequent contact through trade.

Ancient Egypt

A unified kingdom was founded c. 3150 BC by King Menes, leading to a series of dynasties that ruled Egypt for the next three millennia.Egyptian culture flourished during this long period and remained distinctively Egyptian in its religion, arts, language and customs. The first two ruling dynasties of a unified Egypt set the stage for the Old Kingdom period, c. 2700–2200 BC., which constructed many pyramids, most notably the Third Dynasty pyramid of Djoser and the Fourth Dynasty Giza Pyramids.

Modern Egypt

In 1906, the Dinshaway Incident prompted many neutral Egyptians to join the nationalist movement. After the First World War, Saad Zaghlul and theWafd Party led the Egyptian nationalist movement to a majority at the local Legislative Assembly. When the British exiled Zaghlul and his associates to Malta on 8 March 1919, the country arose in its first modern revolution. The revolt led the UK government to issue a unilateral declaration of Egypt's independence on 22 February 1922.

Geography

At 1,001,450 square kilometers (386,660 sq mi), Egypt is the world's 30th-largest country. In land area, it is about the same size as all Central America, twice the size of Spain, four times the size of the United Kingdom

Classwork

pg 128 - 131


What are the listhoperic plates also called?
Tectonic plates


What do all plates have in common?
A part of the crust and a part of the upper mantle.


Name 3 lithosperic plates:
Oceanic plates
Mixed plates
Continental plates


Match the principal plates with the 3 kinds of lithosperic plates:


Pacific, Nazca = Oceanic plates
African Eurasian, Indo-Australian, Antartic = Continental plates
Indo-Australian, African Eurasian, Antartic = Mixed plates


Where is the boundary of South American and African plate?
In the Atlantic Ocean


What is special about the continental plates?
That they are made of continental crust.


What happens with the movement of the plates?

Divergent boundaries

Convergent boundaries

Transform faults

What is the most important?
Transform faults

volcanoes in ecuador

volcanos & earthquakes

Volcanoes: are openings or crevices in earth's crust throught wich materials are ejected from the earth's interior at a very high temperature.Magma is held un der pressure by the earth's internal forces,it rises up through a pipe & comes ouy trough a crater  and ejected materials like ashes lava, and gases.