"Georgia on my mind"

Yesterday Mark made a sortie into Georgia and added a 'bonus' state to our American experience! However, as his transit through the state will be brief, I will dispense with the temptation to 'do' Georgia in an evening and leave you to follow the link above to Wikipedia (which may well take you all evening to read anyway!)

Now, have you been paying attention these last six weeks? Look at the map of the US states - can you name in sequence all the states which Mark has passed through? It seems easy to me now but if I'm honest, I don't know if I'd have got them all right six weeks ago. Shame on me but then, that's not what we 'do' in geography classrooms these days. If you've been following the Geo Blog along the route or even just delving into it now and again, I really hope you have gained an impression of what a varied and interesting classroom subject it is these days. 'Geography is everywhere' is a truism which Mark's trip has certainly shown. Over the last six months have looked at a whole range of physical and human geography topics with a bit of environmental geography thrown in here and there for good measure. In the last few days alone the topics have ranged through hurricanes, coastal features, weather, beach resorts, forestry, rivers. And today, from a quick look at the route Mark took yesterday, the focus is definitely on land use....

As Mark cycled through the north of Florida on Tuesday, the landscape was dominated by both state managed and commercial forests. Over the border and into Georgia, that theme continues along the valley of the Flint river towards Bainbridge. Closer inspection reveals this to be an area of well managed forest. The trees are in clear 'stands' of similar aged/species of tree, there are clear felled areas with patches of trees left for habitat conservation and there are some area of young trees (in rows) on the left of the image.
There is also a mysterious line cutting right through the forest. My first thoughts on this were that as it is about 40m wide, it could be a fire break and then I zoomed in for a good look and spotted these....



so on second thoughts I wonder if the cleared line serves two purposes - fire break and power line route.

Meanwhile to the west of the river valley and further north beyond Bainbridge, a completely new form of land use is appearing .....
Mile upon mile of pivot irrigation circles. Although we have seen these at many locations along Mark's route - notably in Iran, Australia, New Zealand and western USA, I don't think I've ever seen densities like these. Their presence suggests that although this area receives about 1300mm of rain (that's about equivalent to west central Scotland), the high levels of evapotranspiration because of high summer temperatures will reduce the efficacy of the precipitation and so necessitate irrigation.

A bit of research has produced a figure of just over 3 million acres of cultivated land in Georgia, half of which is irrigated. As for the likely crops... well, if Las Cruces way back in New Mexico was the centre of pecan production, this part of Georgia specialises in peanuts. The long growing season (275 days) means that cultivation is almost a year round activity and many farmers can produce more than one crop from their land in a year. In addition to peanuts, the farmers of south west Georgia produce a huge range of vegetables as described here. That last link produced another which finally led to the information I wanted....

"Nearly 10,000 of these center-pivot irrigation systems cover 1 million acres of productive farmland in south Georgia. Tapping the deep, pure waters of the Upper Floridan aquifer, their wells pump not only water but also dollars into the region. The additional growth of high-quality peanuts, sweet corn, cotton and animal feeds, made possible as these irrigation systems fill in rainfall gaps, means dollars for the local economy." And here is you want to read it is the source.
It makes for a most interesting pattern of land use right alongside the route which Mark followed yesterday. From ground level, however, the view would have been more like this field of peanuts being irrigated by centre pivot irrigation.....












Hopeful - what a lovely name for the furthest north spot that Mark reached in Georgia! Turn right and head south and east and the land use changes again. There is still cultivation but less irrigation...

Having then crossed the well wooded valley of the Ochlockonee, the last GPS 'fix' yesterday was just north of Thomasville which you can enjoy a flavour of below...

Meanderings....

I am writing the blog late today as I have spent ages on-line this evening booking tickets for going to Paris! If you are reading this and you are also to be in Paris, I look forward to meeting you and celebrating together Mark's most amazing achievement. But to get back to yesterday....The first meandering mentioned in the title of today's posting is the route which Mark took yesterday. Having imagined him to be on a course due east to the Atlantic, it was a bit of a surprise seeing him suddenly change direction and head north. All was explained later in the web diary ... the wee detour is to add up some extra miles... as you do when you've already done about 16,500! The benefit of the change of direction is also that it lets us look at a different sort of environment to the one we've been looking at in the last couple of days.

However, we've not quite finished with coasts yet. ..

One of the features I have noticed along this Emerald Coast in Florida is a number of air force bases and yesterday, shortly after leaving Panama City, Mark cycled past Tyndall Air Force base.

It takes in 29,000 acres of land, extending well to the south east of the runway complex.

Seawards of the base is another set of barrier islands as described in yesterday's posting and separated from the mainland by the sheltered waters of St Andrew Sound ..... Further along the coast, almost at the point where Mark headed inland, is another significant feature of coastal deposition. The feature is a spit and as far as students of geography are concerned, spits are to coasts as ox bow lakes are to rivers. Few have seen them but they can all write about them!

Spits are formed when the currents which take beach material along a coastline by a process known as longshore drift, continue on beyond a point where the coast changes direction. This could be at a headland as here in Florida or it can be at the mouth of an estuary like the Humber in England where it has resulted in the formation of Spurn Head. Sometimes, as here at Cape San Blas, the spit may become 'recurved' if prevailing winds and tides drive the sediment back towards the shore....

There is a short animation here which shows how spits are formed .

This aerial view of the spit which is part of the St Joseph State park in Florida shows the typical features of parallel dune ridges at the recurved tip. and the image below from Flickr shows the seaward side of the spit looking north.

Mark turned inland at Port St Joe opposite the tip of the spit and very quickly left the coastal environment behind. Beaches quickly give way to forest in this part of Florida. As a state, Florida is well forested. It has 25,000 square miles of forest which is half of the state's area. The forests are in both private and state ownership producing 650 million cubic metres of timber and a huge number of timber products annually. Surprisingly (to me at any rate) Florida's highest value agricultural product is trees. Over $16.6 billion is infused into Florida's economy from the manufacturing and distribution of forest products each year.

The first part of the route inland took Mark through many miles of commercial forest with evidence in places of clearfelling and reafforestation. As he approached Gaskins Still and Wewahitchka, the commercial forests gave way to the swamp natural forests on the floodplain of the Apalachicola river and its tributary the Chipola. And here are the second 'meanderings' - this time on the river itself...
After all these months of looking at rivers across the globe, I feel confident I can leave you to explain what you are seeing here! However, what you won't see from this altitude is that there are many small rafts on the river Apalachicola... They are floating bee hives and they are linked to a very unique product of the region - Tupelo honey! The town of Wewawitchika is the global centre of Tupelo honey production as explained here.... and here the website of the company who dominate production.

North of Wewawitchika lies the Dead Lakes so named bacause deposition from the Apalachicola blocked the mouth of the Chipola causing it to dam up and flood its valley. Dead Lakes State Recreation Area activities include hiking, fishing, boating, camping and nature viewing. Among the wildlife of the park are foxes, cotton rats, racoons, deer , beavers, turtles, snakes and alligators. A variety of trees can be found in the park, including longleaf pines, magnolia and cypress trees.

>Beyond Dead Lakes Mark meandered his way north toward the border with Georgia where he stopped last night just south of Lake Seminole at the town of Sneads. Lake Seminole was formed by damming the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers which flow into the lake from the north and east respectively. The Jim Woodruff lock and dam impounds the lake from which the main outflow is the Apalachicola river.

Life's a beach!

Yesterday's route was one long beach! It started at Navarre beach and ended at Panama City Beach via Wynnehaven, Fort Walton, Destin, Miramar, Blue Mountain, Grayton, Seagrove, Alys, Hollywood and Laguna (all plus 'beach' in their name!). This Gulf coastline of Florida's 'Pan handle' is known as the Emerald Coast and is an almost continuously built up string of beachfront developments facing on to white quartz sand and turquoise water (when the weather is fine).....
Incidentally, I came across this bit of trivia about the Florida Panhandle.... shortly after the Civil War, residents of Florida's peninsula considered ceding the state's entire western arm to Alabama for a million dollars. Alabama's leaders decided that the land was "a sand bank and gopher region," and not worth the money! As a result, the Panhandle remained a part of Florida. and is now a major source of revenue for the state today.


But to get back to those glorious beaches.... looking at this coastline reminds me that we have actually seen quite a few contrasting coastlines along Mark's route and that this might be a good time to do a bit of revision! When we study the physical features of coastlines in geography, they are usually classified as either coastlines of erosion or coastlines of deposition. Mark has 'taken' us to some fine examples of both. Do you remember back in Australia the Bunda Cliffs on the Southern Ocean described in this posting on the 19th and a few days later the cove at Ellison described in this posting on the 24th?


And then there was Cape Catastrophe at the south end of the Eyre peninsula which was described here in the entry fo 25th November .











They are all fine examples of coastlines which are being carved out by a variety of erosion processes.

Then, still in Australia, there was the lovely Coorong at the mouth of the River Murray where prehistoric sand dunes had been inundated by rising seas. You can read about it again in this posting - a reminder that some coastlines are the result of deposition...... which brings us back to the Emerald coast and a coastline which looks not dissimilar to the coastline at the Coorong and may, in fact, have formed in a similar way. The barrier islands of the Gulf coast such as Santa Rosa island offshore from Navarre where Mark overnighted on Monday are a series of sandy islands running parallel to the mainland. Between the islands and the mainland is a tidal lagoon. The jury is out on the origin of barrier islands but they tend to develop on coasts with powerful waves and a low tidal range. One theory is that they formed originally off shore below the low tide mark and that they have 'rolled' progressively on-shore. Another theory (the one favoured for the Coorong) is that post glacial sea level rise partly submerged old beach ridges.

Either way, the Emerald coastline of Florida is lovely..... with a whole sequence of beach resorts lining both the mainland and the barrier islands, linked one with the other by a number of causeways and bridges. There is little to distinguish one resort from the next (though I daresay their municipal authorities might disagree!). Here is just a flavour of some of them starting at Navarre beach and heading east along the coast......
.....towards Fort Walton




...past Okaloosa and the harbour and beach at Destin



which you can see more of below...

..and the golf resort residences which look pretty smart ....
even if the bunkers are a bit tricky!

Although continuously built up for almost 200 miles, this coastal playground is little more than a narrow strip when viewed from the air. Only a mile inland, natural woodlands take over from the flamboyant land uses of the coast.... Above is Point Washington State Forest with what was at first a puzzling, rather 'blotchy' appearance until I read ..An important management tool used on the Point Washington State Forest is the prescribed burning program. The use of controlled fire in managing timber, wildlife and ecological resources on Point Washington State Forest is necessary for the Division of Forestry to fulfill its goal of protecting and managing Florida's forest resources. Objectives of the prescribed burning program include reducing undergrowth and maintaining biodiversity.


.... and finally, still on the Emerald coast, Mark's stop over location for the 28th at Panama City beach...

Nice beach ....shame about the buildings!

Day to state ratio slipping!

Mark's day to state ratio has slipped - only two yesterday! He started the day in Alabama and ended up in Florida- the state with an Atlantic coast. Yes!!

... and here, for those who prefer, is the 'big picture'. In only a few days Mark will be able to dip his toes in the Atlantic and add another ocean to his list. In fact, by the time he reaches Paris, Mark will be able to 'tick off' four continents and four oceans. And they are........?!

Like Mississippi on Saturday, Mark's passage through Alabama was short. Again this is because of the configuration of the state boundary...

Just as Louisiana 'eats' into the coastal lands of Mississippi, so the pan handle of Florida pushes west, leaving Alabama with only a 65 mile wide stretch of Gulf coastline. But what a coastline! here's just a sample ...
Mark's day began yesterday with a circuit of Mobile Bay. The city of Mobile itself is Alabama's only major port but it serves not only as a seaport but also as a 'break of bulk' port at the entrance to an extensive navigable inland waterway system which links the Gulf to the midwest.

Alabama, like Mississippi, suffered considerable economic hardship in the years between The Civil War and WW2. However, diversification of its economy into manufacturing and mineral extraction and more recently into aerospace and high tech industry has meant that it has fared rather better than its neighbour to the west. An interesting recent development has been the choice of Mobile by a German company to locate a $3.7billion steel plant to the north of the city. At a time when few developed countries can compete in steel production, this is an interesting choice of location but is almost entirely the consequence of the need to meet local demand. Car manufacturing is currently a boom industry in Alabama. By 2009 Alabama will overtake Michigan (Detroit) as the major car manufacturing state in the US.

Approaching the top of Mobile Bay, Mark passed McDuffie island on his right where the largest coal and iron ore importing facility on the Gulf coast is located , much of it doubtless destined for the steel furnaces.....

At the head of the bay, before crossing the causeway, is Battleship Memorial Park

Away from Mobile and down the east shore of the of the bay, there are some rather attractive waterfront residential areas with the inevitable out-of-town shopping mall - which, if you look carefully, even has a street named after one of its stores. Watch out for an Asda Avenue near you!!

The second half of yesterday's route took Mark cross country to the Alabama/Florida border at Paradise Beach and on into Florida.... ...which by my reckoning is the eighth US state which Mark has visited on this trip.


First 'port of call' in Florida was Pensacola, gateway to the Gulf holiday coastline of Florida.

The Gulf coastline in west Florida is fringed by a line of barrier islands and glorious beaches. Mark overnighted yesterday at Navarre... Across the lagoon lies the barrier island of Santa Rosa with Pensacola beach....and some rather nice beach front residences....


I should really discuss the formation of barrier beaches but it can wait until tomorrow...