Review of the Geography Lecture at Lincoln University

On a mild mid-September night a fortnight ago, we went to the first Geographical Association lecture in the new academic year, which was offered to all sixth form geography students.  It was based at Bishop Grosseteste University, about an hour away from school. We left at 6pm on Thursday 14th September from LMS and returned to school at around 10:30pm (after stopping off at McDonalds on the way back from the lecture, which was a bonus to the trip!).

The lecture was about Megacities and Earthquake risk: disaster in the making, which we found an extremely interesting topic. Additionally, the lecturer, Dr Martin Degg was highly engaging throughout the lecture, which made it a very beneficial for our course outline, which covers earthquakes.  Moreover, we learnt a lot of very interesting facts, for example: a ‘Megacity’ must have a population of over 10 million people; a hazard only becomes a disaster when it effects vulnerable people and due to an increase in urbanisation, many megacities are developing in areas with much seismic activity – putting more and more lives at risk.

The case study discussed was that of Mexico City. Although 300,000km away from the nearest plate boundary, Mexico City is particularly effected by earthquakes as it is built upon a dried out lake bed, meaning that its foundations are weak due to unstable sub-soil which amplifies the earthquake’s effect.  The knowledge we gained through this lecture will enable us to adapt it to the course in the upcoming weeks. Overall, we found the lecture very beneficial and will be planning on going to some more throughout the course of the next academic year, as it is a great opportunity to get a broader insight into the subject.

By Aragon Greenway and Zoe Bertuzzi (12AJC)