Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Doesn't this sound familiar? Sixty seconds in a minute? And for good reason. The system that you
use to tell time goes back to the same Sumerian base-6 arithmetic that Hipparchus used to divide up a
circle and also the world. Hmmm . . . there are 24 hours in a day. Think 24 being evenly divisible by
6 is just a coincidence? No way.
Applied Geography: Using GPS to save Asia's
tigers
Press a button on a GPS and it gives your precise latitude and longitude. What's a GPS?
It stands for Global Positioning System and involves a hand-held device about the size
of the remote control for your TV. Courtesy of the U.S. Defense Department, a number of
satellites orbit Earth and constantly calculate their precise locations. When you activate
a GPS, it acquires location data from 3 or 4 of those satellites and uses it to calculate its
own location in degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude and longitude. It's an amazing
piece of technology that has all kinds of applications. Take saving the tiger, for instance.
Asian tigers are highly endangered in the wild because human activities (mainly farming
and forestry) have reduced their natural habitat. Governments in affected areas are striv-
ing to create natural tiger preserves, but a major problem is that nobody knows exactly
how much habitat a tiger needs to behave like a normal tiger. Recently, researchers were
able to stun a wild tiger and attach to it a collar that contains a GPS and data recorder.
Every so often the device activates, calculates the tiger's location, and records it. After a
couple of weeks, the collar detaches and sends a signal that enables the researchers to
find it. What they collect, of course, are data that allows them to map the animal's wan-
derings and therefore get a good idea of exactly how much land a tiger needs.
