In October I blogged about the UN’s International Year of Planet Earth and ocean monitoring. If you’re a bit of a news junkie like me you may know that NBC’s Today Show is running a series called “Ends of the Earth” this week. 
The show’s anchors are in different locations: Ann Curry is climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and reporting on how its glaciers and snows have been dramatically shrinking and in turn endangering people’s water supply. Matt Lauer has been reporting from the Great Blue Hole near Belize about the health of coral reefs as well as the state of wildlife in Belize. Meredith Vieira has been in Australia talking about the significant drought there and pollution in Sydney Harbor. Al Roker has been reporting from geologically active Iceland.
If you’re interested in this–and it’s hard to be disinterested in the health of our planet–your University Library has resources for more information.
If you just want to follow the Ends of the Earth series you can go to the Today Show web site. You can also use the LexisNexis Academic database to find transcripts from the show (select “TV and Radio Broadcast Transcripts” and search for “nbc’s today show” and earth. If you sort the results by publication date you’ll see that the transcripts are posted in half-hour segments.
If you want to research topics related to the series, search the Library Catalog and/or article databases to find resources such as the book Darkening peaks: glacier retreat, science, and society (3rd-floor Main Collection GB2405 .D37 2008) and the American Scientist article “The Shrinking Glaciers of Kilimanjaro: Can Global Warming Be Blamed?” (Jul./Aug. 2007, v.95, no.4, pp.318-325).
Please ask a reference librarian for help in finding materials.
The series has ended as of Thursday, November 20th, except that Ann Curry is not yet back down the mountain. Her team decided to give up before reaching the summit due to altitude sickness.