Looking for Regional Geography Readings? Simply click on the link that corresponds to your module. When you see the first 10-ish posts, if you are still looking for more options, you can click on “OLDER POSTS” to find more possible readings.
If you want thematic tags or some country-specific resources, scroll to the bottom of the site for an alphabetical list of pertinent geographic topics and countries.
“Hunger levels have increased across Africa over the last decade—In every region of Africa, hunger is more prevalent than a decade ago.The chart shows the increase in the share of the population that is undernourished, comparing 2014 and 2024 (the most recent year available). These estimates come from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.The situation across Africa is dire. In Middle Africa, where hunger is most acute, almost 1 in 3 people are undernourished. In Eastern Africa, the figure is roughly 1 in 4. Across Africa as a whole, it’s 1 in 5. This marks a reversal of a longer positive trend: over the preceding decades, hunger had been falling across much of the world, including parts of Africa. That progress has now stalled or gone into reverse. Conflict, extreme weather, and the economic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic have all contributed.” SOURCE: by Esteban Ortiz-Ospina from OUR WORLD IN DATA
By many metrics, things are improving across the world, but it is important to not when they are not. What areas aren’t seeing improvements? In what ways are issues getting worse? For which populations and in which places are these issues most noticeable? These are questions geographers need to ask and the folks at Our World In Data are an invaluable resource for geography educators to not simply rely on what were learned back in college or narratives we hear in the news, but using current information about how the world actually is today. Hunger and nutrition from 2000-2014, most of Africa saw incredible progress, but since 2014, progress has stalled. Still better that than 2000-levels of hunger, but sustained progress is certainly a hope for the continent that is currently the least developed. What to learn why? Here is an article from Health Policy to explain these complex regional patterns that include economic, environmental, and political dynamics.
“Ever wondered what would happen if Oceania united? This Outer Side video dives deep into the potential unification of the Pacific islands, exploring the geopolitical and power a unified Oceania could hold. This video covers the cultural, geographical challenges and benefits to climate change of creating a single country from this vast and diverse region. Imagine a world where the vast, scattered islands of Oceania, from the oceanic coastlines, remote coastlines to the notable countries, are no longer separate entities. A world where a single flag flies over a united continent, stretching across the Pacific. What kind of power would emerge from such a union today? Join Outer Side as we journey through this captivating ‘what if’ scenario, exploring the untold story of a unified Oceania. What if, one day, the people of Oceania decided to become one?” SOURCE: Outer Side
People love counterfactual histories. What if Europeans didn’t find the New World? What if the U.S. didn’t drop the bomb to end WWII? What if the South won the Civil War? These counterfactual histories force of to consider plausible scenarios, consider how connections and networks would be different if a single detail were different. I think counterfactual geographies is also a help us to reconsider why things are the way they are.
Oceania is an incredibly vast and diverse region, with four main regions and thousands of islands across the Central and South Pacific Oceans. Understanding the complexity and many different parts that make up Oceania is necessary to successfully complete the related coursework. If all these smaller parts united into one, it would become the most powerful multi-cultural region in the world.
Questions to Ponder: What advantages for some island nations would there be to be a part of a larger Oceania? What geographic forces have prevented something like this from happening in the past?
“Most people living in the region are Christians (62%), while Muslims make up about a third of the population. Religiously unaffiliated people and followers of other religions (which include African traditional religions) each account for roughly 3% of the overall population.” SOURCE: Pew Research
This is significant because Sub-Saharan Africa is a younger population with a higher fertility rate so most of global population growth will be coming from this critical region. This chart is an excellent stimulus with data that could be used for multiple choice or a free response questions to get students to evaluate content that they haven’t yet seen. The chart below would change the scale of analysis to then see how religion has changed in a few highlighted countries, which would be an starting point for more research. Which country’s story sparks some curiosity in you?
The next big earthquake will inevitably come, but predicting exactly when a giant earthquake will come is impossible. The three-and-a-half minute CBC video explains why multiple pieces and tears complicates our predictive abilities to forecast plate tectonics down to the year; focused on the impact that this earthquake will have on southern British Columbia. That physical certainty combined with temporal uncertainty makes for difficult messaging; it’s thought to expect people to brace for impending doom if it might not come in their lifetimes. That uncertainty leads many to not prepare for it as an inevitable because it easier to ignore. This 2015 New Yorker article also nicely lays out the context of the “really big one.”
Below is a PBS video that spends the first 7 minutes of the geographic context of the impending “Big One” that will hit Cascadia (another name for the coastal Pacific northwest with the Cascade Mountains). The remainder video focuses on personal and communal emergency preparation which requires a lot of situational awareness. For example, are you in a new building or an old building? Are you in higher floors of a tall building? What utility connections might be damaged? Knowing your own personal geography helps to inform your safety plan.
As a geography educator who loves trivia and finding ways to make spatial thinking entertaining, games like Geoguessr and Timeguessr are right in my wheelhouse. These videos replicate the competitive experience using spatial information, using aerial photography zoomed in to a city and slowly zooming out to see if you can recognize the city from up above. Recognizing the coast or river is often an important way to discern which city you are analyzing. Can you tell the climate from the vegetation patterns? How is the city laid out? How is this layout similar to other cities that were created in the same region? What does the transportation network say about the public policies and technological context of this city? So many clues, but only 15 second to process all of it.
Fair warning, the hard ones are quite hard. I wouldn’t recommend showing these entire video in front of a classroom without some editing…choose the examples that are more locally relevant to your students and at their difficulty level. If you do need some more difficult examples, the state capitals example is quite hard.
If you are ready to branch out from “just” cities, try this video on the 20 landmarks in the United States.
And another one…just because. Find the ones that you like, with the formal and difficult that work for your situation.
This isn’t JUST about carrots and carrot production. We see a similar amount of intensive, mechanistic inputs needed for large-scale production, whether it is in the corn fields of the Midwest, or the oranges groves of Florida. Too often we fail to recognize the sophistication that is a part of every step in the agricultural, industrial, marketing, and distribution of the foods that we eat. The video is long, but the section from 1:50-3:00 that shows how humans aren’t needed in the harvesting process.
The marketing and branding behind “baby carrots” is brilliant, and the euphemism conceals with unnaturalness of the entire process.
Chokepoints are to the global economy as referees are to a sporting event…when things are running smoothly you don’t notice a thing, but when they are the topic of conversation, you know there are some problems. In 2026, chokepoints became a far more relevant geographic constraint on global trade than we’d prefer, because the Persian Gulf is at the center of discussion for geopolitics and economics. People I’d never expect start talking to me about the Kharg Island with opinions about an island that they didn’t know existed one month ago. Chokepoints aren’t a problem…until you start choking. Below are some videos to give good context, one about all the chokepoints around the world, and the second focusing on the Straits of Hormuz (not current events, but geographic contraints).
I’m deeply fascinated by the Sahara, but since most of my focus in academic geography is on human geography and the settled portions of the planet, this often goes unaddressed even though it explains much about the world we live in. The main landforms of the desert are dunes (ergs), desert pavement (regs), and mountains that rise above the windswept features of ergs and regs. As it’s so inhospitable, it’s hard to imagine that is was that prior to 5,000 years ago the Sahara was more like a savanna with more life (Axial tilt shifts, and other climatic factors shaped this).
Prior to the Sahara as we know it today, the area occupied by dunes now is often in old lake beds because sand (like water) settles into basins. The mountains today bear witness of larger human settlements with art like cave drawings preserved in the high mountain plateaus. The largest lake today, Lake Chad, is a small remnant of what once was, now called Lake Mega Chad…no, I’m not kidding. Like the Great Salt Lake is a remnant of a much larger Lake Bonneville, and still prone to changes, Lake Chad has continued to dry up, losing over 90% of it’s surface area since the 1950.
An artistic rendition of a greener North Africa over 5,000 years ago with more lakes. SOURCE: Countere Magazine
A geographic concept that becomes incredibly important to understanding during war or any armed conflict is the concept of scale. The same issue looks quite different when you see the issue primarily through a local lens, national lens, regional lens, or a global lens. Elements of a war operate of all of these scales and jump scales.
Let’s first take the example of the Syrian Civil War as a template for seeing war operate on various scales. The Syrian Civil War began with the regional spark of the Arab Spring, but it took a different form in Syria because of the distinct national geographic characteristics. The urban warfare in cities like Aleppo and Damascus were intensely local, but regional powers like Saudi Arabia and Iran were taking sides that favored their particular geopolitical objectives. Then global powers like the United States, Russia, and China were also involved as this local war, with regional impacts, started to have global ramifications.
Given that a war operates on many scales, a geographic analysis of any conflict will require us to consider so many thematic factors such as the historical, political, economic, cultural, demographic, and environmental context. Even after considering all that, we’ll need to look at those issues at a variety of scales to understand the full complexity of the situation. Actions that might not make sense at one scale often have a logic that is understandable at a different scale.
GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION 