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.
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.
“A decade of migration through the eyes of a German city. Ten years ago Germany opened its borders to more than a million people at the height of Europe’s so-called migrant crisis. A decade later, that warm welcome has cooled as issues of culture, integration and national identity spark fierce debate across the continent. With German elections just days away, the BBC has revisited one migrant family and the city they landed in, to see how life has changed since 2015 – and what their experience says about the way Europeans now view migration. On this episode, Jonny Dymond is joined by the BBC’s Berlin correspondent Jess Parker, and Mark Lowen, the BBC’s former southern Europe correspondent who covered the refugee crisis for years.” SOURCE: BBC World Service podcast, also available on Podbay.
This episode of The Global Story explores the growing political tension across Europe over migration. It highlights how countries such as Germany, Italy, and Hungary experience migration differently depending on location, border access, economic strength, and political climate. Southern European states serve as frontline entry points for migrants crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa and the Middle East, while northern and western countries often become destination regions due to stronger economies and labor markets. This creates uneven social and political pressures within the European Union. The topic connects directly to regional geography themes such as spatial distribution, core and periphery dynamics, political boundaries, demographic change, and globalization. It also links to the Americas. Migration pressures in Middle America and South America, and border debates in the United States, reflect similar geographic patterns where proximity, economic opportunity, and political policy shape flows of people. This resource fits well into our study of North, Middle, and South America and Europe because it shows how migration is shaped by location, economic disparity, and geopolitical relationships rather than occurring randomly.
Questions to Ponder:
How does Europe’s physical geography, especially coastlines and border proximity, shape migration routes?
Why do wealthier northern European countries often experience migration differently than southern entry-point states?
How do migration debates in Europe compare to border and migration issues in the Americas?
In what ways do political borders both restrict and encourage the movement of people?
In this TED talk, global strategist, Parag Khanna explains how urbanization is reshaping economic and social geography, particularly in major regions like North America, South America, and Europe. Geography plays a key role in where megacities develop, often forming along coastlines, rivers, and transportation corridors that allow trade and movement of people. For example, cities like New York, São Paulo, and London grew because of their strategic access to waterways and global trade routes, which made them economic hubs. This connects directly to our textbook discussions of how physical geography influences settlement patterns, economic development, and cultural interaction. Additionally, Europe’s dense network of cities reflects its long history of trade and political fragmentation, while the Americas show patterns shaped by colonization, migration, and resource distribution. This TED Talk helps visualize how geographic location, transportation, and economic opportunity continue to shape regional development and globalization today, reinforcing the importance of spatial relationships in understanding regional geography.
Questions to Ponder:
Why do many of the largest cities develop near coastlines or rivers?
How does urbanization affect economic inequality between regions within the same country?
Map showing the countries bombed by Iran in the days after the death of Khamenei. SOURCE: CNN
In writing this with the assumption that you’ve all seen the headlines about the US/Israeli strikes on Iran that led to the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Post of my students are currently asking “now what?” Things are still murky as I’m writing this, but the news often will make no sense without the regional geographic context. Understanding the Sunni/Shia divide is vital to understanding why Iran, after being attacked, bombed at least a dozen countries including many other Muslim countries. They are expending their weapons without an ability to replenish their supplies and facing. They’ve threatened to attack any ship going through the Straits of Hormuz, and which doesn’t mean much if we don’t understand what a choke point is, and why their are economic vital, and geopolitically strategic. Fellow Gulf countries like Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are seeing this as a closure as a maritime crisis that will profoundly economically damage them.
The economic and political importance of a choke point is highlighted in a crisis that closes it. SOURCE: CNBC
Nine U.S. bases in the Middle East have been bombed in drone attacks and while it is hard to assess in “the fog of war,” satellite imagery shows us the extent of the damage. Of course this has many domestic ramifications in the United States that are significant, but as a geographic analysis of this situation pulls the focus more to Middle Eastern impacts, starting with the question, “who will be in charge of Iran two months from now?” There are many possibilities ranging from the mullahs staying in charge, to the son of the Shah (Rezi Pahlavi) being installed in the future. Prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution that installed the Ruhollah Khomeini. The current regime has been the largest state sponsor of terror and has been the greatest source of regional destabilization. They’ve funded Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and various other Shi’ite militia groups in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere.
The ABC video here is a good “need to know” primer for March 4, 2026…but the details will fade in time.
The news of the next few month will shape the coming decades and the possibilities are still wide open. The Caspian Report has produced good geopolitical analysis over the years, so this is their latest video (below)
GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION 