Village houses and water filled rice terraces in Longsheng, Guangxi Province, China.
“For thousands of years, when farmers in mountainous regions have expanded their farms to grow crops on the steep slopes, they have carved massive steps into the terrain, forming terraces of many small platforms. Following the contours of the mountains, the edges of the terraces create sinuous patterns in the landscape, presenting picturesque images. Gathered here are photos from China, Switzerland, Vietnam, Peru, the Philippines, and Japan.” SOURCE: The Atlantic
This gallery of 27 terraced rice fields is absolutely fabulous. I find these to be some of the more beautiful cultural landscapes; I’m drawn to the great extent of agricultural modifications of the environment, coupled with the rugged physical landscape.
In many geography classes, teachers will assign students a country to help them gain some depth about one particular country as a way to explore economic, demographic, cultural, political, and environmental issues. These are some data visualization tools that deals with big data; the listed tools are some of my favorite in part because they can easily to incorporated to an ArcGIS StoryMap (especially in the Map Journal template).
Economic (introductory data):Dollar Street from Gapminder
The best comparison and the most relatable thing for students to see in other countries is real people, leading regular lives. Dollar Street brings the economic realities of other places without some of the of the negative stereotypes or romanticizing far-away places.
Populationpyramid.net creates interactive, population pyramids that can be downloaded as image with the raw data also available for download. Simple, powerful, easy.
Gapminder is a tremendous resource that I’ve shared in the past and total fertility rates is an ideal metric to see in this data visualization tool. This is one of the best ways to visualize global statistics. The world is changing–see how.
5. Our World in Data
Like Gapminder, Our World in Data is a fantastic source of global data, maps, and charts on an incredibly wide range on topics. Type any country name in the search bar, and you’ll find a wide range of metrics.
6. ArcGIS StoryMaps
This is my principle cartographic tool that I use in GEOG 201 (Mapping our Changing World). Classic Story Maps is the feature that ArcGIS has to make user-friendly platform to share maps along with a rich, multimedia environment with a variety of pre-made templates. The video below is and introduction to the newer Story Builder which combines a variety of the elements of the templates into one that is more optimized for mobile devices.
7. Google Earth (now completely online)
Google Tours used to be a way to present a series of places on a map, with text, pictures, and videos, but that has been de-commissioned and the online version of Google Earth is now the best alternative. Yes, it works best in Google Chrome, and you’ll need a Google account to save it to your Google Drive. The video below is a brief introduction to the tools that are available to you:
“The UK has finally officially left the European Union (EU), almost four years after its famous ‘Brexit’ vote, and taken the British territory of Gibraltar out with it. Here’s our updated map and list of which countries are in the EU, which ones are trying to join, and which European countries are in neither group.” SOURCE: POLGEONOW
Today I’m teaching the my first class on “the Geography of Europe” since the UK has officially withdrawn from the European Union. As I went looking for any updated map of the EU, I found this excellent article along with the map and thought it was worth sharing. Since Brexit has finally been formalized, these snarky tweets were fun:
My Irish passport is so technologically advanced it allows me to live, work and study in 27 other countries 🤭 https://t.co/1y81wDIx3o
Absolutely disgusting service at Schiphol airport. 55 minutes we have been stood in the immigration queue. This isn’t the Brexit I voted for. pic.twitter.com/QcSne9d4qW
Mosques have been vandalized as religious strife grips Delhi.
“The deadliest violence in India’s capital for decades leaves 23 people dead and scores injured.” SOURCE: BBC
It is so disheartening to see the news that India is undergoing a wave of religious unrest. As citizen and immigration laws have been enacted that have a religious component to it, many feel that this is unfairly targeting Muslim migrants and refugees. Some see this as the beginning of a delegitimization of Muslim citizenship within India. As people are protesting these laws, there are groups that are also a violently clashing with protesters in the streets. Some are targeting Mosques, and the police have been unable to keep the peace. This is some nasty business that I hate to see anywhere, but if you need an example of how religion can be a centrifugal force in a country, this is a perfect example Here is an NPR podcast (and article) that also nicely covers the topic.
“We are tracking the COVID-19 spread in real-time on our interactive dashboard with data available for download. We are also modeling the spread of the virus.” SOURCE: GIS and DATA at Johns Hopkins University
The video below covers 3 major economic impacts that the virus will have on the global economy. In short, 1-Tourism and Travel, 2-Supply Chains, and 3-Flight to Quality Goods.
“Emil is a social media-obsessed entrepreneur in one of the most remote places on earth: An abandoned Soviet mining village in Kyrgyzstan. Emil has returned to put his village on the map as an international tourist destination.” SOURCE: MailChimp
This delightful video shows the former Soviet mining town of Jyrgalan and a local entrepreneur that wants to revitalize the village economy, bring in the outside world, and make is home a tourist destination. It serves several purposes for a geography teacher. One, it’s a great portal into a Central Asian country where most of my students don’t have any real reference points. Two, the video highlights important geographic concepts such as tourism’s impact on indigenous cultures and globalization’s impact on previously isolated locations. Three, this is a great case study for a cultural landscape analysis. The video has some incredible juxtapositions; nomads wearing traditional clothes encountering adventure tourists outfitted in Patagonia gear, people in town cutting grass with scythes as well as gas lawn mowers, and traditional architectural styles intermixed with signs of modernity such as satellite antennas. The physical and cultural landscapes in this are absolutely stunning and worth the twelve minutes of your time.
“Way Back Home is the incredible new riding clip from Danny MacAskill, it follows him on a journey from Edinburgh back to his hometown Dunvegan, in the Isle of Skye.”
I love Danny Macaskill’s video that puts Scotland’s cultural and physical landscapes on display. This extreme sports clip is in many ways more about the places that are being shown that infused with gorgeous physical landscapes. The architecture, the historic sites, the everyday towns, and transportation infrastructure all speak to the importance of landscape in creating a place that is beloved by its people.
Not surprisingly, I’m also a fan of this other video, The Ridge. The Ridge is far more about the physical landscapes of Scotland than the cultural landscapes, but both are stunning.
“#TheRidge is the brand new film from Danny Macaskill… For the first time in one of his films Danny climbs aboard a mountain bike and returns to his native home of the Isle of Skye in Scotland to take on a death-defying ride along the notorious Cuillin Ridgeline.“
“With Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ humming in the background, about two dozen students at George Washington University traced skinny lines and square-shaped landmarks on a satellite image of a rural chunk of Mindanao, the second-largest island in the Philippines. They are in the early stages of piecing together a map of the region where half of the country’s food is grown but where most people live in poverty.
The students carefully scanned the photos to scope out buildings and roads tucked between thick trees. The task is painstaking but necessary to create an up-to-date map. This corner of the Philippines — like large swaths of the planet — does not have any recent digital maps.” SOURCE: Washington Post
Crowd-sourced mapping is increasingly an important resource during an emergency and one of the best ways to put geographic knowledge and geospatial skills in action. Many high school and college students around the country are learning mapping skills by creating maps for places that aren’t well-mapped and in great need. Poorer places are often not as well mapped out by the commercial cartographic organizations and these are oftentimes the places that are most vulnerable to natural disasters. Relief agencies depend on mapping platforms to handle the logistics of administering aid and assessing the extent of the damage and rely on these crowd-sourced data sets. My students and I are working on this over the weekend; can you join in and help? The projects that are marked urgent by the Red Cross are all in Haiti right now. Here are is a video playlist that explains the project and how you can help if you are new to OpenStreetMap (OSM). The embedded TEDx talk below discusses the advantages of using OSM in geography teaching.
“The first Americans to be counted in the 2020 census live in [Toksook Bay, Alaska], a tiny community of 661 on the edge of the American expanse. Their homes are huddled together in a windswept Bering Sea village, painted vivid lime green, purple or neon blue to help distinguish the signs of life from a frigid white winterscape that makes it hard to tell where the frozen sea ends and the village begins. Once the spring thaw hits, the town empties as many residents scatter for traditional hunting and fishing grounds, and the frozen ground that in January makes it easier to get around by March turns to marsh that’s difficult to traverse. The mail service is spotty and the internet connectivity unreliable, which makes door-to-door surveying important. For those reasons, they have to start early here.” SOURCE: AP News.
This article is a reminder that while we are on preparing for the constitutionally-mandated 2020 census (get ready for updated maps everyone!!), the census is tasked with counting everyone. Some populations such as this indigenous village in Alaska are harder to count than others.
Questions to Ponder: What are other populations that might be under-represented in the census? What would be measures that census employees could take to count those people? How does the census improve our ability to understand geographic patterns?
GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION 