GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

This is a floating testament that economies of scale will continue to push the limits.  Today, the largest of the massive cargo ships are simply too big to get through the Panama Canal and have to travel down around the tip of South America.  This is one reason why Nicaragua is planning to construct a canal to rival Panama’s (Maps 101 readers can read more about the geographic implications of Nicaragua’s plans in this article co-authored by myself and Julie Dixon or you can sign up for a free trial subscription to see what Maps 101 has to offer). 

Tags: transportation, Nicaragua, globalization, diffusion, industry, economic.

Some ancient mysteries capture the imagination and Stonehenge has always been that great unknown.  This might explain why the builders worked so hard to bring the stones over 150 miles to this location.  

Protests in public spaces are colliding with the Brazil’s World Cup/Olympic dreams.  The government wants to show the world the best that the country has to offer and protestors are using this moment to highlight the social ills in their country and some of the collateral damages of these major sporting events.  This may not seem like a sports issue per se, but one of social unrest that happens to be more highly publicized because of the coming international sporting events to Brazil.  Many see the money that went to constructing massive stadiums as money that bypassed those that needed it most and the poor neighborhoods (favelas) that were demolished to make way for an ‘ideal city’ that the world would see.  The world’s eye is on Brazil and both sides know it.

I recently received this question and immediately thought that this is a great geographic question, but one that geographic tools can be used to find the answer.  I downloaded all the Rhode Island toponymns (place names) listed by the United States Board on Geographic Names and filtered out all the listed Islands (108 is the answer!!).  A spreadsheet of the data didn’t help to visualize this data so I created this interactive map.  Only 1 of the locations didn’t have coordinates, some are scarcely more than rocks, and this is only according to the the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, but this is the most complete map of islands in the state of Rhode Island that I could produce.  Additionally, here is an article about some sailors who sought to explore every island of the Narragansett Bay.  

The Earth itself is the great source of inspiration for art.  Enjoy the gallery.

Tags: images, art, landscape. 

Some of the greatest discoveries in biology began as spatial discoveries.  Alfred Russel Wallace made some amazing advances in biogeography and discovered appropriately named Wallace Line. 

Tags: biogeography, environment, ecology, historical.

I had the shapefiles with the various neighborhoods of Providence and the good folks at “Click that ‘Hood” were gracious enough to upload it and make a local quiz based on the the 25 neighborhoods of Providence (as defined by the city government officials).  In addition to city neighborhood quizzes, they also have quizzes for regions such as Africa, South America and Europe.  This is a crowd-sourced database, so if you have the right data, you can help them to create more online quizzes.