A volcano erupts in central Costa Rica, belching smoke and ash up to 3,000m (9,840ft) into the air and choking nearby communities.
Tags: Costa Rica, disasters, physical, volcano.
Source: www.bbc.com
Geography nuts have located the hardest place to get to on every continent and beyond.
Source: www.atlasobscura.com
The middle of nowhere…this is a common expression that is used to convey isolation, backwardness, wilderness, or a lack of network connections. This article focuses on 8 places that are the farthest away from coasts as well as land. The point on the map above is Point Nemo, right in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean; it is the farthest place on Earth from land and is one of the best candidates for the world champion title of “the middle of nowehere.” What is it close to? Nothing.
“The sense that the normal America is out there somewhere in a hamlet is misplaced: it’s not in a small town at all. I calculated how demographically similar each U.S. metropolitan area is to the U.S. overall, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity.1 The index equals 100 if a metro’s demographic mix were identical to that of the U.S. overall.”
Source: fivethirtyeight.com
We often do imagine that your typical American is from the Heartland, and that very term, strengthens that connotation. 100 years ago that was true that your average American was one a farm or a small town, as 72% of Americans lived in rural areas. Today, that is decidedly not the case but we still sometimes think (and act) as if it were (84% today live in urban areas). The United States is urban, diverse, and bi-coastal in it’s primary demographic composition.
“Venezuela has become a failed state. According to the International Monetary Fund’s latest projections, it has the world’s worst economic growth, worst inflation and ninth-worst unemployment rate right now. It also has the second-worst murder rate, and an infant mortality rate that’s gotten 100 times worse itself the past four years. And in case all that wasn’t bad enough, its currency, going by black market rates, has lost 99 percent of its value since the start of 2012. It’s what you call a complete social and economic collapse. And it has happened despite the fact that Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves. Never has a country that should have been so rich been so poor. There’s no mystery here. Venezuela’s government is to blame–which is to say that Venezuela is a man-made disaster. It’s a gangster state that doesn’t know how to do anything other than sell drugs and steal money for itself.”
Tags: Venezuela, South America, op-ed, economic, political, governance.
Source: www.washingtonpost.com
On occasion, we are reminded of how utterly captivating and gorgeous nature is, its visual poetry surrounds us. It just takes a step back, a shift in perspective, to realize how amazing the constructs of this planet are; it’s a beautiful constant balance between order and entropy. Case in point, what appears to be well-crafted, intricate abstract paintings, or works of art, are in reality, mindblowing aerial images of Iceland.”
Source: thesuperslice.com
Andre Ermolaev, through his photography has captured the beauty of Iceland’s geomorphology. Being on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Iceland has abundant volcanic ash which adds rich color to the fluvial systems.
Tags: geomorphology, physical, Europe, fluvial, water, landforms, images.
http://www.fao.org/sofa/gender “The world cannot eliminate hunger without closing the gap between men and women in agriculture. With equal access to productive resources and services, such as land, water and credit, women farmers can produce 20 to 30 percent more food, enough to lift 150 million people out of hunger.”
Source: www.youtube.com
Gender inequality, especially in rural, less developed part of the world, would lead to some of the fastest developmental improvements for the lives of women, men, children, and families. Women are the backbone of the rural economy, and this single change would lead to countless benefits.
Tags: gender in agriculture, development, gender, agriculture, labor.
“For generations we vultures, armed with our senses, have fought in silence. We’ve waged a battle against garbage, but now we’re losing that battle. We want to help humans, so we’ve launched a movement to help you detect piles of garbage so that you can take action to eliminate them. Join us in this fight. Vultures Warn, you take action!”
Source: www.youtube.com
This video is an introduction to a fascinating (Spanish language) website and project that uses GPS-tagged vultures to map out the urban trash hot-spots in Lima, Peru. We look at vultures as the dregs of the food chain and ascribe moral filthiness to the species (just think of any number of movie, literary, and cultural references), but they are simply filling an ecological niche. This mapping project is a way to use vultures nature in a way that allows for humanity to fix our trash production/disposal problems.
Tags: pollution, Peru, development, mapping, GPS, biogeography, environment, environment modify, South America, land use, megacities, urban ecology, consumption.
The global refugee crisis, political strife and economic dislocation all contributed to a worldwide deterioration of religious freedom in 2015 and an increase in societal intolerance, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.”
Source: www.npr.org
This is one of the sad results of the many global conflicts today and increase in reactionary political movements that scapegoat religious minorities. The image above is a map/wordle of the 18th article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
Tags: religion, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, podcast, conflict, refugees.
An American city stranded at the tip of a Canadian peninsula where strict adherence to the “49th parallel rule” became problematic.
Source: www.atlasobscura.com
I’m sharing this because what isn’t excited about an exclave that was created by a superimposed, geometric border?
GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION 