Record rainfall in central Australia leads to flash floods and the closure of Uluru national park.
Tags: Australia, environment, weather and climate, water.
Source: www.bbc.com
“Residents of Aneyoshi, Japan, heeded the warnings of their ancestors. They obeyed directions and wisdom found on a local stone monument: ‘Do not build any homes below this point,’ it reads. ‘High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants. Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis.’ When the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan, this village.”
Source: 99percentinvisible.org
Beachfront property is beautiful real estate with enormous economic potential, but when it is in an area with a history of tsunamis, the impending threat of an earthquake looms over the coastal lowlands and limits the land use plans for the region.
“Watch salmon race across the road on their way to spawn; for more footage, watch this extended version.”
Source: www.youtube.com
We often see examples of how human modifications to ecosystems or watersheds have devastatingly negative impacts. This is a remarkable example from Washington’s Olympic Peninsula that shows the resiliency of natural systems to overcome human modifications to the physical landscape. If you study the world, you will always have something to both amaze and surprise you.
Tags: fluvial, biogeography, environment, geomorphology, physical, water, environment adapt, environment modify.
Glacial melting and flooding occurs every year by the Skafta River in Iceland. As the water travels down towards the North Atlantic Ocean, incredible patterns are created on the hillsides. Rising lava, steam vents, or newly opened hot springs can all cause this rapid ice melt, leading to a sizable release of water that picks up sediment as it flows down from the glaciers.
Tags: geomorphology, physical, Europe, fluvial, water, landforms, images.
Source: www.instagram.com
“Mont Saint-Michel emerges from the tides in Normandy, France, like an ancient village from a fairytale. The coastal town built on a massive granite rock cuts a dramatic silhouette against the sky, rising from disappearing marshes to a Gothic Abbey at its height. With a permanent population of around 50, this popular tourist destination has a history dating back to at least the Roman era. Fancy a tour before the tides roll in?”
Source: www.youtube.com
Coastal physical geography produces some beautiful landforms such as tombolos. A tombolo is created when sand deposits attach an island to a larger piece of land–think of it as special type of isthmus. Mont St. Michel is the world’s most famous example because of the iconic walled city with crowned with a striking medieval abbey. This is one of those fascinating places for both the human and physical geographer.
Tags: water, physical, coastal, geomorphology, landforms, France, historical, tourism.
“The Ballena Marine National Park is located in Puntarenas, at the South Pacific coast of Costa Rica.”
Source: www.ballenainfocenter.com
This National Park in Costa Rica is a delightful example of many things geographic. Not only is the local biogeography make this a place famous for whales (ballena in Spanish), but the physical geography also resembles a whale’s tail. This feature is called a tombolo, where a spit connects an island or rock cluster to the mainland. Additionally, there is also a great community of citizen cartographers mapping out this park and the surrounding communities.
Tags: biogeography, environment, geomorphology, physical, water, landforms.
Vietnam’s rice region is facing the worst drought to date. Over half a million people have been affected, and the country could lose one million tons of its staple food.Leaders of six countries along the Mekong River met in China to discuss the relief measures.
Source: www.youtube.com
Economic progress for some often entails job loss and environmental degradation for others. As dams upstream are slowing the flow of the Mekong River, the low-lying delta that is a rich agricultural region is facing the ocean water that is moving further inland. The once isolated and remote Mekong is experiencing some impacts of globalization.
Tags: fluvial, water, Vietnam, agriculture, SouthEastAsia.
Workers, including children, labor in harsh and dangerous conditions to meet the world’s soaring demand for cobalt, a mineral essential to powering electric vehicles, laptops, and smartphones, according to an investigation by The Washington Post.
Source: www.washingtonpost.com
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a land rich with minerals and resources vital for high end consumer goods (laptops, cellphones, electric cars, etc.). This in-depth investigation from the Washington Post of the cobalt mining districts in the DRC (60% of global cobalt production) is incredible. It has great videos, maps, and an detailed article that cuts across the geographic themes (exploited local labor, global commodity chains, political governance, polluted water supply, medical geography, etc.).
Just two days ago, the United States pulled the families of all governmental officials out of the DRC amid political turmoil and violence in the streets of Kinshasa, highlighting the fact that the weakness of political institutions in the DRC are a major reason for this situation.
Tags: Congo, labor, water, medical, environment, pollution, political, conflict, resources, political ecology, Africa.
For hundreds of years, on the eighth month of the lunar calendar, people have gathered along the shores of China’s Qiantang River at the head of Hangzhou Bay to witness the waves of its famous bore tide. Higher-than-normal high tides push into the harbor, funneling into the river, causing a broad wave that can reach up to 30 feet high. If the waves surge over the banks, spectators can be swept up, pushed along walkways or down embankments. Below, I’ve gathered images from the past few years of the Qiantang bore tides.
Source: www.theatlantic.com
This is an amazing set of images, where a cultural phenomenon is wrapped up in observing the pulsating physical geography of the river. Usually the tidal bore is impressive (but not dangerous–see video here), but occasionally it can be incredibly violent (see this 2015 video).
Tags: physical, geomorphology, water, China.
GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION 