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Countries often make poor comparative units because they vary greatly in both size and population. India and China each have more than a billion more inhabitants than the world’s third most populous country, the United States. Their populations are more than five orders of magnitude greater than that of a truly tiny country like Nauru. […] The post Three Geopolitically Informed Versions of a Map of Chinese Provinces and Neighboring Countries appeared first on GeoCurrents.
As I often mock the AI-slop maps that I see on X (“Twitter”), my account has apparently responded by sending even more garbage my way. One example recently caught my attention as perhaps the worst map that I had ever seen. Then, several days later, I encountered something even worse. The first map, from the […] The post Is This the Worst Map in Current Circulation? No, It Is This One! appeared first on GeoCurrents.
As noted in the previous GeoCurrents post on the “deserts” of Colombia, Colombia is usually considered to be the world’s rainiest country, receiving some 127 inches (3249 mm) of precipitation annually, averaged over the entire country. Learning this fact inspired me to make a map of average annual precipitation by country, which is posted below. […] The post Average Annual Precipitation by Country Mapped appeared first on GeoCurrents.
A recent GeoCurrents post suggested that the electoral geography of the United States has strikingly deviated from that of Latin America during the 21st century. In the U.S., population density has become one of the main influences on voting patterns, with cities favoring candidates on the left and the countryside preferring those on the right. […] The post Does Colombia Have an Urban/Rural Electoral Divide? Despite Bogotá, Not Really appeared first on GeoCurrents.
Dividing the terrestrial world into the “Global North” and the “Global South” is becoming increasingly common. Simple versions of this “two worlds” model have a relatively clean north/south division, with only Australia and New Zealand falling out of place as southern outliers of the North. The Wikipedia map posted below, however, includes a few additional […] The post The Misleading Concept of the “Global South” appeared first on GeoCurrents.
More in cartography
Some years ago, I began to identify my place in the cartographic world. Being surrounded by so many skilled colleagues can be intimidating. If I walk into a room at NACIS (or open up my social media), I see so many people doing things that I cannot do — we all have different workflows, specializations, … Continue reading Finding One’s Place →
Countries often make poor comparative units because they vary greatly in both size and population. India and China each have more than a billion more inhabitants than the world’s third most populous country, the United States. Their populations are more than five orders of magnitude greater than that of a truly tiny country like Nauru. […] The post Three Geopolitically Informed Versions of a Map of Chinese Provinces and Neighboring Countries appeared first on GeoCurrents.
Having recently returned from an international symposium at the University of Macau on “Rethinking Space in Japanese and Asian Studies” (October 23-24, 2026), I am happy to report that geographically informed historical analysis is thriving in Macau, and more generally across East Asia. The symposium was organized by ZHONG Yijiang, associate professor of Japanese Studies […] The post Geographical History is Thriving in Macau appeared first on GeoCurrents.
Another November means another #30DayMapChallenge. Last year I was annoyed at the Gulf of Mexico renaming. This year it's personal! I live part time by the shores of Lake Ontario now. For some incompetent fool to give it some stupid name and for Apple and Google immediately obeying in advance, November is my tiny protest. These maps are nothing special so far, it doesn’t help that the first 3 days prompts are points, lines and polygons like every year. Maybe we can give that a rest for a year at least? Day 1: Points - The Great Lakes as a constellation-with the actual names of the lakes Day 2: Lines - The US/Canadian border line as it travels through Lake Ontario Day 3: Polygons - The name of this polygon is Lake Ontario! Hand drawn, ink on index card. Day 4: Clusters - plastics pollution. The data source is very generalized but for complicated technical reasons the map looks more specific than it should. Next week - the madness continues! *Pardon the brief editorializing but it really annoys me when I look at my weather app for the area and have to see that stupid name every time. Yes there are other weather apps that still show the lake with its correct name and I should switch but habits are hard to break.
Here is an animated map of wind speeds. It stacks up six months of global average wind speed and direction, and uses the flow renderer. The cumulative result is a sort of silky living web. You can click on the link above and reverse engineer it or you can watch this short how-to that walks …
