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The two previous GeoCurrents posts examined the biological significance of continents by looking at the distribution of animals. It is time now to turn out attention to plants. One of the most influential divisions of the world into “floristic kingdoms” is that of botanist Ronald Good, found in his 1947 book The Geography of Flowering […] The post Floristic Kingdoms and the Architecture of Continents appeared first on GeoCurrents.
An important 2013 article in published in Science, “An Update of Wallace’s Zoogeographic Regions of the World,” redivides the world’s faunal regions. The study is based on a sophisticated statistical and phylogenetic analysis of 21,037 species of amphibians, non-pelagic birds and terrestrial mammals. In the end, the authors split the world into 11 zoogeographic realms, […] The post How Does an Updated Map of Zoogeographic Regions Mesh with the Architecture of Continents? appeared first on GeoCurrents.
If the division of the terrestrial world into continents is partially but misleadingly rooted in geology, as recent GeoCurrents posts have argued, we must also ask whether it reflects the distribution of animal and plant life. Are continents, in other words, entities of biological significance? To answer this question, it is useful to begin with […] The post Zoogeographical Regions & the Architecture of Continents: The Legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace appeared first on GeoCurrents.
On the surface, there is little to distinguish small islands on continental fragments from oceanic islands that have no continental connections. Careful observation, however, can reveal some interesting differences. The Seychelles microcontinent in the Indian Ocean is an intriguing case in point. The islands sitting on this chunk of continental crust constitute a sovereign state, […] The post The Biological Significance of Micro-Continents: The Fascinating Caecilians of Seychelles (and Other Parts of the World) appeared first on GeoCurrents.
I am pleased to report that GeoCurrents has been selected by FeedSpot as one of the “100 Best GIS Blogs” for 2025. It is an honor to receive this recognition and I give my sincere thanks to FeedSpot for the acknowledgement, although I do have to say that GeoCurrents is more a “GIS-adjacent blog” than […] The post GeoCurrents Listed as One of the 100 Best GIS Blogs and Websites in 2025 appeared first on GeoCurrents.
More in cartography
The United States Disappeared Tracker is a new Tableau visualization from Danielle Harlow. It shows where people have been taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This map is part of a dashboard that “visualizes person brought into ICE custody when the trump Administration has demonstrated undeniable political motive/animus and/or the person has been denied appropriate due process, even if the charges are eventually substantiated in a court of law.“ Being a dashboard, there are also charts and lists of the disappeared. You can also hover over the map for details on some of the incidents. The data sources are not clear but 370 people just in Massachusetts? The author is also working on an ICE Flights Tracker.
The two previous GeoCurrents posts examined the biological significance of continents by looking at the distribution of animals. It is time now to turn out attention to plants. One of the most influential divisions of the world into “floristic kingdoms” is that of botanist Ronald Good, found in his 1947 book The Geography of Flowering […] The post Floristic Kingdoms and the Architecture of Continents appeared first on GeoCurrents.
