You know how you can crank up the sense of drama and studio photography professionalism by switching over to portrait mode on your phone’s camera? It just looks…cool. The subject is in focus and the peripheral background content is blurry. It’s actually how our eyes and brains work, so it’s pleasing to see in photography. …

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.

This bird-eye diagram of lower Manhattan appeared in a Harpers Magazine article from 1908 titled “The Story of a Street.”  In 1844 the Dutch governor of New Amsterdam ordered the town’s citizens to construct a cattle guard at the north end of the settlement to keep the cattle in and the Indians out. Lower Manhattan, beforeland fillingwas much narrower than it is today. The cattle guard may have stretched all the way from the East River to the North (now Hudson) River but at a minimum extended from Pearl St to Broadway, covering most of this distance. The original guard was likely made of trees that had been cut down and piled up. There were approximately two hundred houses within this enclosed area. After some peaceful years, the administration began to feel more of a threat from the Indians and the British. A wooden fence was ordered built about 40-50 feet south of the cattle guard, along the southern line of what would become Wall Street. There were two gates in the wall to allow for commerce, one at Broadway and another at Pearl St. A couple of years later, seeing how much of the wall had been chopped down by residents for firewood, the barricades were rebuilt. This did not stop the British, who came by sea and were welcomed by many residents after suffering much misrule from the Dutch. As the city grew and wall maintenance costs mounted, pressures mounted to take the wall down. Real estate speculators built lots to the north and finally, in 1699 New York ceased to be a walled city. Some interesting items from the map include the Bowerie (Bowery), an antiquated Dutch word for farm that was north of the cattle guard and the Heere Graft canal, now Broad Street. The cattle guard was interrupted by this canal.   Unrelated side note: I hate self promotion so I regret to inform you that Map of the Week is now the Number One Cartography Blog according to Feedspot. They even gave me a badge. You can see it on the sidebar but also here it is below. Their rankings are determined by “relevancy, authority, social media followers & freshness“ so I guess I’m feeling pretty fresh! I know many of the other people on their list and I am quite honored to be among them, let alone ranked above them. Thanks to all you readers for helping make me relevant and fresh!