For those following the war between Israel and Hamas, the New York Times is posting maps here: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/07/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-maps.html
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This map highlights the growing militarization of the Arctic Ocean and its periphery. (Map from www.wsj.com/articles/americas-military-falls-behind-russia-china-race-for-melting-arctic-2a71dfac.)
Timed for release the same day as the Hollywood movie "Oppenheimer," a new study finds that nuclear radiation from the July 16, 1945 U.S. nuclear test, code named "Trinity," was "much stronger than anticipated. ... [The mushroom] cloud and its fallout went farther than anyone in the Manhattan Project had imagined in 1945. Using state-of-the-art modeling software and recently uncovered historical weather data, the study’s authors say that radioactive fallout from the Trinity test reached 46 states, Canada and Mexico within 10 days of detonation." The timelapse map in this New York Times article shows the likely spread of radiation over the first 10 days following "Trinity": www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/science/trinity-nuclear-test-atomic-bomb-oppenheimer.html
This BBC article shares maps about areas of control in Ukraine as well as the complex dam system affected by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and reservoir: www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60506682 (Note: maps about current fighting in Ukraine are regularly updated at the Institute for the Study of War.)
Images of the earth at night can reveal a great deal about population, economics, land use, and the availability of electricity. In this article, The New York Times has assembled a series of satellite images to illustrate how all of these factors have changed on the ground in Ukraine since Nov. 2021. www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/world/europe/ukraine-satellite-darkness.html
Landmines often persist long after a conflict ends. This map, based on data from an NGO that monitors landmines and operations to clear them, shows where landmines still exist, more than 25 years after a UN treaty that bans their use: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/26209.jpeg
The Chagos Islands have been in the news this week. The Chagos Archipelago is in the Indian Ocean, northeast of Madagascar and Mauritius and south of the Maldives. In the 1960s and '70s, the British government forced more than 1,000 residents of the Chagos Islands to leave their homes to make way for a military base on the largest of the islands, Diego Garcia, that was then leased to the United States. The Chagossians have fought for their return ever since. This week Human Rights Watch called for Britain to pay reparations to the Chagossians and allow for their return to their homes.
www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F21f707ea-3949-11e9-8581-34e77e2582ca.png The fight for eastern Ukraine is not just about land or population or territorial integrity. It is also about Ukraine's mineral wealth, a disproportionate share of which lies east of the Dnieper River, as these maps show. (Maps from www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/10/ukraine-russia-energy-mineral-wealth/.)
Hal Brands, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and former Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Strategic Planning and lead writer for the Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States, released an important and somewhat contrarian new book this week arguing that China is likely to try to invade Taiwan within the next five years. Danger Zone lays out the case that far from being a rising power, China is a peaking power due to the convergence of a variety of serious demographic, economic, and geopolitical constraints, a situation that tends to make countries more reckless. "When you think about revisionist powers - so that's just a fancy political science word for countries that want to change the way the world works; they're dissatisfied with the existing order. They tend to become most aggressive, most rash, not when they are very confident about the future, when they think that things will be better a decade from now than they are now, but when they worry that their window to change the system is closing. That, either because their economy has stalled or they're becoming encircled by their enemies, or sometimes both, that they have a closing window of opportunity to achieve their objectives. And when that is the case, they become more prone to use coercion, to use violence, to use force to get what they want while they can still grab it. That's been the case historically in a variety of instances, from ancient times up to the 20th century. And it's the trap that we worry that China may be falling into today. ... [A] lot of the tailwinds that propelled China to where it is today have now become headwinds. Assets have become liabilities, so to speak." The book makes the argument for China's status as a peaking power and details what the U.S. and its allies can do, now, to head off possible Chinese aggression in the Pacific. (Quote from Brands' interview with the "Intelligence Matters" podcast: www.cbsnews.com/news/hal-brands-on-potential-of-future-conflict-with-china-intelligence-matters/.)
This series of maps details recent Chinese military exercises in the area around Taiwan and Japan's southernmost islands: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/world/asia/taiwan-china-maps.html
Because inexpensive armed drones, including Turkey's TB2 drones, proved decisive in the 2020 conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, other countries have been looking to add them to their arsenals. This map, from ProPublica, shows which countries have used TB2s, purchased TB2s, or are trying to purchase TB2s: assets-c3.propublica.org/images/articles/Screen-Shot-2022-07-15-at-5.48.51-PM.png
Soil composition is a vital but often-neglected component of physical and biogeography. Like the American Midwest, Ukraine and southern Russia have some of the world's most productive soil, called chernozem (in Eurasia and Canada) or mollisol (in the U.S). This article from Science News looks at ways in which war has a lasting impact on the underlying soil chemistry, hydrology, structure, and physical composition: www.sciencenews.org/article/ukraine-russia-war-soil-agriculture-crops. (For a map that shows soil types around the world, check out this one from the USDA: https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/soils/use/?cid=nrcs142p2_054013.)
Although Russia has been the focus of the world's liberal democracies for the last several months, countering China remains the long-term project. In the wake of a recent security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands, The Economist (UK) looked at other countries in Asia, Africa, and Oceania in which China either already has a military base or likely has an interest in establishing a military base: www.economist.com/img/b/640/356/90/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20220507_CNM979.png (Map from www.economist.com/china/2022/05/05/china-wants-to-increase-its-military-presence-abroad.)
The war in Ukraine is bottling up wheat exports and, especially in the southern and eastern parts of the country, damaging winter wheat fields planted last fall and interfering with spring planting. This geo-graphic from Statista highlights the countries most dependent on Ukrainian and Russian wheat: www.statista.com/chart/27181/least-developed-countries-dependent-on-wheat-from-russia-ukraine
Maps are powerful and easily understood vehicles for conveying geographic information. This excellent article from Geographical (UK) looks at the some of the less-obvious issues that data visualization professionals are needing to consider as they prepare maps about the war in Ukraine, from color choices to spatial precision to arrows or no arrows and more. geographical.co.uk/places/mapping/item/4316-mapping-ukraine
In the last two years, extremist violence in West Africa has increased significantly in frequency and spread out from its original geographic flashpoints in northeastern Nigeria and central Mali. This map shows the location of 2021 attacks by extremist groups operating in West Africa. The U.S. military and others have observed that "[t]he Islamist militants who have rampaged through the heart of West Africa in recent years are now spreading toward the Gulf of Guinea coast, including some of the continent’s most stable and prosperous countries, ... [with] militant cells infiltrating as far as Ghana and Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producers." [Quote and map from www.wsj.com/articles/sahel-based-militants-edging-south-toward-west-africas-most-stable-and-prosperous-states-11646221800.]
As of late last month, an estimated 4 million people had left Ukraine, 9% of the population. This geo-graphic from Statista, based on data from the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, puts Ukraine in the context of previous refugee crises since 1960: www.statista.com/chart/27151/largest-refugee-crises-since-1960-by-peak-number-of-refugees
The impact of even fairly conventional warfare can be long lived from a biogeographic perspective. A 460-square-mile area of northeastern France was so badly contaminated by shelling during WWI that shortly after the war the French government cordoned it off as the Zone Rouge, or Red Zone, an area deemed unfit for agriculture or human habitation. Even today, more than a century later, there are untold numbers of unexploded shells, including gas canisters, in the Zone Rouge and enough arsenic in the soil to kill 99% of plant life. www.atlasobscura.com/places/zone-rouge
Brisbane, Australia, is vying to become the home port of Australia's new nuclear submarine fleet. Biogeography says this would be a very bad idea. Why? The abundant jellyfish in the waters off Brisbane would almost certainly clog the subs' intake valves and force a shutdown of the nuclear reactors powering the subs. It's happened before: www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/11/jellyfish-nuclear-submarine-emergency-reactor-shutdown-brisbane-base-moreton-bay-australia
The Sea of Azov, at the far northeastern end of the Black Sea (and the Atlantic Ocean) has been in the news recently. Situated east of the Crimean Peninsula, the Sea of Azov is the shallowest of the world's seas, with a depth that does not exceed 46 feet. Historically, the sea was known for its rich fishing. Although Russia and Ukraine agreed to share the Sea of Azov in a 2003 treaty, today the sea is all but encircled by Russian military forces. The besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol sits on the northern shore of the Sea of Azov, as shown on this map from the geopolitical consulting firm Stratfor: www.stratfor.com/sites/default/files/styles/wv_small/public/ukraine-navy-sea-of-azov-092418_0.png.
The maps and analysis in this BBC article might help those who are looking for resources to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine with their kids. (BBC News is also a reputable source to follow on this topic from a non-U.S. perspective.) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56720589
The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) tracks armed conflicts around the world (adding the terrain is a nice feature): acleddata.com/dashboard/#/dashboard
Although neither Finland nor Sweden are members of NATO, both countries have recently mentioned the possibility of joining the security alliance, in defiance of Russia's warnings against doing so. This map shows NATO's current members, highlighting members that have joined since the collapse of the Soviet Union. (Map from www.wsj.com/articles/the-betrayal-myth-behind-putins-brinkmanship-11641568161.)
These maps from The New York Times detail Russian military positions on Ukraine's northern, eastern, and southern borders: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/01/07/world/europe/ukraine-maps.html
To the extent that Americans know anything about Nigeria's security problems, it tends to be awareness of Boko Haram, which has been in decline. For Nigerians, though, the security situation is far more complex, as this map from The Economist (UK) shows. www.economist.com/img/b/640/547/90/sites/default/files/20211023_MAM996_0.png (Map from www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/how-kidnappers-zealots-and-rebels-are-making-nigeria-ungovernable/21805737)
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