Electric vehicles are dependent on a variety of minerals. This article from The Wall Street Journal includes maps that show where cobalt and manganese, as well as lithium and nickel, are mined and refined: www.wsj.com/articles/electric-vehicles-scarce-parts-supply-chain-11668206037

Yes, climate change is making some natural disasters worse, but is it also becoming a tidy way of letting governments off the hook for bad planning?  The recent floods in Pakistan are a case in point. An international team of researchers analyzed the flooding in Pakistan and found that rainfall in the southern provinces of Sindh and Balochistan was "about 75% more intense than it would have been had the climate not warmed by 1.2C." But the report also found "The devastating impacts were also driven by the proximity of human settlements, infrastructure (homes, buildings, bridges), and agricultural land to flood plains, inadequate infrastructure, limited ex-ante risk reduction capacity, an outdated river management system, underlying vulnerabilities driven by high poverty rates and socioeconomic factors (e.g. gender, age, income, and education), and ongoing political and economic instability." Although solving climate change will remain out of the purview of any single country, that does not mean governments do not need to address in-country zoning, infrastructure, economic and political issues to mitigate the impacts of climate change. www.worldweatherattribution.org/climate-change-likely-increased-extreme-monsoon-rainfall-flooding-highly-vulnerable-communities-in-pakistan/

This topological map from Visual Capitalist shows the number and percentage of each country's population deemed to be at high risk from once-in-a-century flooding, like the floods that inundated more than one-third of Pakistan earlier this fall, killing more than 1,700 people, destroying buildings and crops, and creating lasting crises in food security, education, and waterborne disease. www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-highest-flood-risk/ 

Geography journalist Tim Marshall takes a look at the emerging naval rivalry between India and China in this article from Geographical (UK): geographical.co.uk/geopolitics/indias-ocean-rivalry-with-china?

The Chinese government has become one of the world's biggest lenders, especially to countries in the developing world and those associated with its Belt and Road Initiative. This map, from Statista based on World Bank data, shows which countries are most indebted to China: www.statista.com/chart/19642/external-loan-debt-to-china-by-country/

Americans often confuse the terms "monsoon" and "typhoon."  A monsoon is an annual rainy season; it is usually critical for life in the region.  A typhoon is a wind storm, like a hurricane, in the Pacific Ocean. The extreme flooding in the news in Pakistan is being caused by monsoon rains. Agriculture would be all but impossible in Pakistan without monsoon rains, but, unfortunately, this year's arrived earlier than normal and are falling more heavily than normal.  As of the last official U.N. count, nearly half a million homes in Pakistan have been damaged by the recent flooding and more than 1,000 people have died. This map, from the U.N., shows the damage is concentrated along the lower reaches of the Indus River. By the way, despite was you might read elsewhere, Pakistan cannot experience a typhoon: hurricane-like wind storms in the Indian Ocean are cyclones.  (Map from reliefweb.int/report/pakistan/pakistan-2022-monsoon-floods-situation-report-no-03-26-august-2022.)

This has been China's hottest, driest summer since record keeping began 61 years ago, and the impact on the Yangtze River has been severe, with tributaries dried up and water flow in the main branch running 50% below normal. The Yangtze is the longest river in the world that runs through only one country, and five of China's megacities -- cities with a population of at least 10 million -- are in the Yangtze River basin.  The Yangtze is not only a key source of water for drinking and irrigation, it is also a major source of hydroelectric power. In Sichuan Province, which gets 80% of its electricity from hydropower, factories have been shut recently to save power for home air conditioning. The next few days may also determine the impact on China's main rice crop. www.euronews.com/2022/08/21/china-declares-first-ever-drought-emergency-amid-intense-heatwave

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/.)

One of the terms my biogeography students learn is "extirpated," which means a species has gone extinct in part of its former range. India is undertaking a project to reverse extirpation: cheetahs are being reintroduced to Kuno National Park in north-central India. Cheetahs were extirpated from India more than 50 years ago. The cheetahs being reintroduced to India are African cheetahs; today, all that remains of the Asiatic cheetah that once roamed from India to the Arabian Peninsula is 12 individuals, 9 males and 3 females, in Iran. www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-62377387

This geo-graphic compares per capita spending on pharmaceuticals in the U.S. to that in a sampling of peer-group (OECD) countries: www.statista.com/chart/3967/which-countries-pay-the-most-for-medicinal-drugs

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

Plants, animals, and microbes move around based on changes in the physical environment and human activity. This shifting geography was documented recently by the appearance in southern Mississippi of a dangerous microbe previously found only in tropical and subtropical zones, including northern Australia, parts of Central and South America, and South and Southeast Asia: www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/health/deadly-bacteria-us-soil-water.html

Liquifying natural gas is a more expensive, energy-intense alternative to pipelines in the delivery of natural gas.  Several European countries are trying to bring more liquified natural gas (LNG) capacity online as quickly as possible to replace Russian, pipeline-delivered gas. This geo-graphic from Statista looks at which countries are currently the biggest suppliers of LNG: www.statista.com/chart/27839/biggest-liquefied-natural-gas-exporters

Europe's record-shattering heat has been in the news, but "Qatar is heating faster than almost anywhere else on the planet, the consequence of being a peninsula surrounded by overheating seas in one of the hottest corners of the world." This article from Geographical (UK) looks at what climate change means for Qatar and how the country is responding: geographical.co.uk/climate-change/climate-and-qatar?

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

According to a new report from the United Nations, global population is projected to hit 8 billion on November 15 of this year, India is expected to surpass China as the world's most populous country in 2023, and more than half of global population growth between now and 2050 will be concentrated in just 8 countries (alphabetically): the DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Tanzania. For all the details, you can download the report here: www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/wpp2022_summary_of_results.pdf

In 2021, the European Union exported 33 million tonnes of waste to non-EU countries, a 77% increase in exported waste since 2004.  Where did it go?  This geo-graphic from Statista shows the top eight destinations for EU waste in 2021: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/24716.jpeg  (China which, as recently as 2009 received more than 10 million tonnes of EU waste, now takes virtually none.)

India has more linguistic diversity than all of Europe put together: recent research shows at least 780 languages are spoken across India. This article highlights the work being done to document these languages and the political dimension of doing so while India's Hindu-nationalist BJP government is trying to make Hindi the country's national language. www.nytimes.com/2022/06/11/world/asia/india-languages-ganesh-devy.html

World Refugee Day was earlier this week. Although Ukrainian refugees -- now numbering 5.2 million -- have dominated the news this year, this map from Statista is a reminder that Ukrainians are just a fraction of the world's refugees: www.statista.com/chart/18436/total-number-of-refugees-by-origin-country

This article from Geographical (UK) profiles the world's 10 fastest-growing cities -- chances are you've heard of relatively few of them -- and looks at new additions to the list of the world's megacities (population 10M+): geographical.co.uk/culture/the-fastest-growing-cities?

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently compared himself to Czar Peter the Great, who waged war against neighbors to "reclaim" Russian lands. This map from Statista compares the borders of Russia today with the borders of the Russian empire at the beginning of WWI: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/27605.jpeg

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 past two months were the hottest March and April in India in 122 Years, with high temperatures in the Delhi area occasionally exceeding 110°F. At the same time, shortages of coal for the country's power plants have resulted in daily power outages for 2 in 3 Indian households. Power plants in the Indian states of Rajasthan (capital: Jaipur), Maharashtra (capital: Mumbai), West Bengal (capital: Kolkata), and Tamil Nadu (capital: Chennai) have been experiencing the most critical shortages. www.businesstoday.in/latest/story/power-crisis-in-india-these-states-facing-electricity-problems-full-list-332105-2022-05-02

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

Shanghai is the world's busiest container port -- handling about 3x the container traffic of #2 Rotterdam -- and China's ongoing COVID lockdown of Shanghai is further gumming up global shipping. This map, based on live ship-tracking data, shows the backlog of ships earlier this week in the East China Sea, the mouth of the Yangtze River, and the Huangpu River waiting to be loaded and unloaded. cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/27343.jpeg