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

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

According to a recent investigative report by The Washington Post, "The pattern is clear: First, the forest is razed. Then the cattle are moved in. If the Amazon is to die, it will be beef that kills it. And America will be an accomplice. Cattle ranching, responsible for the great majority of deforestation in the Amazon, is pushing the forest to the edge of what scientists warn could be a vast and irreversible dieback that claims much of the biome." This map, based on satellite data, shows Brazil's portion of the Amazon River basin and where rainforest has been converted, often illegally, to pastureland: www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2022/05/01/PDTN/a9baa492-b47e-4da0-aa3f-c32911150f4c-2022-04-30_23_24_31-pasture-vs-deforestion.png (from the print edition of www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/amazon-beef-deforestation-brazil/).

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

Not surprisingly, Russia has become the most sanctioned country in the world, with nearly 6,000 different sanctions targeting individuals and/or governmental entities. This geo-graphic from Statista looks at the countries with the most international sanctions. cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/27015.jpeg

When my geography students study biomes, the most unusual biome we learn about is the tepui, a kind of tabletop mountain found primarily in southern and eastern Venezuela. Tepuis are often home to plants found nowhere else in the world, including carnivorous plant species.  This article from Geographical (UK) chronicles the hunt for carnivorous plants on the most famous tepui, Mount Roraima, which is better known as the site of Angel Falls. geographical.co.uk/people/explorers/item/4218-hunting-for-carnivorous-plants-on-mount-roraima

Researchers have "mapped the location and density of Earth’s irrecoverable carbon — carbon locked in ecosystems that is potentially vulnerable to release from human development and, if lost, could not be restored to those ecosystems by 2050." This irrecoverable carbon, mostly residing in forests, peatlands, mangroves, and other natural areas, has been described as "the carbon we must protect to avert climate catastrophe." www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/111821_jl_carbon_inline_desktop_rev.png  (Map and quotes from www.sciencenews.org/article/climate-change-natural-carbon-stores-new-map)

Although Barbados achieved independence in 1966, the island elected to remain a constitutional monarchy with Britain's Queen Elizabeth II as its titular head. Only recently, 55 years later, did Barbados choose to become an independent republic (while remaining part of the Commonwealth). This map from Statista shows countries that used to be part of the British Empire: www.statista.com/chart/26297/countries-gained-independence-from-the-uk/

According to a recent report by the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, an estimated 4.3 million Americans (corresponding to 1.3% of the U.S. population) is Native American. In Bolivia, by contrast, nearly half of the population is indigenous. www.statista.com/chart/19633/countries-by-indigenous-population-in-the-americas

Stronger-than-usual trade winds are shifting water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, creating a La Niña effect that is expected to influence weather patterns through the winter and into the spring. Because La Niña impacts vary with the location, check out the maps in this article to see what might be in store for you: www.wsj.com/articles/la-nina-is-coming-to-shape-winter-forecasts-what-to-know-11636666122

The world's tropical glaciers are melting away as air temperatures heat up. This article from Atlas Obscura introduces what was once the world's highest ski resort, with an elevation higher than Mount Everest's base camp.  Chacaltaya Ski Resort, near La Paz, Bolivia, was closed in 2009 when the Andean glacier upon which it depended melted. www.atlasobscura.com/places/abandoned-chacaltaya-ski-resort

Argentina recently released data showing that more than 40% of the country's population is living in poverty, with nearly 11% of the population classified as destitute (extreme poverty). The country had been in recession since 2018 and coronavirus-related shutdowns caused Argentina's GDP to sink an additional 9.9% from spring 2020 to spring 2021, devastating the country's middle class and youth. Income inequality has long had clear geographic patterns in Argentina, with the highest rates of poverty in the north and the lowest rates in and around Buenos Aires. www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/klpiuh/persistent_poverty_rates_in_argentina_by/

Recent extreme weather, including both drought and frost, has damaged the current coffee crop in Brazil, which is both the world's largest coffee producer and the world's largest coffee exporter. Because coffee plants only thrive within a fairly narrow geographic band -- determined in large part by temperature, precipitation, and elevation -- scientists are on the hunt for ways to continue to grow coffee as temperatures climb. The dominant species of coffee (Coffee arabica) prefers average temperatures of 18-22◦C. Other species -- and there are apparently more than 120 other species of coffee -- have long been thought to have a worse taste or lower yield. Going back over records from nearly 200 years ago, though, a British botanist has tracked down a species of coffee, native to Sierra Leone, that tastes good and does well at temperatures as high as 26◦, giving growers hope for a new species or a crossbreeding option. www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/04/22/how-to-save-coffee-from-global-warming

A new study, from a team of human geographers, analyzed satellite imagery of 913 major flooding events around the world from 2000 to 2018 and then compared population estimates in these same locations and discovered the population in flood-prone areas has grown by up to 86 million people, 10x faster than previously thought. Much of the population growth in floodplains has been part of the rural-to-urban migration in the Global South.  www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/08/04/tens-millions-people-have-been-moving-into-flood-zones-satellite-imagery-shows/

"Extirpation" is one the biogeography terms my geography students learn in the course of their studies. This map shows the current range of the jaguar (in green) as well as its historic range, from which the jaguar has been extirpated (in yellow). 
c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/photos/22252/images/magazine_medium/Jaguar_map2_WWfall2021.png (Map from www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/fall-2021/articles/restoring-the-jaguar-corridor.)

As we are already seeing, changes in the climate do not have the same impact across all regions. This geo-graphic from Statista summarizes the changes in key elements of physical geography -- precipitation patterns and temperature -- forecast in this week's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by region. www.statista.com/chart/25511/scientific-consensus-climate-change-patterns-world-regions

And therein lies the rub: just days after the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its bleak report on global warming, the Biden White House asks the OPEC+ group to pump more oil to bring down gasoline prices, which are at or near a seven-year high.  OPEC+ refers to the official members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, shown in dark blue on this map, and other major petroleum producers who often coordinate with OPEC but are not members of OPEC, shown in light blue on this map. www.insightsonindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Break_through.png

The primary case study in this New York Times article is Kobe, Japan, but the issues apply equally well to any coastal area in an earthquake zone, which includes much of the Philippines, Indonesia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, New Zealand, Chile, Mexico, the South Pacific, the Caribbean, and the U.S. Pacific coast, among many others: how does one build -- and pay for -- new sea walls that will not fail during the next earthquake?  www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/climate/san-francisco-sea-wall-earthquake.html

Although domestic tourism might be rebounding, the slow pace of vaccination in much of the world is expected to continue to depress international tourism. In fact, a recent UN report expects 2021 to be nearly as bad as 2020 in this regard, with estimates that global tourism will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2023 or later. This geo-graphic shows the 10 countries that are expected to take the biggest hits to their economies in 2021 because of the lack of tourism. www.statista.com/chart/25202/gdp-losses-by-country-due-to-a-pandemic-related-reduction-in-tourism

Since the beginning of the civil war in neighboring Syria 10 years ago, Lebanon has hosted the largest number of externally displaced people on a per-capita basis. At one point, as many as one in four people in Lebanon were Syrian refugees. In 2020, the island of Aruba (technically part of the Netherlands) supplanted Lebanon as the host of the greatest per-capita number of externally displaced people, most of whom have fled nearby Venezuela. This geo-graphic, based on UN data, shows the eight countries hosting the most externally displaced people on a per-capita basis: www.statista.com/chart/3576/the-countries-with-the-most-refugees-per-capita

Brazil has been nicknamed the Saudi Arabia of water, but Brazil is currently facing a severe drought, brought on by a combination of La Niña weather patterns in the Pacific and deforestation in both the Amazon rainforest (a major source of the Amazon River) and the less well-known Atlantic Forest (a major source of the Paraná River).  Low water levels are reducing hydroelectric power output (the source of two-thirds of Brazil's electricity), reducing or halting river transportation, threatening crops, increasing fire risk, and squeezing drinking water supplies. This is Brazil's third "once in a century" drought in the past 20 years.  www.batimes.com.ar/news/economy/historic-drought-threatens-brazils-economy.phtml

Vice President Kamala Harris's recent trip to Guatemala to discuss illegal immigration reflects Guatemala's status as the #1 source country for people apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol trying to gain illegal entrance to the United States. This map shows the top 10 source countries in FY2019, which is the most recent annual data released by the U.S. Border Patrol showing citizenship. The top two countries, by far, are Guatemala and Honduras which, together, accounted for more than 60% of all apprehensions.

The left-wing candidate in Peru's hotly contested election this week, Pedro Castillo, is from Chota Province, an area in the Andes Mountains nearly 1,000 km north of the capital of Lima.  Despite its distance from the Atlantic Ocean, Chota is both mountainous and part of the watershed of the Amazon River. Chota Province is shown in red on this map; the inset on the lower left shows the province's location within Peru: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/Location_of_the_province_Chota_in_Cajamarca.svg/375px-Location_of_the_province_Chota_in_Cajamarca.svg.png

The encrypted messaging app WhatsApp has been in the news recently because Facebook, which bought the app in 2014, required users to accept new terms of service, including a new privacy policy, earlier this month. This geo-graphic shows where WhatsApp is most popular: www.statista.com/chart/24855/share-of-respondents-saying-they-regularly-use-whatsapp

Because warmer air can hold more moisture, humidity is expected to rise along with global temperatures. A recent study published in Nature Geoscience suggests that the combination could push human life in the tropics to the breaking point. "Humans’ ability to regulate their body heat is dependent upon the temperature and humidity of the surrounding air. We have a core body temperature that stays relatively stable at 37C (98.6F), while our skin is cooler to allow heat to flow away from the inner body. But should the wet-bulb temperature – a measure of air temperature and humidity – pass 35C, high skin temperature means the body is unable to cool itself, with potentially deadly consequences. ... The research team looked at various historical data and simulations to determine how wet-bulb temperature extremes will change as the planet continues to heat up, discovering that these extremes in the tropics increase at around the same rate as the tropical mean temperature. ... This has potentially dire implications for a huge swathe of humanity. Around 40% of the world’s population currently lives in tropical countries, with this proportion set to expand to half of the global population by 2050 due to the large proportion of young people in region. The Princeton research was centered on latitudes found between 20 degrees north, a line that cuts through Mexico, Libya and India, to 20 degrees south, which goes through Brazil, Madagascar and the northern reaches of Australia. ... '“Theoretically no human can tolerate a wet bulb temperature of above 35C, no matter how much water they have to drink,' [Boise State climate risk expert Mojtaba Sadegh] added."
www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/08/global-heating-tropical-regions-human-livability