Extreme drought in Argentina is expected to reduce the country's GDP by 3% this year.  Because this decline comes almost entirely in the agricultural sector, significantly lower crop yields are likely to affect global prices for soybeans, corn, wheat, and other foodstuffs.  www.reuters.com/world/americas/historic-drought-argentina-seen-shrinking-gdp-by-3-points-2023-03-10/

Valentine's Day is a major chocolate-giving holiday. This site has an interesting collection of links related to the geography of chocolate: cocoarunners.com/the-geography-of-chocolate/

Which countries have the largest share of their populations living abroad? It turns out island nations -- nearly one out of three Polynesians is living outside of their home country, for example -- and, not surprisingly, countries with stagnant economies and/or conflict are high on the list. This geo-graphic from Statista looks at the top 8 countries (min. population size 750,000) and a sampling of others:   www.statista.com/chart/4237/the-countries-with-the-most-people-living-overseas

Students in some of my geography classes learn about one of our most unusual biomes, a tepui. Found almost exclusively in Venezuela -- Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall, cascades down a tepui -- these distinctive tabletop mountains host a range of plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. This article highlights the use of satellite imagery to document the extent of illegal gold mining destroying a tepui in Venezuela's Yapacana National Park considered sacred to the indigenous people and home to several critically endangered species.  www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/06/venezuela-yapacana-gold-mining/

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

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/ 

The Darién Gap is the southernmost section of Panama that is part Panamanian rainforest and national park, part indigenous land, and part ungoverned space in which a variety of gangs and smugglers have long held sway. The "gap" refers to a gap in the Pan-American Highway: there is no road through the Darién Gap to connect Panama with Colombia. Over the last few years, the Darién Gap has become a route for Venezuelan and other migrants heading to the U.S. (many of whom fly into Ecuador from around the world to take advantage of Ecuador's liberal visa policy). This article from The New York Times chronicles the hazards of the Darién Gap: www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/world/americas/venezuelan-migrants-us-border.html

Over the last two decades, China has built a vast ocean fishing fleet that has depleted China's own fishing stocks and now spends most of its time in and near the territorial waters of other countries. This recent article from The New York Times includes a series of maps profiling the journeys of a Chinese-owned refrigerated cargo ship that offloads catches from fishing vessels in South American waters, including in waters adjacent to the protected marine sanctuary of the Galapagos Islands: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/26/world/asia/china-fishing-south-america.html

Fog is a vital characteristic of biomes ranging from temperate rainforests to cloud forests and may even become a source of water commercially harvested for drinking. Yet scientists around the world are finding that fog, particularly along the coasts, seems to be in decline for complex reasons, including warming oceans.  "Fog may be the most difficult meteorological phenomenon to capture, calculate and predict. Unlike temperature, precipitation, humidity or wind, there is no reliable gauge for it. There is not even a practical definition of it. Most will say that fog is a cloud that touches the ground, which sounds simple enough. But fog is movement in three dimensions, dipping and rising, forming and disappearing. Sometimes a thin layer hugs the water below the Golden Gate Bridge, blinding mariners. Sometimes it settles about 200 feet higher, blinding drivers. Sometimes it shrouds the top of the bridge’s towers and the airspace above, blinding pilots. Sometimes it does it all. Which of those things is fog? ... Fog from the ocean is a dependable feature in several places around the globe, mostly on the west coasts of major continents. Villages in places like Peru and Chile, sometimes with almost no rain throughout the year, have for centuries sustained themselves largely on fog water. ... Using observational data at airports in the coastal redwood region — from central California to its northern border, including the Bay Area — they found that the frequency of fog, measured by fog hours per day, had dropped 33 percent since the middle of the 20th century." www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/14/climate/san-francisco-fog.html

The second major named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season has just made its way across Cuba and Florida.  This map, based on the INFORM Risk Index, looks at the risk of hurricane-related humanitarian crises in Latin America and the Caribbean: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/28317.jpeg

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/

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/