Issue 39

Happy Lunar New Year to all Geolunatics!

All issues can be found at: https://geocraic.com/

World

Out of Eden Walk I’ve covered Paul Salopek’s epic journey to replicate humanity’s journey out of Africa to South America but it’s always good to revisit and catch up on the latest.

• New interview with Paul: https://emergencemagazine.org/interview/a-path-older-than-memory/
• National Geographic site: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/
• Out of Eden Learn: https://learn.outofedenwalk.com/about/

GeoHistory

Eratosthenes and Ptolemy. Ever wonder how we ended up wth Geographic Coordinates?

• Birth of Coordinates: https://maphappenings.com/2022/09/27/birth-of-coords/

Open History Maps I think I’ve seen this site before but it is not very intuitive and becomes frustrating. But, there are tutorials so if you’re into exploring it, explain it to me sometime.

• Open History Map:
  • Open History Map: https://www.openhistorymap.org/
  • https://blog.openhistorymap.org/
• Open Historical Map:
  • About the project: https://www.greeninfo.org/work/project/openhistoricalmap
  • It’s not intuitive to use. This intro is helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DspkKGe2kX8
  • Open Historical Map: https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/about
  • Wiki: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenHistoricalMap

Asia

Silk Roads

Very thorough site with Silk Roads routes, history, stories, and a hand-drawn map.

• Fun site to explore: https://www.intofarlands.com/
• BBC Episode on Silk Road(s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNllajrj3u0
• Silk Road Books!
  • Fruit from the Sand
  • The New Silk Roads
  • The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes

Economic Geography

Very interesting site for Exploring Pluralistic Economics.

• https://www.exploring-economics.org/en/

BioGeography

Species management gone wrong (From Susan. Thanks Susan!).

• https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/fixing-the-cormorant-disaster-on-the-columbia-how-could-this-have-come-out-any-worse/

Temperature differences inside Tropical Forests. New study provides microclimate modeling to tropical areas that previously were modelled with models that relied on boreal or temperate region data and results. “We already knew that temperatures inside forest differ substantially from those outside forests. Our study shows that those differences are evident not only in terms of magnitude (ie., the absolute difference between temperature inside and outside forest) but also in terms of spatial and temporal heterogeneity,”

• Popular article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/01/240123122210.htm
• Patterns of tropical forest understory temperatures: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-44734-0

Demographics

• The “None’s” have it: https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/1226371734/religious-nones-are-now-the-largest-single-group-in-the-u-s

GeoTech

Cesium now has world bathymetry

• From their announcement: https://cesium.com/blog/2024/01/23/introducing-cesium-world-bathymetry

Correlation is not causation (from Andy. Thanks Andy!):

• https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations?p

ESRI launches Maps.com It must have cost a bit to get the domain. ESRI launches maps.com. Looks like a nice collection. It includes both ESRI created maps as well as user submitted maps. Here’s a sample.

• About: https://www.maps.com/about/
• Paleomap project: https://www.maps.com/earths-ancient-past/
• US Underfunded Schools: https://www.maps.com/public-school-adequacy-funding-map-underfunded-us-schools/
• Solar Eclipses: https://www.maps.com/nasa-maps-solar-eclipses-2023-2024/

OpenAI and OSM An obvious OpenAI geospatial agent would be one that helps you query Open Street Maps (OSM) for specific features. There is a GPT to do that. It will generate an Overpass Turbo query as a response to a question. Unfortunately it’s not very good yet. But, the idea is sound and we should keep an eye on it.

• https://chat.openai.com/g/g-Emy7pH8oc-openstreetmap-query
• Overpass Turbo: https://overpass-turbo.eu/ Query: Show me campgrounds in a 50 mile radius around Bend, Oregon Response: [out:json][timeout:90]; ->.searchArea; ( nwr(area.searchArea)“tourism”=”camp_site”; // 50 miles in meters nwr(area.searchArea)“leisure”=”campsite”; ); (._;>;); out qt;

Africa

African Biodiversity hotspots. Our modern capitalistic cultures continue to degrade ecosystems at exponential rates. When are we going to regenerate faster than we degrade? It is a sad, hopelessness-inducing question. Read Regeneration if you want more hope. It is really excellent for that.

• https://africacenter.org/spotlight/african-biodiversity-loss-risk-human-security/

Ecuador

More on the Upano Valley sites found via LIDAR.

• BBC: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240122-the-discovery-of-the-americas-long-lost-rome

US

• Housing is now unaffordable for a record half of all U.S. renters: https://www.npr.org/2024/01/25/1225957874/housing-unaffordable-for-record-half-all-u-s-renters-study-finds