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

Discussion Group!

Coming soon. I am setting up a GeoCraic discussion group at Groups.io: https://groups.io/static/about. A big caveat is that I’m planning for it to be public. That means your responses are public as well. If anyone has issues with this, let’s discuss. This will give us the ability to see an archive of replies and other responses to the group without digging through crappy email search. Just go to the group. It also means that the group could grow. Growing the group is not something I’m actively working on, but it could happen.

World

eDNA

Occasionally, there are technological revolutions that shake the world and the humans re-making it. Environmental DNA (eDNA) and the biotechnical revolution is one of those. For Geographers there have already been stunning insights from it.

Demographics

Life Expectancy Let’s get a little personal with demographics and compare you to other parts of the world in terms of life expectancy. A very interesting “scrolly-telling” story from the Washington Post.

Europe

Rewilding in the EU goes big! EU Parliament Makes History by Adopting First-of-its-Kind Nature Restoration Law.

“this legislation aims to restore at least 20% of the EU’s land and seas, reverse pollinator decline, and restore 25,000 kilometres of European rivers to free-flowing condition by 2030”

Mid-East

Geopolitics

The slaughter in Gaza is both horrifying and numbing. Neither the US, nor Israel, nor Hamas, seem to know more than how to kill or abet killing. All of their actions just make things worse on all sides. I’m not sure there is any near-term solution. Certainly not a “Two State” solution where the religous zealots on both sides want the other side wiped out. While the term “Middle East” is unquestionably Eurocentric I don’t know that there’s a generally accepted alternative. Southwest Asia? In any event I try to curate more geopolitical “climate” content rather than “weather” content and I thought this was an excellent geopolitical point made in the article below from The Hill. Which is about how unaware the US establishment seems to be that “Iranian-backed groups have changed the balance of power in the region”. Which seems to me to be true.

GIS

One of the cartographers I admire most, John Nelson, has a new cartography MOOC coming up. If anyone wants to learn/re-learn cartography details in ArcGIS Pro.

US

Pleistocene Lake Highway

We still need a better name for this corridor of early human diffusion through North America. What if we just answer the question that must have been on their minds and that humans have be seeking an answer to for millennia? Donde esta La Playa? “Where’s the Beach”? La Playa Carril! “The Beach Lane”. I like it.

Boats!

So, what kind of boats were used in the Pleistocene Lake and Kelp highway? How about a rush-raft (photo below)? Easily available materials. We have examples of rush rafts from Ireland, Vietname, and South America. Or a Curach-like boat? A Curach is very like a Native Amerian “Bull boat” which was made of buffalo hide. Plus we know they made excellent canoes and dugouts of various kinds.

So, first you gather rushes from your marshy neighborhood, then form a boat-shaped frame atop the pile of floating reeds…and cast off for parts unknown. This is one of my favorite images in the book, showing Patrick Gately rowing his Clioth Thulca on the River Suck in County Roscommon. (This might serve as the visual definition of “inshore craft.”)

Bull Boat, circa 1939 Chief Crow’s Heart, Hidatsa Nation Fort Berthold Reservation, Elbowoods, North Dakota

PNW

Since I did my masters thesis in the Oregon Dunes this first story below is definitely nostalgic for me. Also it’s super interesting that the Oregon Dunes were where Frank Herbert got a lot of his inspiration for his novel Dune. Good timing with the second movie just out. As Rewilding gains steam its focus on native plants is a clear contrast to the non-native species used for dune stabilization on the Oregon coast.