Geography
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When the Border is a River: A Journey Along the Salween River-Border
Rivers might appear to be a natural or even an expedient way to demarcate political borders. Yet rivers are always in flux as flows of water, sediments, and fish and aquatics shift with the rains and tides. For rivers to serve as borders, individuals, communities, and governments engage in a range of efforts, such as erecting walls, fences, or signs, underlining the reality that borders are actively constructed through contested sociopolitical processes and in everyday life.
Floodplains and Hurricanes: Mapping Natural Disasters to Uncover Vulnerable Communities
Using GIS mapping, I can identify at-risk communities most impacted by water-related natural disasters in the Houston Metropolitan Area (HMA), which is highly susceptible to hurricanes, tropical storms, and excessive flooding. Geospatial analysis reveals that at-risk communities are not randomly distributed throughout the HMA; populations like women and children are at higher risk of disproportionate outcomes during flooding events.
A Map of the Future of Water
Restorative Cartography of the Theakiki Region: Mapping Potawatomi Presences in Indiana
By Elan Pochedley. This article explores what decolonization can consist of—and be envisioned as—when we recognize how settler colonial governance, policies, industries, and structures have affected both Indigenous peoples and nonhuman relatives within their respective homelands. I assert that analyses of settler colonialism must address the environmental dislocations and degradations experienced by both humans and nonhumans.
Exploring the Map: The Mississippi River (from North America: Portrait of a Continent)
Explore North America through this contemporary hand-drawn map and this video, that follows the Mississippi River and explores more than just the banks of the river, including Chicago, the Ozarks, and Acadiana.
Flood Narratives of the Lower Subarnarekha River Corridor, India
Eroding Memories and Erecting Risk on the Amite River
A Lake with a Crossing in a Sandy Place
A few months ago, it was a typical day at work for me. I was tasked with producing a basic map graphic for an outreach brochure—nothing extraordinary. I sent off the completed graphic and moved on to another project. The next day, our local watershed partner replied to my email and asked me to “add the reservation communities of Little Rock and Ponemah to the map.”
Water and the Preclassic Maya at El Tintal, Petén, Guatemala
As part of the 1931 Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Uaxactun expedition, geologist C.W. Cooke (1931: 286) noted, “If the bajos were restored to their former condition, the Petén would be a region of many beautiful lakes. Travel in it would be easy, for one could go from place to place by boat, with only short journeys overland, from one lake to another, across country that offers little impediment to travel at any season.” These bajos mentioned by Cooke, low-lying swampy areas prone to flooding, are spread throughout most of the northern lowlands of Petén, Guatemala, characterizing the region with seasonal and perennial wetland systems.