Britain and France basically drew a narrow strip around a river just to split up territory. Because of this, Senegal is awkwardly wrapped entirely around another country. It completely splits up the local Wolof and Jola peoples, ruins West African trade, and makes travel an absolute nightmare. It’s easily one of the most poorly conceived colonial borders out there. Poor sandwiched Gambia…

just looks really out of place compared with the surrounding geography

If you were to divide California into 4 roughly equal strips of area, a hefty majority of its 39 million residents live in the southernmost strip containing the LA+San Diego metro areas, with nearly half of the state (~47%) living in the Greater LA metro area alone. If it were its own state, Southern California, with primarily just LA and San Diego metro areas, would compete with Florida for title of 2nd most populous US state.

The SF Bay Area, Sacramento, Monterrey, Fresno, and most of the Central Valley and put together are short of SoCal by over 9 million residents, but on its own this area would compete with Illinois for title of 6th largest state.

The strip sandwiched between Southern California and the Bay Area, containing Bakersfield plus other farming towns in the Southern Central Valley and most of the towns of the Central Coast, has about more people than Utah or Connecticut.

Suprisingly, despite how empty it can feel, there are still over a million people still live in the strip of CA north of Sacramento, containing about as much people as Hawaii and New Hampshire, albeit of a larger area.

Ultimately, one way to better understand the scale and density of California, is to conceptualize it as Florida + Illinois + Utah + Hawaii, all packaged in one single state under one single state government

It seems like the perfect place for a maritime city, what's the reason a major city never developed there? Mountains, soil, coast, geopolitics, or other reasons?

I came up with this question when Curacao participated in de WC and people questioned its sovereignty. surprisingly Curaçao turns out to be remarkably independent from the Netherlands with its own constitution, parliament, immigration policy, currency and central bank. Does this make them more “independent“ than England from the UK?

but it gets more interesting because neither does the Netherlands have a UN seat as that is reserved for the kingdom of the Netherlands. Does that make the Netherlands the most autonomous non-sovereign state? At least according to international law?

are there other contenders? Self governing Russian oblasts in Russia perhaps? I know Denmark is in a similar situation but it seems like the danish parliament has Greenland representatives which makes them less “autonomous” I guess(?)

edit: since I made this account specifically for this question I sadly don’t seem to be able to take part in discussions. I think taiwan is the best so suggestion so far.

Image credit: What Was The "Boring Billion" Really Like? (Image is NOT AI)

Iraq’s coastline is extremely important for the country despite its small size. It has 3 significant ports and several smaller ones that serve the entire country’s needs and oil exports.

The grand al faw port is the biggest and newest of these ports, with a world record for having the longest breakwaters in the world (14.5km), it is set to become West Asia’s largest port by 2037 upon full completion. It is connected to the rest of the country via a submerged tunnel underneath the Zubair inlet that was completed this year connecting the Al faw “peninsula” (which is really an island) to the other ports and rest of the country.

The most important port currently is the Um Qasr port built on the ancient Hellenic port city of Teredon, divided into two ports, the north port along an artificial channel and the south port. It is set to become a large capacity port after it’s fully completed.

The last major port is Khor Zubair port further up the Zubair inlet.

The Khor Al Zubair served as Iraq’s strategic gateway to the sea, until Kuwait built the Port Al Mubarak on Bubayan island and claimed half of the Khor Abdullah which limited Iraq’s access to the sea, forcing Iraq to build Al Faw grand port directly on the sea rather than relying on Kuwait. It’s been over 12 years since Kuwait built its port on its side of the channel, but it still hasn’t started operations due to lack of investment and because Iraq has repeatedly refused to connect the port to its own ports and to Europe via Turkey and Iraq.

Iraq is also building 2 offshore artificial islands and has 2 offshore ports/terminals.

Iraq’s only natural marine island is Hajjam island, along with a few insignificant islands at the end of the Khor Al Zubair in the tree like formation.

In the late 70s Iraq duh a canal named the “Shatt al Basra canal” diverting the water from the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates away from its natural route on Shatt all Basra along the Iran border to Khor Zubair so that Iraq could fully control the outflow of the rivers. The canal also connected the Euphrates and marshes directly to the sea.

In early 2026 Iraq Iraq officially submitted its proper maritime EEZ coordinates to the UN, which sparked backlash from Kuwait and fellow GCC members aswell as Jordan, Egypt, Sudan and Palestine (although later Palestine backtracked on its stance due to an official complaint from Iraq accusing them of backstabbing after all of the support Iraq gave to Palestine). Only Morocco supported Iraq’s claim. Iraq argued that Kuwait established its maritime EEZ zones unjustly without consulting Iraq in 2013 taking advantage of the civil war in Iraq. Iraq said that it’s ready to properly re define the boundaries with Kuwait fairly, however Kuwait refuses to back down on its claims.

In recent years, Iraqs coastal region has become a construction zone. Iraq has actively contracted companies for several projects including desalination plants, fiber-optic cables that transit from the gulf to Europe, highways, an industrial city and a new city directly on the coast etc.

In what concerns territorial waters, I can think of Monaco's thin strip between the big Italian and French territorial waters. A possible candidate for Exclusive Economic Zone can be Japan which expanded its EEZ many thousands square kilometers thanks to little Okinotorishima Island. Which country do you think has the weirdest territorial waters? And weirdest EEZ?

Just a fun fact!

Assuming the humans aren't worried about ecological damage, unintended consequences, or cost, but want a usable result in the end, so nuclear radiation is to be avoided. And a single controlled project outcome, so climate change doesn't count.

What's the largest scale geographic change ppl could make in a year, or in a decade?

I think possible contenders could be the Australian interior sea idea, or targeted bombing of the Thwaites glacier. Any other possibilities? Asking for a friend (jk!!)

Given that we have explored more of Mars (in pure area) than our own oceans, what can fully exploring our oceans and the seabed help in, especially in the field of science and research?

Two of America's largest reservoirs are sitting at about a quarter full, and the rules governing how the Colorado River gets shared expire at the end of this year. Nobody's agreed on what replaces them yet.

Been digging into this for a while and a few numbers genuinely surprised me:

• Glen Canyon Dam is currently only about 37 feet above the elevation where it physically stops generating power
• The whole 1922 agreement governing this river was based on measurements taken during one of the wettest periods in its recorded history, so it promised more water than the river has reliably produced for decades
• Roughly 74% of the water taken from the river goes to agriculture, and a meaningful share of that is alfalfa grown specifically for export abroad

The seven states involved have already missed one federal deadline to agree on new rules, and if they can't sort it out, the federal government has said it'll impose its own plan on all of them.

Genuinely curious what people closer to this actually think happens next? My view is that humans are too short sighted to act before it's late. I also wonder whether lobbyists are in play making sure that the enormous agriculture industry is able to keep operating un-hindered.

Would love to hear everyones thoughts on this! 😊

I dunno who might have posted this before, but this is a film that generations of Canadian kids have seen many times. Well, Ontario kids. It's one of the Canada Film Board's masterpieces. This is a really good film if you're interested in teaching north american post-glacial geology and geography at the student level.

Students fron any US state with a great lakes shoreline would learn something valuable from this film.

The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes.

I was reading about presumed lost ancient civilizations in the Sahara desert and I thought if someone thought to put a point nemo like in the Pacific Ocean. Chat gpt give these coordinates 23.30, 13.00, but it also says that is in south Algeria while Google Maps takes us in south Libya. Anyone has a more correct answer?

I've heard pretty regularly of Paris, Texas, but recently I heard they also have a city named Dublin, and then I started googling "(European city), Texas", and I've compiled the following list.

-Paris, City

-Dublin, City

-Athens, City

-Florence, City

-Naples, City

-London, Uninc. Territory

-Berlin Uninc. Territory

-Amsterdam, Uninc. Territory

-Warsaw, Uninc. Territory

-Moscow, Uninc. Territory

-Vienna, County Region

-Cardiff, County Region

-Edinburgh, County Region

-Stockholm, County Region (formerly, apparently)

-Lisbon, Neighborhood in Dallas

-Glasgow, Neighborhood in Pasadena

I'm not sure if this type of post is allowed or if this is the right place, so please let me know if it isn't. But I'm looking for physical geographer or geomorphologist to hire/commission for a personal project!

I'm creating a fictional place, for fun, that is still very much rooted in today's world, so I would like to make the physical geography as plausible as possible, as if it truly did exist (or if it existed hypothetically). I'm after stuff like landforms, terrain, climate, ecosystems, etc.

I don't want to rely on AI like ChatGPT, and I want it to be grounded in actual research and real references as much as possible. So it would be great if you are an expert on things like this!

Again, this is a completely personal project that is unrelated to my current job (I don't do anything with geography) and I've already graduated. I don't have a set budget right now, so please let me know your rates if you are interested. I would also appreciate if you could send any examples or credentials.

Thank you!

--
P.S I'm not exactly looking for a map-maker. I have a basic "map" of the fictional country that I would like to be analyzed :) so I'm more so looking for someone to help me research and create a written document about the country's geographical information.

The little thing going north, what is it, and why dies it have 1 block sticking out