Sounds silly but since I grew up near the beach and ocean, I’ve always dreamed of being in a forest so beautiful/unique it was like being transported into fairytale. Are there any forests in real life you’ve been to that give you that feel?

Cape Horn for example is known for its hazardous waters. So is around South Africa. Why it is and what are the other examples?

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?

just looks really out of place compared with the surrounding geography

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…

Such a massive body of sand. It’s funny how it stands encircled by what looks like mountains.

Gobi Desert in Asia

The spacing between the lines seem a bit to even to not be man made, but I would assume they were naturally formed.

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

Hello, I finished this map of Costa Rica’s geographical role as a key link in the continental corridor connecting North and South America. Costa Rica sits right in the middle of the jaguar’s range, acting like a vital bridge for conservation across latin america. It’s really cool to see how geography shapes wildlife survival. Feedbacks are welcome and I hope you enjoy!

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)

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?

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.

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!!)

Hey everyone!
I’m a middle school teacher whose primary subject area is geography. I like to do personal work in the summer, like those workbooks your parents had you do in the summer.
Does anyone have suggestions for adult geography textbooks/textbooks? Anything to help add to my lessons would be so cool.
Thanks everyone!

Just a fun fact!