Geo-Joint

Everywhere you go in the solar system, they call Earth the water planet. We’re famous for it. Oceans cover about three-quarters of the surface, and they’re pretty deep. Of course there is a store of freshwater on the land itself too, and aquifers beneath it holding an additional component of... …

Even though the majority of the world runs on the Gregorian calendar and plans its New Year’s celebrations for the night of December 31st, there are older traditions and cultures that mark time differently and do their partying or worship at other points of the year. The biggest alternative group would be adherents of the Chinese New Year. They define the new year as …

The Geo-Joint has been focusing on foodstuffs lately, and that’s not un-geographical. The nature of the land (or sea) has an effect upon what kind of chow comes up out of the ground or water. So continuing in that vein, our nose for geography today leads to a special bump in a very …

When a car gets into a bad collision or simply wears itself out, the last stop is the junkyard. Every auto has at least a few pieces that can be used to further the life of similar models in need of a replacement part. Other means of transportation also reach the end of their useful life and head for the …

Humans had lived on Earth for a long time, wondering how the planet came to look as it did, before some began to realize the answers were right under their feet. Geology is the science of understanding earth materials and the processes that rework them into different forms. Through this understanding comes the piecing together of Earth’s history from a…

People sometimes say a map is a work of art, and there are innumerable examples of very beautiful cartography. Still, they’re maps, and their technical brilliance makes them more a tool than an objet d’art. Advanced usage of shaded relief and hypsometric tinting pushes cartography closer to the definition of art, but there is a further step, one that truly…

Famous people are by definition usually well known in their time, actively doing something that draws attention. After they’re gone, their memory can fade if not for efforts to maintain the story of their deeds in books, music, paintings, photographs, or by word of mouth. These are all a little fragile, and some of these forms must be sought out ... Read More

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Some time ago, the Geo-Joint looked at underwater logging. No, that doesn’t involve scuba divers with waterproof chainsaws but rather the retrieval of cut logs that were meant to float downstream to a collection area but sank instead. Lying for years or even decades at the bottom of cold lakes, the logs are well preserved, and some are so old ... Read More

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The Earth presents challenges, and life responds. No matter what the extremes, living things find a way to tolerate whatever levels of temperature, rainfall, sunshine, wind, slope, and soil chemistry a habitat may provide. Occasionally, even a generally moderate region will feature a certain corner that presents difficulty as well as opportunity, and plants and animals find a way to ... Read More

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Out on the open road, you’re free as a bird, sailing along with the wind in your hair. That freedom has limits, though, especially when another motorist comes toward you from the opposite direction. At that point you will both want it very clearly understood who is going to be on what side of the road. Of course, that’s all ... Read More

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What’s the first thing you think of when somebody mentions Japan? Very likely it’s the modern, urban face of Tokyo, brimming with cutting-edge electronics, bright lights, and super-fast trains. There’s more of the same in Yokohama, Osaka, and Nagoya, and Japan has many smaller cities and towns with millions of buildings and people and miles of roads. But despite the ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: The Woodsy World of Japan appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

Maybe you remember the old riddle from your childhood: What happens if you drop a white hat in the Red Sea? Aside from the answer, which never fails to get a disappointed groan out of kids, what is there to know about the Red Sea? Where is it, and how did it get there? The Saudi Peninsula, home to Saudi ... Read More

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Lots of mammals like water. Humans, for one, although we don’t generally use it as a habitat. Beaver are more integrally involved with the water, damming it, swimming in it, slapping their tails on it. Beaver are important to their natural habitat and have been reintroduced at some effort in places where they had been hunted out by trappers. Their ... Read More

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Life is filled with so much work, duty, and obligation. In the little stretches of free time we get, there are innumerable physical activities to keep us amused and exercised. No one needs to be told what sports are tops in America, and worldwide, soccer (the real football) is king. Despite the availability of these and many other mainstream sporty ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: The Wide World of Weird Sports appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

The massive slabs of rock that form Stonehenge seem impossibly arranged, tons of weight seemingly placed on high by a giant’s hand. Nothing else compares with the pure volume of the stoneworks there. However, southern England wasn’t the only place big rocks were being moved around, and some of the best examples of the Neolithic cultures who created these displays ... Read More

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They say everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. So while you’re not dying, where do you want to spend your time? Visions of warm, sandy beaches or mountain vistas come to mind—or maybe a dense cityscape fires your quest for art and culture. Everybody has their own concept of the perfect place to play out ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Getting the Blues to Live Long and Be Happy appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

Some people make sketches of fanciful designs—curving, wandering lines of composition, artful constructs that would be impractical to translate into the three dimensions of real-world materials. And some people have those Dr. Seuss visions and go ahead and make them real despite the difficulty. Sabato “Simon” Rodia, also known as Sam, was an Italian immigrant to Los Angeles in the ... Read More

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Africa is a very big place. While much of its land is arid, it has vast areas that hold plenty of water. When you can say you are one of Africa’s largest lakes, that’s no small claim. Lake Chad was once a member of that club. Located in northern central Africa’s Sahel region where Nigeria, NIger, Cameroon, and Chad share ... Read More

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Some think the best way to survive a fight, or a really bad set of circumstances, is to be tough as nails. Be strong, nimble, street-smart, quick, and very determined. In some fights, however, the best quality to possess is adaptability. We live in a changing world. Seasons change, weather changes, the climate shifts to wetter or dryer, colder or ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Jellies Roll with the Punches appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

There’s nothing like a lazy soak in a steaming hot springs. It relaxes the muscles and puts one in a blissful state. However, some prefer a more active interaction with water and choose to actually swim in a pool. Nice, flat, evenly heated water there, but yeesh, the chlorine. For habitual swimmers, it can result in dry skin and hair ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Swimming in Salty Pools appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

Conservationists note that the public is moved by what are called “charismatic megafauna.” That means the plight of pandas, elephants, tigers, and sun bears captures attention and inspires donations for their preservation far more than for say, the delta smelt, the Kentucky cave shrimp, or the valley elderberry longhorn beetle. It helps to be big, have a personality, and be ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: The Vaquita Vanishes Before our Eyes appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

A little while back, the Geo-Joint went out into the Indian Ocean and had a look around at the Maldives. These islands, as well as Mauritius and Reunion islands to the southwest, and other islands and submarine ridges, were formed by a hotspot which pushed magma to the surface as the tectonic plates moved over it. Pretty impressive work, and ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: The Trappings of Flood Basalts appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

Lawns are generally not complicated things. Give them some water, rake up the leaves, run the lawnmower when it gets shaggy, and watch for dandelions and crabgrass. But sometimes strange and mysterious things appear there, and no, it’s not what the neighbor’s dog leaves behind. After a good rain, you may notice that little white heads are poking up through ... Read More

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There are so few things we can count on 100 percent. Certainly the doings of humankind are rife with failure, deception, and disappointment. Nature provides us with more reliable behaviors, so much so that when we get unexpected results, we are generally flabbergasted. One thing you ought to be able to be certain of is that water will always flow ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Fighting the Current, Turning the Tide, and Flowing Upstream appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

Texas is a big state. It’s so doggone big that it has a broad variety of landscapes and geographic regions, and these regions themselves are sizeable. One of them is the Llano Estacado. It covers a vast amount of the western part of the state, from the Canadian River near Amarillo in the north down to the Midland/Odessa area in ... Read More

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If you had to name two of the “nicest” nations on the planet, you might think of Canada and Denmark. They just don’t cause a lot of trouble in the world, and the last thing you’d expect is a border dispute between the two. Well, of course not, right? They’re nowhere near each other! Ah, but as a matter of ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Going Toe-to-Toe on Hans Island appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

We generally think of mountains as tall, broad ridges–a sort of wall of stone. Rocky structures aren’t often found as distinct entities, with a small base and a narrow, steep-sided body. Occasionally, such promontories stick up above the surrounding lands, like Devil’s Tower or the sandstone pinnacles of Monument Valley, but these are solitary, or few in number, and catch ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: The Karst Spires of Guilin appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

Island life is generally thought of as desirable, being distant, scenic, and peacefully isolated. Throw in a tropical location, and the notion becomes dreamlike. Unfortunately for a lot of unlucky individuals over the course of about a hundred years, such a location was a living nightmare. In 1852, the government of French Emperor Napoleon III needed a place to send ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: A Fiendish Stay on Devil’s Island appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

There are some lakes, like Tahoe, that can be crystal clear. Even those rare bodies are increasingly plagued by incursions of pollution or sediment that mar the clarity to some extent. And most lakes don’t come close to that kind of visibility, especially in summer when warmer water is so conducive to the growth of algae. Green, then, is a ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Pretty Lakes in Pink appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

There are a thousand and one places to go on this planet, and each dictates its own set of preparations for a successful trip. Even so, terrestrial destinations all have some similarity when compared to leaving this planet entirely and heading for another. That kind of excursion will require a good bit of time cooped up in a tin can ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Making Yourself at Home on Mars appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

Snorkelers can see a lot of great stuff, because the water over coral reefs often isn’t that deep. But to really get down into what the undersea has to offer, it’s going to take some scuba gear and the know-how to utilize it properly and safely. If you’re just in it for recreation, 130 feet is about the limit. Technical ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Proving the Depths of Hranicka Propast appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

If you live on the coast, the air is thick. It doesn’t feel like that, but at sea level you’re at the bottom of a sea of air. The gases of the atmosphere there are under the weight of the maximum column of overlying air. Thus they are pressed together more densely than at higher elevation. This barometric pressure is ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Drawing the Karman Line appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

There must have been something in the minds of all early peoples. You just know they sat around the campfire, trading stories and plotting, scheming, and planning on how to create sizeable stone displays that would drive their distant progeny nuts trying to figure out just exactly what the heck they were up to. The Easter Island moai, the pyramids, ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Mysteries and Danger on the Plain of Jars appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

The Maldive Islands are a string of tropical beauty southwest of India, stretching for over 500 miles. The ridge that forms the base of the country’s 22 atolls was built up from the ocean floor in much the same way as were the Hawaiian Islands. A hotspot that now rests far away under Reunion Island, east of Madagascar, fed enough ... Read More

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Some people think studying geography just means learning where all the capital cities are. Geographers bristle at such a narrow definition, but capital cities are indeed important. They are often the biggest and most prosperous locations in a country, their fame coming from the power and history they contain. Capitals represent the face of the government and are usually filled ... Read More

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Who doesn’t love a beach? Some people find the sand to be a bother, and the sun and wind uncomfortable, but they have to be in the minority. How else to explain the huge popularity of a seaside vacation, or the high cost of living coastally due to it being the place everyone wants to move to? The generally milder ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Sandy Beaches Going with the Flow appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

Life is messy. It’s hard to keep things organized, and when a whole bunch of people live nearby each other (as we usually do), all sorts of inefficient, unsightly, poorly maintained situations develop. For proof of this notion, have a look at just about any urban area. Maybe it’s human nature, or entropy, or some other immutable universal law, but ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Celebration, Florida – The Happiest Town on Earth, sort of. appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

Water covers about three quarters of the Earth, so it doesn’t seem too greedy that folks in Netherlands wanted to convert some of that to dry land. But before we get to that undertaking, how did that area evolve to where it became necessary to dry out land in the first place? The Netherlands, sometimes called Holland, have always been ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Staying Dry in the Netherlands appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

When the National Parks Service began to set aside America’s natural wonders, the first lands that were so honored were all out west. Of the initial ten parks, established between 1872 and 1916, the farthest east was in South Dakota. Understandably, the eastern half of the country wanted some of this action. Two of the earliest parks in that region ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Driving the Blue Ridge Parkway appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

Not long ago, the Geo-Joint went to Meteora, Greece, where some very daring monks took up residence on top of broad, tall pinnacles of limestone and sandstone, back in the 1300s. They built some impressive structures on high, which are still there for us to marvel at, and probably will be for some time to come. The limestone they built ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: Civita di Bagnoregio – On Shaky Footing for a Long Time appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.

When it comes to flatness on Earth, the surface of a calm lake is probably the optimal setting. You can witness the scene, and paddle a canoe across it, but you can’t go for a walk on it. Many landscapes in the Plains States or in Australia’s interior, or the deserts of Ethiopia, among others, feature some vast stretches of ... Read More

The post Geo-Joint: El Salar de Uyuni and Bonneville – Worth Their Salt appeared first on Journeys by Maps.com.