2018

As human population grow it becomes questionable whether our food supply can keep up especially since growing wealth is leading to growing demand for food products that require more resources to produce. So maybe we should look to insects. They are much more efficiency at producing resources, mature quickly, eat just about anything (like garbage) and take up little space since they tend to live in colonies. If you think they are too icky, get this. Unlike livestock they don't carry diseases that can be passed on to humans, many societies consider them delicacies and they can be processed into innocuous looking ingredients.

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SUnknownHow Does an Oasis Form?

Mon, Jun 18, 2018

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SUnknownAll Things Soil Taxonomy

Wed, Jul 04, 2018

Soil is a mixture of crushed rock of various sizes called; clay, silt and sand. It's composition and what grows best in it is influenced by climate, the organisms that live in it, altitude, what type of rock it formed from and how long mother nature has been breaking it down. With all these variables there is a planet full of soil varieties.

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SUnknownWhat if Antarctica Melted?

Fri, Jul 13, 2018

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SUnknownWhat's Under Antarctica's Ice Sheets?

Fri, Jul 13, 2018

If you take away all Antarctica's ice you first might consider, where would it go? Then let's see what the continent would look like. But don't expect it to be pretty.

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SUnknownHow Geography Doomed Africa

Mon, Jul 23, 2018

"Climate unites people through culture." In Eurasia large swathes of similar climate lead to contiguous peoples living with a similar life style and eventually uniting and developing. In Africa fragmented climates lead to small fragmented societies with little interaction to encourage development.

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SUnknownThe Coriolis Effect Explained

Wed, Sep 12, 2018

The Coriolis Effect occurs because objects at the equator rotate around the Earth faster then objects closer to the poles. But air is free to move north and south. When it does it will move into an area where the air is moving faster or slower and move ahead or fall behind causing a rotation. If the rotation is fast enough a hurricane can result. Maybe a diagram will help.

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SUnknownIs Tibet a Country?

Wed, Sep 26, 2018

To be a county a region needs to satisfy three criteria. It must comprise a clearly defined area of land. It must have a government. It must be a nation meaning a people with a common history, culture, language or decent. Alas, Tibet only qualifies for two out of three though the answer would have been different in the past.

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SUnknownEutrophication Explained

Tue, Oct 02, 2018

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SUnknownHow to Profit by Saving the Amazon Rainforest

Sun, Oct 28, 2018

Which is a better use of the Amazon; logging, cattle farming, or harvesting indigenous fruits. A 1989 research paper looked at this question and found that first year, logging is more profitable. But logging is not sustainable. By year two harvesting indigenous fruits wins out and by far surpasses the profitability of raising livestock.

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SUnknownThe Geography of Fruit

Tue, Nov 13, 2018

Fruit production has spread around the word from where they first originated. China is now the leading producer of many of the popular fruits. But the leading producer of some fruits has been the same region of hundreds or thousands of years even though the fruit did not originate there.

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SUnknownRare Earth Elements: China's Vibranium?

Sun, Nov 25, 2018

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SUnknownIs There Any Truth to Flood Myths?

Sun, Dec 16, 2018

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SUnknownThe Rarest Element on Earth

Mon, Jan 28, 2019

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SUnknownOceans are Deserts

Thu, Feb 14, 2019

Although the open ocean comprises 65% of the Earth's surface it only produces as much biomass per unit of area as a desert. What a waste. On land, plants are the foundation for the biomass. In the oceans it's phytoplankton. But in the vast volume of the oceans the environments that provide enough sunlight and mineral nutrients for phytoplankton thrive is very limited.

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SUnknownThe Geography of Yohanan

Sun, Mar 17, 2019

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SUnknownThe Plan to Fertilize the Ocean with Iron

Mon, Mar 25, 2019

Phytoplankton are the foundation of life on earth converting carbon dioxide, that causes global warming, into oxygen that we and other animals need to survive. So more phytoplankton sounds like a good thing. Yet there are huge swaths of ocean where phytoplankton struggle to thrive due to a shortage of iron. Would it be a good idea to feed them more iron in these regions?

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SUnknownEast African Federation: A New African Superpower?

Tue, Apr 02, 2019

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SUnknownCould Global Warming Start a New Ice Age?

Sun, Jun 02, 2019

A hotter Earth leading to a new ice ages is counter-intuitive in the extreme. To understand this possibility it's necessary to recognize that ocean currents transport heat around the planet. In particular, the Gulf Stream transports heat to the north keeping Europe rather warm and ice free. Global warming could halt this current so heat builds up at the equator and ice builds up nearer the poles.

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SUnknownRedefining Continents

Thu, Jun 27, 2019

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SUnknownWhat's the Best Temperature for Civilization?

Thu, Jul 11, 2019

If you look for the optimum temperature for humans to survive in you find the locations of two great ancient civilizations, Egypt and Mesopotamia. But if you look for a bit cooler climate you find the locations of the great technological civilizations dating from ancient Rome to modern China, Europe and United States. But there are a few isolated areas in southern regions Australia, Africa and South America that did not develop much technology. Does this make sense?

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SUnknownWhy Build Venice?

Tue, Aug 27, 2019

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SUnknownWhat Did Pangaea Look Like?

Wed, Oct 23, 2019

Pangaea was the most recent super continent (if you don't count modern Eurasia-Africa). To determine the environments of the continent start with an overall map of how the current continents fit together. Then determine where the mountain ranges were. Next, predict the ocean currents taking particular note of the Tethys Sea. Now you can forecast (retrocast?) the rainfall across the continent. And voila, you get a continent with central and polar deserts, mid-latitude rainforests closer to the coastlines and transitional zones in between.

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SUnknownHow to Build a Forest

Tue, Nov 19, 2019

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SUnknownThe Problem with Africa's Borders

Sun, Jan 05, 2020

The Europeans did a pretty miserable job of dividing up Africa during the colonial period leaving a legacy of civil war, revolution and genocide. Caelan wonders if the borders can be drawn better to reduce the strife and gives it a shot taking into account religion, language and ancestry.

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SUnknownThe Geography of the Ice Age

Fri, Apr 17, 2020

Most of human history, including modern times, has occurred during ice ages. But in the past the ice ages were far more severe covering large areas of land with ice sheets and, with less water in the oceans, turning shallow ocean areas into dry land. In particular the retreating oceans exposed the Beringia land bridge allowing humans to expand their range into the Americas.

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SUnknownThe Biogeography of the Ice Age

Sun, May 10, 2020

During the last ice the Earth was cooler, of course, but also dryer and virtually every region of the world had a different environment than it does today. While this lead to deserts near the equator and arctic conditions near the poles, the temperate regions of Eurasia and the Americas were grassland and savannah similar to the African savannah today. It was a huge area ideal for large grazing animals.

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SUnknownThe Geography of Fruits PART 2

Sun, May 31, 2020

If you are looking some readily available fruits that aren't the standard fair here are a bushel of options. But you may have to travel to try some of them in a country were the locals are crazy about them. And be a little careful about picking them right off a tree because they may be poisonous when not yet ripe.

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SUnknownIntro to Areography: The Geography of Mars

Sun, Jul 19, 2020

A quick look at a map of mars shows a pretty much undifferentiated surface. So Caelan added some water to create an ocean in the northern lowlands and a continent in the southern highlands. He then added some additional relief to reveal a massive volcanic structure and directly opposite on the other side of the planet some large deep craters. What a coincidence.

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SUnknownWhat's the Biggest Canyon on Earth?

Wed, Sep 30, 2020

How do you decide what is the biggest canyon; length, width, depth, surface area, volume. Unfortunatly, the biggest in each case you will never really get to see because they are either submerged under the ocean or the ice of Greenland. So if you want to see a canyon bigger than the Grand Canyon get our you telescope and look at the Valles Marineris on Mars which dwarfs anything here on Earth.

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SUnknownEarth's Real Lost Continents

Sun, Oct 25, 2020

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SUnknownLands That Will Flood in Our Lifetime

Thu, Nov 19, 2020

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SUnknownWhat is the Blue Revolution?

Sun, Dec 20, 2020

With the human population still growing and land and wild ocean farming reaching their limits it's time for the blue revolution; aquaculture. Civilizations have been experimenting and using ocean farming for millennia and it is now overtaking wild ocean food sources. But challenges remain with awareness being one of the biggest.

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SUnknownWhat Causes an Ice Age?

Sat, Mar 20, 2021

Earth has experienced five major ice ages each due to a different combination of circumstances. The current ice age resulted from the sequestration of water at the south pole due to restricted water circulation at the poles caused by the placement of the continents and the growth of the Himalayas. During ice ages, the non-uniformity of the Earth's orbit causes periods of moderate warming and cooling.

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SUnknownThe Plan to Revive the Mammoth Steppe to Fight Climate Change

Wed, Mar 24, 2021

Pleistocene Park is an experiment that reintroduced mega fauna in a region of Siberia in 1996. It is expected that the animals will destroy the mosses and forests that have taken over in the last twenty thousand years and return it to grassland. And so they have. That change in turn should sequester carbon, preserve the permafrost and prevent methane from being released from subsurface soil. In other words, reduce greenhouse gases.

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SUnknownThe Biogeography of Dinosaurs

Mon, May 24, 2021

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SUnknownWhy We Find Rainforests in Unexpected Places

Mon, Jun 14, 2021

Normally when we think of rainforests we think of the tropics. But there are a plethora of smaller rainforests in temperate climes. When winds blow across a large body of water toward a mountain range a phenomenon called the orographic-effect condenses vast amounts of water from the air and forests thrive. These forests are populated by surprisingly diverse trees.

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SUnknownThe Uncertain Future of Marie Byrd Land

Tue, Jun 29, 2021

Much of Antarctica was claimed by seven countries in the twentieth century. As conflicts over overlapping regions began to develop the countries of the world in a rare exercise of good sense agreed to treat Antarctica as a non-commercial demilitarized continent. Problem solved, almost. There is one unclaimed part of Antarctica called Marie Byrd Land that is experiencing rapid glacial melting and will likely be a mostly ice free island within a century. The United States has by far the largest presence in this region and, as it happens, is one of only two countries that have reserved the right to claim part of Antarctica under the current treaties.

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SUnknownThe Island of Dwarf Dinosaurs: Island Biogeography 3

Thu, Sep 09, 2021

Franz Nopcsa, who incidentally lead a quite colorful life, discovered a plethora of gigantic dinosaur species that were actually tiny. And a tiny dinosaur species that was actually gigantic. Whilst other paleontologists scoffed Nopsca made the case that 70 million years ago the area in Rumania that he was excavating was an island and he had discovered the phenomena of island dwarfism and gigantism.

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SUnknownIslands That Aren't Actually Islands

Thu, May 05, 2022

Caelan changes gears to look at isolated environments that aren't islands. Specifically. Lake Baikal two thousand miles from the ocean, Mount Mabu in Mozambique and two isolated ecosystems in Patigonia. Here he again finds examples of insular dwarfism and insular gigantism.

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