American Geographical Society

The Red Fort

The Red Fort Complex was built as Shah Jahan's palace fort when he made Shahjahanabad the new capital of India during his reign as the fifth Mughal Emperor, and was completed in 1648. The Red Fort came under the control of the British East India company as it consolidated its hold on northern India and they took Delhi in 1803, though it remained the residence of the Mughal emperor.

When a rebellion arose against the British in 1857 and was subsequently quelled, the last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar II, vacated the Red Fort, but was imprisoned there after being caught. The palace quickly evolved into the focal point of the colonial government's strategy to put an end to the uprising, and most of the fort was demolished under British orders in 1858.

The Red Fort was reclaimed by the Indian army after the the country gained independence, and continues until today as a symbol of Indian independence since Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the Indian national flag at the fort on August 15, 1947. Ever since, this custom has continued to thrive.

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🇮🇳 Religious Event Turns Deadly
🇮🇱 🇵🇸 IDF Hits South Gaza Strip
🦣 New Woolly Mammoths Findings

https://mailchi.mp/americangeo/dailygeo-1145514

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🇵🇦 Deal to Slow Migrants
🇧🇷 Extreme Turbulence on Flight
🇳🇴 Hydrothermal Field Discovered

https://mailchi.mp/americangeo/dailygeo-1145510

Yellowstone, America’s First National Park

Yellowstone National Park, established in 1872, is generally considered the first national park in the world. Spanning nearly 3,500 square miles across Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, the park rests on a volcanic hot spot, containing roughly half of the world’s active geysers and boasting the highest concentration of hydrothermal features globally.

The park's establishment was driven by a commitment to safeguard its unique geothermal features, diverse wildlife, and stunning scenery for public enjoyment. At the time, the concept of setting aside land for the recreational enjoyment of future generations was not widely understood. The expansion of American national parks mirrored the intellectual, social, and economic shifts that led to a growing appreciation for wilderness and wildlife, a desire to escape the increasingly urban environments created by industrialization, and the rise of the automobile's popularity that allowed widespread access to remote locations. The management of Yellowstone from 1872 through the early 1900s laid the groundwork for the establishment of the National Park Service, an agency specifically dedicated to the care and preservation of national parks.

Distinctive Fourth of July Songs by State

This map displays the single song that, in comparison to the rest of the year, individuals in each state typically listened to the most on July 4. These songs experience a greater surge in popularity on July 4th than they do at any other time of the year. It seems that some people's idea of Americana is embodied in certain songs, much to how we celebrate holidays like Christmas or Valentine's Day.

People's idea of Americana is embodied in certain songs, much to how we celebrate holidays like Christmas or Valentine's Day. According to Spotify, Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA" is the song that gets played the most on July 4th across 46 states. This map indicates that "Star Spangled Banner" by Whitney Houston, "Star Spangled Banner" by Lee Greenwood, "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen, "America F**k Yeah" by a tribute band on Spotify, "America the Beautiful" by Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert, and "God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood, R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. by John Mellencamp are the other songs that people listen to the most on July Fourth.

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🇫🇷 National Rally Takes Round One
🇺🇸 🔥 Wildfire Season Underway
🌱 Moss Could Grow on Mars

https://mailchi.mp/americangeo/dailygeo-1145506

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🇧🇴 Attempted Coup in La Paz
🇸🇩 Humanitarian Crisis Deepens
🪸 4th Global Coral Bleaching Event

https://mailchi.mp/americangeo/dailygeo-1145498

Sherpas of the Himalayas

Thousands of native Sherpa guides reside year-round in Sagarmatha National Park, located in the Solu-Khumbu region at the southern base of Mount Everest. Renowned for their mountaineering abilities, these guides play an indispensable role in the success and safety of foreign climbers. The majority of guides who lead climbers up Mount Everest are part of the Sherpa ethnic group, which have resided in the mountainous region of Nepal for over 6,000 years. Research has shown that part of the Sherpas’ unique ability to work in low-oxygen conditions comes from their genetic adaptation to living in a high altitude atmosphere.

Becoming a guide is a lucrative profession, but it is one of the most dangerous in the world. Sherpas are the backbone of the mountaineering industry, bringing clients and huge loads of equipment to the summit of the 29,000 foot (8,848-meter) mountain. Sherpa guides typically earn $2,000-$5,000 per climbing season.

The Sherpas living within Sagarmatha National Park, who are primarily Tibetan Buddhist, engage mainly in agricultural and trade-based activities. They remain custodians of a rich cultural heritage and delicate ecosystem. By continuing their traditional cultural and religious practices, such as restricting animal hunting, Sherpas have significantly contributed to the ongoing conservation of the park.

The region has seen a dramatic increase in annual visitors over the past few decades, which while stimulating the local economy, has simultaneously contributed to the degradation of the region’s cultural traditions and fragile ecology. Proper garbage disposal from visitors remains a primary challenge for the park. Additionally, the construction of illegal trails, resort development, and energy demand and supply threaten the environment and livelihoods of people living there.

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🇰🇪 Anti-Tax Protests Escalate
🇺🇸 Minnesota Dam Partially Fails
🇸🇸 Largest Land Mammal Migration

Read Here: https://mailchi.mp/americangeo/dailygeo-1145494

The Ellora Caves

The Ellora Caves, built from 600 to 1000 CE, are an architectural marvel that brings together Buddhist, Jainist, and Hindu religions. Excavated from the basalt cliffs in the Charanandari Hills, the Ellora Caves are home to over 100 caves, including 34 that are available to the public. They include temples dedicated to Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism. The Ellora Caves functioned as a trading route in addition to housing itinerant Buddhist and Jain monks. The mythology of each faith is portrayed in 17 Hindu, 12 Buddhist, and 5 Jain caves through the use of gods, carvings, and even monasteries.

The harmony and unity of all faiths and beliefs are symbolized by these caverns built close to one another. While the Yadav dynasty constructed the Jain Caves, a portion of the Hindu and Buddhist caves were constructed during the Rashtrakuta kingdom. Whose caves came first, Buddhist or Hindu? That question is still up for debate. However, it is known that the Ellora caves were constructed during three main periods, according to the archaeological evidence discovered at different sites: the early Hindu period, which spanned from 550 to 600 CE; the Buddhist period, which lasted from 600 to 730 CE; and the Jain and Hindu period, which lasted from 730 to 950 CE.

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🇬🇧 Assange Freed on Plea Deal
🇰🇷🔋 Deadly Korean Battery Fire
🦋🌊 Butterfly Ocean Flight Revealed

https://mailchi.mp/americangeo/dailygeo-1145486

Cassini Map of France

The Cassini Map of France was the world's first geometric map that covered the entire kingdom of France. As the first map to be based on triangulation and geodetic measurements, the technique used provided remarkable accuracy for the time. The project spanned over decades and was undertaken by four generations of the Cassini family, who were renowned astronomers and mapmakers associated with the royal court.

The map’s origins date back to the seventeenth century, when Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who had recently settled in Paris, developed a method for obtaining more consistent and reliable longitude measurements using Jupiter’s satellites instead of the less frequent lunar eclipses. In 1747, King Louis XV commissioned the map to create a detailed and accurate record of the entire country using this new method. At that time, distances between settlements on maps had previously been estimated using travel time or the length of roads, a process which left inaccuracies. Cassini created 182 detailed sheets which each measured 65×95 centimeters to cover the entire country.

Read more about the Cassini map on the AGS Library blog! https://agslibraryblog.wordpress.com/2024/06/10/the-cassini-atlas/

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🇷🇺 Gunmen Attack Dagestan
🇺🇦 ATACMS Rocket Kills Beachgoers
🇺🇸 🦖 Lokiceratops Unveiled

https://mailchi.mp/americangeo/dailygeo-1145478

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☀️ Heatwave Persists in East
🇨🇳 🇷🇺🇰🇵 China Seeking Navigation Rights
🇮🇱⚓️ Oldest-Ever Shipwreck Found

https://mailchi.mp/americangeo/dailygeo-1145470

Global Distribution of Microplastics

Microplastics are major environmental health hazards that have been found in every corner of the globe and across every biota. Plastic debris and microplastics, which are small pieces of plastic less than 5 mm in length, currently make up around 75 percent of the debris in the world’s oceans. They have also been found in rivers, soils, and air, and in some of the world’s most remote locations like Arctic ice and deep ocean sediments. Recent studies have even found the presence of microplastics in the human body, which experts theorize could be transmitted through food and water, inhalation of airborne particles, or contact through the skin.

Once microplastics enter aquatic systems, they are carried by ocean currents and gyres, accumulating in regions where ocean currents circulate. Circulation patterns give rise to hotspots of high microplastic concentrations. One of the most notable is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is located in the North Pacific Gyre. Garbage patches are particularly threatening to marine life due to increased risk of ingestion and entanglement. High concentrations of plastic contamination can also be seen in the Mediterranean due to its semi-closed shape and proximity to dense coastal populations that contribute to pollution.

Plastic particles primarily enter water bodies via runoff from urban areas and industrial discharges, or directly through fishing activities. Airborne particles can disperse over long distances before settling back into terrestrial or aquatic environments. The largest sources of microplastics in the world’s oceans are synthetic textiles, followed by car tires, city dust, road markings, marine coatings, and personal care products. Once plastic pollution is broken down into small pieces, they can be ingested by marine organisms, which poses both physical harms, such as blockages to digestive systems, and chemical harm from the leaching of toxic substances used in plastic production. The accumulation of plastic contaminants in the food web can have cascading effects on ecosystem health and biodiversity.

As plastics enter the environments we interact with, humans are also at risk. While the full extent of human health implications from ingesting microplastic is not fully known, it is hypothesized that particles can carry harmful chemicals and pollutants into the body. Studies have suggested that microplastics can cause inflammation, disrupt the endocrine system, and cross cellular barriers to cause cellular damage. The presence of these materials in the body could potentially increase vulnerability to cancer, heart disease, and kidney disease. There are also theories that microplastics might play a role in Alzheimer’s disease or affect fertility. With hundreds of millions of tons of plastics entering the environment each year, scientists are racing to find answers.

Read more on our UBIQUE blog! https://ubique.americangeo.org/map-of-the-week/map-of-the-week-global-distribution-of-microplastics/

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🇵🇭 South China Sea Clash Escalates
🇸🇦 Hajj Pilgrimage Heat Deaths
🇵🇹🇪🇸 Rare Lynx No Longer Endangered

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Happy Juneteenth from AGS! Commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, this date is also known as Freedom Day, Emancipation Day, and Jubilee Day.

June 19th, 1865, was the date Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that slavery had been abolished, nearly two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln. The following year, the first official Juneteenth celebrations took place in Texas.

The original observances included prayer meetings and the singing of spirituals, and this tradition has evolved to include educational events, family gatherings and picnics, and festivals with music, food, and dancing.

Juneteenth became a state holiday in Texas in 1980, and a federal holiday in 2021, in no small part due to the “Grandmother of Juneteenth,” activist Opal Lee.

Zion National Park

Located in southwestern Utah, Zion National Park has unique geographical features such as canyons, plateaus, landscape arches, and a layered history. The paved trail is 15 miles long, but the park covers 148,733 acres in total. The Virgin River sculpted the Zion Canyon over millions of years, reaching a depth of almost 2,000 feet. There are 32 reptiles, 79 mammals, and 289 bird species in the park. This park has the second-largest landscape arch, which stands at 287 feet.

Notably, the park used to be home to an ancient civilization called the Anasazi. The remains of their villages, road paths, and rock art can still be seen at the park today. Zion is the second-most visited park in the nation, with an average of approximately 5 million visitors.

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🌎 Rising Global Nuclear Spending
🚢 Houthis Pressure Global Trade
🇳🇿🐊 Ancient Sea Reptile Discovery

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“A Tapestry of Time and Terrain”

This map from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) displays the topography and age of rocks underneath the continental United States. Representing geologic time in color, the scale bar ranges from the Precambrian era (2.6 billion years ago) at the bottom to more recent Quaternary sediments at the top. Combining data from two earlier USGS maps depicting topography and geology, the map displays a composite of detailed geological information under a shaded relief of the U.S. land surface. The map was compiled by Eleanor Jewel and published in 2000.

Through this visual representation, USGS narrates the geological story of continental movements, mountain formation, river erosion, glaciation, volcanic activity, and other processes that have shaped the landscape over millions of years. For example, the map shows how sediments and rocks younger than 200 million years old cover the southeast edge of the country, where rivers originating from mountainous areas transported great quantities of sediment, depositing them onto the coastal plains.

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🇨🇳 China Responds to EV Tariffs
🇬🇷 Migrants Thrown Overboard
🚀 Voyager 1 Fully Operational

https://us10.campaign-archive.com/?u=023a4ebf81fd06583f67b9f62&id=78c7384d87

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🇱🇧🇮🇱 Hezbollah Strikes Missiles at Israel
🇷🇺🇺🇦 Putin Proposes Cease-Fire
🇲🇽 Mayan Sacrifice of Boys Revealed

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Gyros from Greece 🇬🇷

This widespread Greek dish typically includes tomato, onion, fried potatoes, tzatziki, and vertically-cooked meat served wrapped in pita bread. Originating in the Ottoman Empire, this method of cooking meat has been spread around the world by immigrants 🌍

Racial Inequity in New York’s School Funding

The state of New York’s own equitable funding formula exposes that in 2018, it owed schools $4.2 billion in aid, of which 74% belongs to students of color. In order to provide the lowest-wealth districts with the necessary levels of state aid, the Foundation Aid formula establishes a base per-pupil cost for all students. The Foundation Aid formula in New York has not been updated for 17 years, leading to the issues of inequity occurring now. New York State is home to the most segregated schools in the country. In terms of equitable school funding, New York ranks 49th out of the 50 states in the United States. As seen on the 2018 map, districts in New York that are owed aid have a large percentage of black and brown students. Districts that are owed little to no aid either have a small percentage of black and brown students or none.

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) has not updated the list of successful districts since 2012, despite the fact that the Foundation Aid statute mandates the foundation or base amount to be altered every three years by updating the list of “successful” districts and their average spending levels. This model is called the Successful School Districts (SSD) Costing Out model and is part of how foundation aid is derived.

In the interim, New York started using evaluations that were more in line with the state’s Common Core curriculum and established new standards that matched them. The foundation cost produced by the SSD approach does not correlate to the current benchmarks for which school districts are held responsible, as NYSED is not utilizing these more recent evaluations to determine whether districts are considered “successful.”

The Foundation Aid formula is found by accounting for the average cost of a successful school, the regional cost index, and the needs of students minus the expected local contribution determined by local income and property wealth. It is uncertain if the subgroup of districts that met 2012 standards for success would meet current standards as well, and if so, whether their average expenditure levels fairly represent the basic cost of educating all students. Regardless, though out-of-date, the foundation aid model reveals the inequitable funding of districts with large percentages of students of color. This issue is not specific to only New York; this occurs all across the United States. This is a manifestation of modern-day racial segregation and inequity.

Read more on our UBIQUE blog: https://ubique.americangeo.org/map-of-the-week/map-of-the-week-racial-inequity-in-new-yorks-school-funding/?preview_id=2190540&preview_nonce=20d925383a&post_format=standard&_thumbnail_id=2190541&preview=true

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🇺🇸 Flooding in South Florida
🇬🇷☀️ Athens Acropolis Shut Down
⚓️ Shackleton's Last Ship Found

https://mailchi.mp/americangeo/dailygeo-1145454

📣 Call for Proposals for the Geography 2050 Symposium’s Poster Exhibition and Lightning Talk Sessions! Submit your proposal(s) early and present at our Symposium with Columbia Climate School this November 21-22 in NYC 📣

For the tenth anniversary of our annual Fall Symposium, AGS and the Columbia Climate School will bring together leading practitioners and thinkers from government, industry, academia, and the non-profit world to discuss how cooperation and conflict will impact a changing climate.

Posters will be presented at the Symposium’s Poster Exhibition and featured in a Digital Exhibition on the Geography 2050 website. Posters can cover specific research projects, innovative ideas, or novel geospatial applications.

Learn more and submit a poster proposal here:
https://www.geography2050.org/posters-info?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaZbudMCgI74moJs0s1OTsygni5Ap1NNyX0AUjGjoIKQU-n3QD2Wk71KGx4_aem_Adn72ShbaDPzMLgAdizUdCl1GIuTmtUJ9gW3aW703hqXjgO1RyMDJPTWo4GEMNCfsWWKjk76bLI_TCyEvqi1dT_3


We are accepting proposals for 5-minute Lightning Talks to be included in the program for presentation either online or live and in-person. Your proposed Lightning Talk should be highly creative, potentially visually compelling, provocative, and directly related to one of the main Symposium themes - we especially appreciate the use of maps, satellite images, photos, and graphics.

Learn more and submit a lightning talk proposal here: https://www.geography2050.org/lightning-talks-info?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAabnRrJ-DqxG25fcmdDrEUeXhbMKpgU8EC9cQ1ByrDXyyM1ZBcB5n100GzE_aem_AdlleBMe0XKPHljDkHXu1YdFUkRa8qsWcFC9HTtXBDwzzpM6vDhMdSSR_UqKZxFkJLaOzHRtBcPYaVlg6j9qTfZG

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🇨🇺🇺🇸 Russian Fleet Visits Cuba
🇰🇷🇰🇵 Warning Shots at DMZ
🌎 Ozone Harming Gases Falling

https://mailchi.mp/americangeo/dailygeo-1145450

Arab Pearl Diving Music

Before the Persian Gulf discovered its abundant oil reserves, the economy was dominated by the pearl industry, which shaped the region’s culture for centuries and led to the emergence of Fijiri, a vocal music that originated as a work song for pearl divers.

Until the early 20th century when Japanese cultured pearls overran the market, nearly the entire population of the Gulf was involved in pearling in some form, whether fishermen, shipbuilders, sailors, or pearl divers. Pearl diving was strenuous and dangerous work, with expeditions aboard pearl dhows lasting up to five months. Many of the men aboard these ships were enslaved peoples kidnapped from northeast Africa, while some were workers from the Gulf, India, or Pakistan. Crew members often suffered from malnutrition or disease in addition to risking death from shark attacks or drowning.

To keep men unified and motivated, every ship would hire a naham, whose only job was to lead the crew in song. The songs were usually performed in a call and response style, with the crew forming a chorus of singing, clapping, and drumming. Lyrics would often express the hardships being faced at sea, covering themes of love, God, memory, loss, and emotion. Due to the diverse origins of pearling crews, the music was a blend of Bedouin, East African, Persian, and Indian styles. Though no longer widespread in the industry today, Fijiri is a celebrated part of Arab cultural heritage and continues to be preserved as a link to the region’s past.