Geography News Network

Among the most famous of island paradises, the Hawaiian Islands have a long, and in many respects, a tragic history. Peopled by seafarers from Polynesia, the unique flora and fauna that had developed over millions of years began to degrade with their arrival and the introduction of non-native species. Centuries later, the descendants of those early inhabitants, the Hawaiian people, had their kingdom taken...

Summer 2014 brought a sight that had not been seen since 1941: the Charles W. Morgan leaving the Mystic River for the Atlantic Ocean, stopping at several New England harbors before eventually arriving in New Bedford, Massachusetts where the ship was built in 1841. The Charles W. Morgan is the last remaining wooden whaling ship in the world, and a National Historic Landmark. In 80 years at sea...

Even if you're not sure where Transylvania is, you probably have a picture in your mind's eye, inspired by Hollywood, that is a dark and brooding landscape, cold and rainy and sinister. Transylvanian nights are as dark as any others, and they do get a fair amount of rain and cool temperatures, but the reputation for scary evil is nothing more than the result of a novel written by an Irishman in the late 19th century. Bram Stoker's Count Dracula went about drinking the blood...

It's an old idea - dreamers have made plans to dig a canal across Nicaragua utilizing enormous Lake Nicaragua (also called Lake Cocibolca), the largest in Central America, for centuries. As far back as the early Spanish explorers in the 1500s, the concept has been considered. More concrete plans cropped up in the late 1800s and by the early 1900s...

The United Nations estimates that by 2050 the planet will be home to 9.6 billion people—2 billion more than our current population. Many experts insist that crop production must double to keep pace, yet agriculture is one of the greatest contributors to global warming and water pollution. Entire ecosystems have disappeared...

Can you imagine traveling 2,000 miles or more to escape winter? Each fall, Monarch butterflies from the United States and Canada leave because they cannot survive the cold. Monarch butterflies are the only insects to make such a difficult journey. Up to 300 million travel every year to Mexico or California. Where they go depends on where they live; butterflies that live east of the Rocky Mountains...

Billons of animals and plants die every day. Almost all of them decay through natural processes back into the elements that their bodies were made of. Of course, after they break down, they don't look like the things they once were. But a very small number of them will die in just the right environment to preserve their bodies, or at least the shape of their bodies. These are called fossils, and they can last a very long time - even millions of years. The most likely things to become fossilized are the hard parts of organisms such as bones, teeth and shells. Soft parts like flesh and hair are easily broken down, so we have almost no evidence...

Our national landscape features a number of impressive canyons. Perhaps most famous among them is the Grand Canyon, but they also include Zion, Bryce, Palo Duro, Glen and many others. There’s another that is plenty big - in fact deeper and about as long as the Grand Canyon - and you’ve probably never seen it, even if you’ve been close to it. The reason you haven't seen it is that it's under the Pacific Ocean. Monterey Canyon starts at the mouth of the Elkhorn Slough by Moss Landing on California's Monterey Bay and extends some 272 miles out to sea...

Some people are afraid of sharks. Actually, most people probably are, but suppose you had an uncontrollable phobia and wanted to get absolutely as far away from them as possible. Where to go? Anywhere mid-continent comes to mind, but some are bigger than others and Eurasia is the biggest...

*Please note: This article was written and recorded in early Septemer 2014. New findings into the Ebola outbreak have emerged. Please check your trusted news source for updates.*  When two American aid workers returned to the United States to be treated for Ebola, the news spread across the country, dominating headlines and creating some irrational fears. Alarms were raised at hospitals in major cities awaiting cases that inevitably would come through the emergency room doors. Since that time, there have been no reported cases of Ebola in the US nor do experts expect many to arise...

When you think of life on Earth, you might think of people. People are all around you, and you know a lot about them. Of course there are much smaller forms of life, like dogs and frogs and houseflies and fleas. How small can an animal or a bug be? What are they made of? At the basic level, all plants and animals...

Everybody knows what the weather is. Just look out the window and you can see whether it's sunny or rainy or foggy. As the day goes by, it's likely that light clouds may cover the sun, or the rain clouds will blow away, or the fog will lift. Weather changes all the time (although sometimes it rains for days!). Over a week's time...

Scattered across the American landscape in remote deserts and plains, are enormous concrete arrows, some as long as 70 feet, resting on the ground. Their presence is puzzling, and many wonder who put them there and for what purpose. They are remnants from a very interesting story of an earlier time...

By the late 15th century, Portugal had decided that finding an all-water route to the Indies would be the most profitable way to dominate the lucrative spice trade...

City planners don’t think small – after all, the job they’re in charge of involves rather large scale development. Sometimes they put together projects that never come to be. But in China, where everything today seems to be done on a grand scale, countless major projects actually did get built and then….sat there...

The total world population is 7 billion, of whom more than 1.6 billion are Muslim. Yet the Muslim faith itself is divided and has been almost since the death of Muhammad, the religion’s founder. The two main branches are known as Sunni and Shia (also referred to as Shiite). The Shiites are a minority and make up a small 10 to 15 percent of the Muslim population, but their numbers are clustered...

Freedom House is an independent organization whose members promote freedom throughout the world. The organization was established in 1941 with support from then U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. It was originally developed as a response to totalitarianism in the era of communist threats...

The force of nature that is a flash flood can result from a number of causes including heavy rain, dam or levee failure, ice jams, or very rapid snowmelt. Flash floods are characterized by their quick onset, frequently occurring less than two hours after the start of strong rainfall...

The Sargasso Sea is well known by name, but where is it? Well, it's actually located within the Atlantic Ocean, and while most seas are part of an ocean, the Sargasso is the only one that has no land boundaries to define its two million square mile area...

Earth is the water planet. 76% of the surface is covered with it, and of course most of that is salty seawater. In terms of useable water, that source is pretty unhelpful, without the enormous effort of desalinization. Only about 2.5% of all water on earth is fresh water. Of that fresh water, nearly 70% is frozen...