AAG 2012 Video Contest Winners

The Association of American Geographers has announced the winners of its "Geography Matters" video competition.  I am personally a fan of the University of Buffalo's film on Haiti.  The geography of food one ties the physical geography of a river to wine very well.  The first place film fits much into Yi-Fu Tuan's humanistic geography.

First Place



Second Place



Third Place

Six Fascinating Planets Outside Our Solar System

The humor website Cracked has an article giving a survey of six fascinating planets outside our solar system.  All the planets discussed have something unique to them which seem to be more science fiction than actual science.  For instance, Gliese 436 b's is under such gravitational pressure being located near its star and its atmosphere is so unique that the planet is covered with burning ice!

Please note:  the website while most probably is safe for work is not necessarily appropriate for children.

The United States' "Lost Lands"

My latest blog post on how Lost Lands are mapped produced some conversation on Lost Lands and the United States.  While the United States does not claim any of its territory has been lost via coercion or theft, few Americans know that some territory that was once part of the United States has been given away.  For the purpose of this post I am not considering lands occupied by the United States under temporary military jurisdiction as ever being part of the United States.  Examples of these lands would be Cuba post-Spanish-American War, Germany and Japan after World War II, or the Pacific Trust Territories which the United Nations entrusted the United States to develop with the final goal being self-determination.  Instead, for the purpose of this post American Lost Lands will be territories or parts of states which were or would have been part of a state in the United States.

Special Mentions

The Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone: Both were United States territories but never part of a state.  Also, the Guano Islands.

Retroceded Lands Not Part of States

Maine's Northwest

 

From the State of Maine

The Treaty of Paris in 1783 ended the American Revolutionary War and defined its borders.  However, the border between Canada and Maine (at that time still part of Massachusetts) was not well defined due to the limited surveying done in the region.  A disputed area providing military favorable terrain and rich timber resources quickly developed between the United Kingdom and the United States.  What made matters worse was that the local ethnically French population cared little for either the British nor the Americans.

Tensions rose nearly to the point of war in 1838 but a treaty dividing the area more favorably to the British secured peace has held since.  In the end all the United States loss was a few ethnically French villages in southeastern Quebec.

Montana's Louisiana Purchase

 

Lost Northern Montana.  From Wikipedia

The United States bought the entire drainage basin of the Mississippi/Missouri Rivers System for three cents an acre in the Louisiana Purchase.  However, looking at a map of today part of what should be Montana is instead part of Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada.

The reason for this is geopolitical.  The 1783 Treaty of Paris gave the United States lands east of the Mississippi River and south of the Rainy River.  However, the Mississippi River does not meet up with the Rainy River and this would leave a gap of present-day Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota British.  So the Treaty of 1818 gave the Red River Basin of the Dakota and Minnesota to the United States in exchange for established 49 degrees North as the border between the United States and Canada.  This chopped of a bit of what would have become northern Montana.

The United States gained land on which Fargo, Grand Banks, Bismark, and Bemidji.  In exchange it gave of land which is now includes the dark sky preserve of Grasslands National Park and very few people.

Texan Towns

Texas may be big but it was once bigger.  The reason why Texas is now smaller is because of the Big River, the Rio Grande.  Rivers may seem like a great idea for a border, they form culturally and political borders so easily.  However, one must always remember rivers can and do move and that each physical geography move can create problems with human geography.

Chamizal/El Paso

The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo defined the American Texas-Mexico border as the Rio Grande.  The river kept meandering though to the point that in the late 1800s an island in the river was split by the river while merging into the north and south banks.  This created the odd problem of part of Mexico being north of the Rio Grande and part of the United States being south of the river.

Transfer of land between the United States and Mexico. From Wikipedia

Americans began to settle on the north of the border Mexican-land and made it part of El Paso, Texas.  Meanwhile, the Untied States kept its territory south of the river and allowed development on it.  Logic prevailed in 1963 when it was agreed that the river's new course would be the border and that the river would have engineering work done on it to ensure it did not change course again around El Paso.  Logic was also helped by then President John F. Kennedy's desire to appease Latin American states during the rise of Hispanic Communism and Red Cuba.

Today the lost land is now a park dedicated to cooperation between the United States and Mexico.

Rio Rico

Rio Rico is a small hamlet towards the end of the Rio Grande as it approaches the Gulf of Mexico.  In 1906 a private company doing irrigation work in Texas diverted part of the Rio Grande which caused the river to move and cut off Rio Rico from the rest of Texas.  Mexican authorities moved in and the small town de facto became part of Mexico despite being still legally a part of Texas.  In a somewhat surprising act of apathy no one seemed to care.  Rio Rico was purely Hispanic, very small in population with less than 1,000 people, and the border between the United States and Mexico was very open back then (one could merely cross the river with no border or customs enforcement for the most part).  In the 1920s and 1930s the mob set up a presence in Rio Rico as a spot in the United States where one could drink alcohol.

Eventually it was decided that everything should become formal on paper.  The Boundary Treaty of 1970 established that Rio Rico would officially become part of Mexico in 1977.  After some court cases U.S. federal court ruled that all people born in Rio Rico born between 1906 and 1977 were legally United States citizens.  Thousands upon thousands of Mexicans all the sudden declared they were born in Rio Rico.  After some verification processes Rio Rico emptied out as the residents were allowed U.S. citizenship.

Today Rio Rico is a quiet town in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.  Note the image below.  One can still tell where the old border was.


View Larger Map

Lost Land Map Techniques

One way to lay claim to a region is to display it as a "lost land" stolen from the country.  Overall all, there are three main ways cartographically a country can lay claim to a region.

One "lost land" map technique makes a special effort to emphasize the "lost" territory through coloring.  Nazi Germany in the below Lost - but Not Forgotten Country map uses color to claim territory.  Black Germany bleeds in the form of its lost lands.

This idea of German lost lands led to World War II. From Propaganda Post Cards of the Great War.

Another option is to use misleading text or legends. Pro-Palestinian groups use the below map, e-mailed to me, to claim Palestinian controlled land has been decreasing over time.  This map assumes local Palestinian Arabs controlled all non-Jewish lands, that the United Nations 1947 was the law of the land (instead it was rejected by neighboring Arab powers), that Palestinians controlled the pre-1967 territories (ignoring the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank and Egypt annexing the land of the Gaza-based All Palestine Government), and wrongly gives the impression that the various zones of current Palestinian control are decreasing (Israel instead has withdrew fully from the Gaza Strip and in the 1990s and 2000s began transferring islands of land to full and partial Palestinian control).  Finally it confuses Arab private property in 1946 and Palestinian National Authority political territory today .

Palestinian land is apparently land owned by another form of Arab state, occupation or not. From e-mail conversations.

The third technique is to show the claimed lost land with the flag of the claimer.  The "Real Irish Republican Army" political front group 32 County Sovereignty Movement uses a map of all the island of Ireland in front of an Irish Republican flag.

The Irish Republic's flag, not the Republic of Ireland's flag, embraces a unified Ireland.  From a terrorist website.

The idea for this blog post came from Argentina's new lost land map.  Inside the presidential palace, there is a new lost land mural map showing the Falkland Islands filled in with the Argentine flag.  This new mural is the latest development in Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner effort to refocus the country's population from problems with the economy to the "lost lands" of the Falklands.

Argentina uses the third Lost Lands map technique in claiming the Falklands.  From the AP/CSM

Call for Guest Blog Posts for the Virtual Geography Conference

While the lucky geographers get to attend the Association of American Geographers conference in New York from February 24th to the 28th, I will be hosting a virtual convention with (hopefully) readers placing their presentations online.  However, I am also opening up the blog to guest posts.  If you want to write about anything related to geography, no matter how short or how long, contact me (catholicgauze at gmail dot com) and you will have your very own forum to share your knowledge and insight!

Syria Civil War Maps Batch Three - Twitter and News Update Maps

Libyan War Maps 
Syrian Arab Spring Protest Maps - Batch One
Syria Civil War Maps Batch Two - Syrian Air Defenses 
Syria Civil War Maps Batch Three - Twitter and News Update Maps 
Syria Civil War Maps Batch Four - The Soccer Map  
Syria Civil War Maps: Batch Five - Ceasefire Violations
Syria Civil War Maps: Batch Six - Houla   
Syria Civil War Maps: Batch Seven - June 2012    
Syria Civil War Maps: Batch Eight - Battle of Damascus 
Syria Civil War Maps: Batch Nine - September 2012 
Syria Civil War Maps Batch Ten - October 2012 
Syria Civil War Maps Batch Eleven - Propaganda Maps
Syria Civil War Maps Batch Twelve - First Quarter 2013
Syria Civil War Maps Batch Thirteen - Chemical Weapons Attack?
Syria Civil War Maps Batch Fourteen - Israel Strikes Again
Syria Civil War Maps Batch Fifteen - Second Quarter 2013
Syria Civil War Maps Batch Sixteen - The Coming Western Intervention
Syria Civil War Maps Batch Seventeen - Al Qaedastan in Iraq and Syria

As the Syrian Civil War intensifies with the Battle of Homs and international stalemate instant news updates are becoming must for intelligence analysts, news analysts, policy makers, and the interested public.

Mibazaar has created a map showing Twitter messages posted with the hastag #Syria from "allegedly" a 400 mile (~650 kilometer) radius of Damascus.  I say allegedly because people can falsify their location and I have seen several Tweets from Bahrain which is over 950 miles (over 1,500 kilometers) from Damascus.

Meanwhile al Jazeera has a frequently updated map of recent developments from Homs.  The map is reposted below.

View Homs - Recent developments in a larger map

Request for Presentations for the Geographic Travels' Hosted Virtual Geography Conference

Sadly I'll be unable to attend the AAG as will several of my good friends of mine this year. However, I'm thinking that a virtual conference could be accomplished via the blogosphere. If anyone wants free publicity I would love to post your presentation and any other information you would like on the blog. Please contact me if interested!