Jerry T. Mitchell - Geography For Dummies

15 Chapter 16FIGURE 16-1: The explosive growth of Dubai – upward and economically – is a res...FIGURE 16-2: Wind farms are becoming more commonplace as an alternative energy ...FIGURE 16-3: Dams such as Three Gorges in China may produce hydroelectric power...

16 Chapter 17FIGURE 17-1: Urban-rural population trend in the United States, 1790-2050. FIGURE 17-2: Locations of urban hearths.

17 Chapter 18FIGURE 18-1: Hundreds of watercourses from six states drain into the Chesapeake...FIGURE 18-2: Currents in the Gulf of Mexico spread the Deepwater Horizon oil sp...FIGURE 18-3: Terrestrial and aquatic food chains link diverse life forms. FIGURE 18-4: The acid precipitation that destroys forests and contaminates lake...FIGURE 18-5: While the effects of acid rain are global, the greatest impacts ar...FIGURE 18-6: Large quantities of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere greatly contr...

1 Cover

2 Title Page

3 Copyright

4 Table of Contents

5 Begin Reading

6 Index

7 About the Author

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Has there been a better teacher of geography than COVID-19? I don’t mean that as a joke. That deadly serious disease showed how interconnected our world has become. Within a matter of months, people worldwide were exposed to something that they could not see that up-ended everything else that they could.

I was in Sweden in March 2020 when the world was shut down. I was traveling with colleagues to several universities to explore partnerships, discuss joint research opportunities, and so on. Being in charge of 14 other people is a challenge by itself, but managing them after being forced home by one’s government as airlines cancel flights is quite another. Gothenburg to Charlotte via Frankfort was the original plan. Then Frankfort fell out. Agents suggested routes home via Brazil (!) and then Canada. Finally, an option opened through Brussels, but a stop in Washington D.C. was necessary as the government declared only a few airports could accept international travelers. How we organize travel networks across space — and what can happen when links within them fail — is of crucial geographic importance, as you can see.

Later we learned of the intricacy of spatial business connections as supply chains were stressed, and then political scale (who is responsible for public health decisions? The state or federal government?), and then spatial ethics as well-off countries secured vaccine supplies in numbers far greater than their poorer neighbors. COVID-19 laid bare how understanding where , why there , and why should I care — the essence of geographic thinking — is paramount in living on 21st century Earth.

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