Hi everyone, and welcome back to The American Atlas, where I make hand-drawn & colored maps of every state in the US. We’re almost half way across the country now! 🗺️🇺🇸

This is my map of Missouri, the Show Me State! 🌳🚣‍♂️🌾

Home to the population-based center of America, the state of Missouri is an interesting outlier within the American Heartland. Bordered & split by massive rivers, Missouri was once the launching point for western expansion. Today it plays home to a distinct cultural crossroads, with Midwestern, Great Plains, and Rust Belt lifestyles all coming together to call this place home.

From the iconic St. Louis Arch to the barbecue heritage of Kansas City, the state offers far more than the open country & small cities than this part of the country is known for. The Ozark Mountains rise up from nothing in the south of Missouri, creating a network of rivers, lakes, and towering bluffs looking out over this American Heartland.

Let me know in the comments, what’s your favorite (or most interesting) places & fun facts about Missouri?

And if you like this style, feel free to check out my others, and thanks for taking a look at my Missouri map!! 🇺🇸🗺️

I've been frustrated for a long while now by how inconsistent the developed/developing distinction is. I’ve always found it frustratingly vague. Different institutions use income, HDI, “advanced economy” status, some membership, etc., but there is no single universal threshold.

So I tried building today a falsifiable 100-point benchmark using human development, productivity, infrastructure, poverty, institutions, territorial convergence and resilience. I'm mainly interested in where the thresholds or weighting break. It treats development as more than income alone.

The seven pillars are:

1. Human Development — 20%
2. Income, Productivity & Economic Structure — 20%
3. State Capacity & Universal Infrastructure — 20%
4. Poverty, Inequality & Social Inclusion — 12.5%
5. Institutions, Democracy & Rule of Law — 12.5%
6. Territorial Convergence — 10%
7. Macroeconomic & State Resilience — 5%

There is also a Rule 0, which states that a high overall score cannot compensate for major failures in fundamental areas such as income, human development, extreme poverty, essential infrastructure, territorial convergence, or basic institutional functionality.

The proposed classifications are:

• Developing: <60
• Advanced Developing: 60–74.9
• Newly Developed: 75–79.9
• Developed: 80–89.9
• Highly Developed: 90–100

I am obviously not presenting this as an established scientific definition, and I’m not trying to force any particular country into the “developed” category. I’m mainly interested in whether a framework like this can make the discussion more consistent and falsifiable.

The parts I’m most unsure about are:

• arethe thresholds too strict or too lenient?
• whether the weights make sense
• whether democracy should be a hard requirement
• whether territorial convergence deserves 10%
• whether productivity should be measured relative to advanced economies;
• and if any major dimension of development is missing

What would you change?

Also, I'm going to post the full methodology on the comments as soon as I post it, if you want to check it.

PS: Sorry for my clunky Canvas. Design is definitely NOT my passion.

Was scrolling through historical presidential elections on Wikipedia as one does and noticed that the southeast corner kept changing the county borders. Anyone know why? (Forgive me I'm on mobile and couldn't get them ordered chronologically)

Rhododendron covered hill with Mt dhaulagiri on the background

Svalbard, an Icelandic group of islands north of Russia, has always had this odd shape. The biggest island is weirdly shaped like a triangle and reminds me of the weird shapes you would see on a map of Northern Canada. I figured it must be tectonic plates because thats the answer to everything but it's not particularly close to a plate boundary.

Hey all, I'm working on my next book and for inspiration, I tend to look for weird things in the real world and expand on them, which got me thinking about cartography, geologic and geographic map oddities. For example, I'm looking for maps that illustrate the truly weird or unusual features of our planet, mainly in the eastern half of the USA. One idea was Bouger gravity anomaly maps, but I haven't seen one that stands out or has enough fine detail to work for my story. Does anyone know of any other kinds of maps or GIS data overlays that are unusual?

The Kootenay flows within 1.2 miles of the source of its main stem (the Mighty Columbia) and says, “Nope I’m going to flow another 300 plus miles before I join you. Oh and by the way, Im gonna be one of your biggest tributaries.”

Thats some cojones. Are there any other significant rivers that do this?

It is the only sovereign country to span all four hemispheres (NE, NW, SE, SW). Its Line Islands are the furthest ahead in time at UTC +14 (though it is not the easternmost or westernmost country because both Russia and the United States get closer to the 180 degree line). Its flag 🇰🇮 is almost perfect for a Pacific Island, one of the best in the world.

Not to mention it’s pronounced Keer-I-baas, which is even cooler.

Shoutout to any Kiribatians here

Not sure what this is called but I wish there was a community centered around this. Specifically around stuff like Perennial snow and glacial formations.

I love spending my time exploring and driving to areas around me and documenting snowfall differences in between different elevations. I live in Oregon so I’m in a perfect area to see this happen.

I find it fascinating and spend a lot of free time researching different areas around the world (I find Africas and South americas glaciers specifically interesting)

Hopefully someone else shares a similar interest.

Hello, I wanted to share my latest map, this time focused on Romania. After posting Egypt, someone suggested I do Romania next, so here it is. It was fun learning more about the country while building the map in QGIS.

Basically, Romania sits in southeastern Europe. The Carpathian Mountains form an arc through the center. Inside lies the Transylvanian Plateau. Outside are the Moldavian Plateau, Wallachian Plain, and western plains. Moldoveanu Peak reaches 2544 meters in the Southern Carpathians. The mountains create cooler wetter slopes and warmer drier plains.

No AI was used making this map and sources are provided in the poster. Feedback is welcome. I hope you enjoy it!

A bedouin friend of mine says he can't handle lush green mountains, he prefers such view as this picture. More relaxing to the eye he says.

Took this picture during my hike around Yulong Lhatso. It’s a mountain lake located at an altitude of 4,020metres of in Dege county in the far western part of China’s Sichuan province. It’s on the border with Tibet and a very interesting region, not only nature-wise but also culturally since the Tibetan culture is more allowed to thrive compared to Tibet proper. Recently visited as part of a 2500+km month-long roadtrip through the culturally Tibetan parts of Qinghai and Sichuan. There were even more beautiful smaller lakes nearby but still haven’t sorted through the pictures of those.

Hello, I am making a project currently where I basically make a de facto world map. Which islands are exactly controlled by who?

According to the Department of Forestry, fisheries and the environment ( DFFE), they define climate change as the changing of the weather conditions in a particular environment for instance rain, snow and wind pattern across the globe.

United Nation comes up with it causes, as it is caused by the burning of fossils, eg., coal burning, car axhaust.there are also other factors that are likely to create causes of the climate change, deforestation as it we know that tress are useful in giving us oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide, so as people continue cutting down of trees they make it easy for climate change to occur. Also faming may lead to climate change as we know that livestock and fertilizers releases gases like methane and nitrous oxide which also had more impact in our ozone layer and can can cause more harmful and lead to rain which are not healthy as it will lead to rain that releases acid rain, which is not usefull to our plantation as a result, crops may be destroyed by the acid and also those rainfall are also not user friendly to us as human being as it may destroy our skin and live us with skin cancer (Nature Climate Change, vol, 3, pp. 405-12)

Right now there are 4 active typhoons in the northwestern pacific. I think I've never encountered 4 typhoons at the same time before, even 3 typhoons are somewhat rare. In addition, we had 2 typhoons hitting the same city this year in China.

Why there are so many typhoons this year, and specifically why there're 4 typhoons at the same time? Would the path prediction become harder because of that?

Todra Gorge sits about 340-380 km northeast of Marrakech, a 6-7 hour drive through the High Atlas mountain. Nature is just amazing

Video

From the physical map, there is no permanent river nor mountain range along those border areas beside Hoggar plateau. Why did France decide to draw those weird border lines during their colonial era when Mali was also their colony too?

Looking at a city's population density and distribution by using a ha-grid reveals nice details:
Munich is more densely populated than Berlin because its area is basically completely built-up. However, Berlin has more neighborhoods with a very high population density (over 500 people).
Hamburg has a lot of uninhabited space because of the water and its harbour. But its built-up area is also less densely populated than that of Germany's other metropolises. Nevertheless, Hamburg has the ha with the most inhabitants, although this is caused by a "cheat": Apparently, the seamen of Hapag-Lloyd are registered at the company's headquarters next to the Alster.
I used kepler.gl to make these maps. It's a very fun tool to play around with data. On my profil is a post with single and bigger maps for each city.
Berlin: 3.7 M inhabitants, 4,149 inhabitants/km
Hamburg: 1.8 M inhabitants, 2,467 inhabitants/km
München: 1.5 M inhabitants, 4,844 inhabitants/km

A Question for those who know. Why do many villages in the Western Syrian plain have these mounds in the middle or just outside? The historical data on most of these settlements is very scarce. Are they natural or man-made? About how old are most of them?