How Climate Change Will Affect You

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology have produced guides to show how each region of Australia is likely to be affected by climate change. The Guardian has released an interactive map which allows users to click on any region of Australia to view how it will be affected by global heating.

If you enter a postcode or click on the How the climate crisis will affect you interactive map you can see how your region's temperatures, rainfall, sea levels and fire risk will be affected by future climate change.

If you are interested in the effects of future climate change in Australia you can view the CSIRO and Australian Bureau of Meteorology prediction in more detail on the government's Climate Change in Australia website. The Climate Change in Australia website also includes an interactive map which allows you to access the future climate change affects by region. These include more detailed predictions, such as the degree of temperature rises in the near future (2030) and for the end of the century (2090).



The Guardian's map is part of a growing trend to map the future impact of climate change around the world. A number of organizations have released maps which allow you to view future climate change by showing you which town or city your home will resemble after global heating. For example in the year 2100 summers in New York will be as hot as Juarez in Mexico is today and Los Angeles can look forward to summers that are as hot as the current summers in Belize City.

Climate Central's interactive map tells you how hot your city will be in the year 2100 if carbon emissions continue as currently predicted. Shifting Cities allows you to choose from a large number of major cities around the world to find out how hot they will get in 2100. When you select a city on the map you are shown the current summer temperature in your city and a city which now has a temperature that your city can expect in the year 2100.

You can find your 2080 climate twin using The Summer of 2080 Will Be This Warm interactive map. If you enter your location or click on your location on this map you can view the town or city in the world which has a climate now which is similar to the climate you can expect at your location in the year 2080. The map uses two different climate models, showing you your climate twin for a global warming scenario of 4.2 degrees or 1.8 degrees.

The World's Worst Climate Sinners

If we want to avoid a climate change catastrophe then every person on Earth needs to restrict their CO2 output to 2.7 tonnes a years. For comparison, if you took a return flight from Vienna to New York in economy class, you would consume about 2.8 tonnes of CO2.

Moment has created an interactive map which shows which countries around the world are currently exceeding the 2.7 tonnes of CO2 output per person, and in which countries the population are outputting less. On the World Map of Climate Sinners the countries colored red/pink are largely responsible for climate heating. The countries colored green have reasons to be very upset with the rest of the world.

If you select a country on the map you can view the per capita annual CO2 output. For example, in the USA the average person produces around 15.74 tonnes of CO2 every year. This is around 6 times more than the 2.7 tonnes per person which would limit global heating to around 2 ° C by 2050.

America isn't alone in causing global heating. People in most of the developed world are exceeding the target 2.7 tonnes of CO2 output. In fact the developed world is even more guilty than the map shows. On this map CO2 output from manufacturing is shown in the country of manufacture. Much of the consumption in the developed world is the consumption of products developed in the developing world. Therefore on this map a lot of consumption in the developed world is shown as developing world CO2 output.

The target of 2.7 tonnes of CO2 output per person was calculated by the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna. This target, it is estimated, would limit global heating to 2 ° C by 2050.

France's Nuclear Paradise

Between 1960 and 1996 France carried out 193 nuclear tests in French Polynesia in the South Pacific. The tests have had a devastating and long lasting impact on the area's islands and people. You can learn more about France's nuclear testing program in Nuclear Dissent, an interactive multimedia report into the effect of France's nuclear testing in French Polynesia during the second half of the Twentieth Century.

The documentary uses a combination of video, photos and audio to tell the story of where and when France carried out nuclear tests in the South Pacific. The documentary also explores the legacy of this nuclear testing, including the spread of cancer, the damage to the food chain and the irreparable harm caused to the environment.



In order to bring the story a little closer to home Nuclear Dissent also includes an interactive map which allows you to see the effects of dropping a nuclear bomb in your own backyard. Enter your address into the map and you can explore the fallout that would result from dropping a selection of different sized nuclear weapons on your home.

A number of concentric circles are displayed on the interactive map, centered on your address, to show the fallout range of your selected nuclear bomb. The outer circle shows the thermal zone, the radius within which people will receive third degree burns. Inside this, the next largest circle, is the air blast zone. In this radius buildings will be knocked over from the pressure of the bomb's air blast. Inside this zone is the radiation zone, inside of which 50-90% of people will die from radiation. The smallest circle represents the fireball zone, inside which temperatures reach as high as the sun.



Nuclear Dissent has a very long loading time. If you are impatient, or your device struggles loading Nuclear Dissent, then you can always explore the effects of nuclear bombs on a number of other interactive maps. Both NUKEMAP and Ground Zero allow you to view the potential damage that a wide choice of nuclear weapons would have when dropped on locations around the world. You can also use Outrider - Bomb Blast - which comes with some realistic looking nuclear fallout effects.

Outrider - Bomb Blast allows you to choose from a range of different types of nuclear weapon and select whether you want to detonate the bomb at ground level or as an air burst. You can then view the likely damage on an interactive map. The map shows the likely radius of the fireball, radiation, shock-wave and heat zones. It also provides an estimate of the number of fatalities and injuries your nuclear weapon would cause when dropped on your location.

The Papua Environmental Atlas

The Papua region, which makes up the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea, is largely undeveloped. While this lack of development is wonderful for the environment it also means that 53 percent of the population doesn't have access to electricity. More than 25% of people living in the Papua region also live below the poverty line.

The government of Indonesia has decided to accelerate infrastructure development in the Papua region. This may have some positive benefits for some of the indigenous population. It could also have a hugely negative effect on the environment. The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has therefore released a new interactive mapping tool which it hopes will help planners, officials and policymakers monitor the environmental effects of new infrastructure projects.

The Papua Atlas allows users to view forest loss, plantation & mine development, and road construction. The map uses satellite data dating back to 2001 which can be used to create time-lapse animations which show the impacts of logging, plantation development and road building. It includes a number of different tools for exploring how infrastructure projects are impacting on the local environment. For example you can visualize forest loss for 1 km on either side of public roads to visualize the impact of road development on the immediate environment.

So far the Papua region has managed to avoid the fate of the island of Borneo. In 1973 three quarters of Borneo was covered in tropical forest. Since 1973 over one third of that forest has been lost due to industrial logging and the spread of industrial oil palm and pulpwood plantations. CIFOR's original interactive deforestation map, the Borneo Atlas, shows where Borneo's tropical forests have been lost and the incredible scale of this continuing deforestation. Hopefully CIFOR's new Papua Atlas will help the Papua region avoid the same levels of deforestation.

What's in a Streetname?

Inspired by Data Stuff's The Beautiful Hidden Logic in Cities the mapping team at the City of Amsterdam has been mapping out the street names of Amsterdam. What's in a Streetname? is an interactive map which colors Amsterdam's streets based on their name endings (i.e. whether they are streets, roads, lanes, alleys etc.).

Streets in many American cities are often organized into a grid system with street names decided by compass direction. So most roads running south-north might be called 'streets' while streets running west-east would be called 'avenues' - or vice versa. You probably won't be surprised to learn that in Amsterdam, a city which has grown up around canals, water seems to play a very large role in determining the name endings of many of the city's streets.


streets whose name endings relate to water and canals

The roads on either side of the canals in Amsterdam's famous canal ring (the light blue lines on the map) are all named for the canals which they follow  ('gracht' = 'canal'). As well as having streets named for canals Amsterdam has lots of streets which are named for quays (kade), dikes (dijk), waterways (gouw), and a large encircling canal (singel).

You can explore the frequency and distribution of the different types of street in Amsterdam for yourself by using the filters in the map legend. Using the legend you can select to view any type of street (or any combination of different types of street) on the interactive map.

Killing Child Mortality

The New York Times has published an interactive map which shows how child mortality rates are improving around the world. According to the Times Almost Everywhere, Fewer Children are Dying. In fact since the beginning of the 21st Century child mortality rates have been cut in half.

The Times' interactive map visualizes the reduction in child mortality from 2000-2017. The red patch on the map outlines the four regions of Syria where the rate of child mortality has actually grown during this period. Since 2000 child mortality rates have dropped in all but one of the 97 countries with the highest child mortality rates. The one exception, Syria, has been beset by a devastating civil war.

If you mouse-over individual countries on the NYT map you can view the percentage by which child mortality rates have dropped (or risen in the case of Syria). You can also view a chart showing the child mortality rate in the selected country for every year since the turn of the century.

The Times article takes a close look at how child mortality rates have been improved in a number of different countries and regions. Malnutrition is a contributing factor in nearly half of all child deaths. Therefore they can be prevented. Economic inequality and political unrest often seem to be the biggest stumbling blocks in those countries which are struggling the most to lower their rates of child mortality.

A Real-Time Map of the Galaxy

NASA's Your Galactic Neighborhood is a digital orrery which shows the real-time position of the planets in our solar system. Like a traditional mechanical orrery Your Galactic Neighborhood provides a model of the Solar System that shows the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons.

As well as visualizing the position of the planets and moons Your Galactic Neighborhood shows the real-time position of some of NASA's spacecraft. For example you can see the current position of the Parker Solar Probe, which is on target to pass through the Sun's atmosphere closer to the Sun's surface than any spacecraft before. 



If you select a planet or moon on NASA's digital orrery you can view a 3D model of the planet. This close-up view includes information on the planet, its moons and distance from the sun. It also includes a link to NASA's dedicated page on the selected planet.

NASA don't seem to have a direct link to its digital orrery. To access Your Galactic Neighborhood you need to click on the small animated solar system graphic in the header of NASA's Solar System Exploration website.

Segregating San Francisco

According to the Haas Institute the San Francisco Bay area is more segregated now than it was 50 years ago. The Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley has analysed levels of racial residential segregation in the Bay Area since 1980 and concluded that seven of the Bay Area’s nine counties have become more racially segregated.

You can explore the results of the Haas Institute's research on the Racial Segregation in the San Francisco Bay Area interactive map. Census tracts on the map are colored to show whether they have a low, moderate, or high level of segregation. The map includes a simple timeline control which makes it very easy to see which neighborhoods in the Bay Area have become more or less segregated over time. The map also includes filters which allows you to view how 'isolated' a specific racial group is in each county.

The interactive map is just one tool released as part of the Institute's three part investigation into Racial Segregation in the San Francisco Bay Area. This investigation explored US Census data to see how residential racial segregation has changed in each decade since 1980. While most counties in the Bay Area have become more segregated, counties, such as Napa, Sonoma, and Marin, are now dramatically more segregated than they were in 1980.

The Timeline of American Universities

Founded in Massachusetts in 1636, Harvard University was the first college of higher education in America. In fact for 57 years Harvard was the only university in America - until the founding of the College of William & Mary in 1693. Yale University was the fourth university to be founded, opening in 1701.

Nine universities in total were founded before the United States of America became a sovereign nation in 1776 after the American Revolution. These nine are collectively known as the colonial colleges. Seven of these nine are part of the Ivy League athletic conference. The eighth Ivy League college, Cornell, was founded after the American Revolution, in 1865.

You can explore when all American universities were originally founded on the Timeline of Higher Education in America interactive map. This map plots the location of every American university based on its foundation date. Adjust the timeline on the map and you can see universities opening up across the USA, sweeping from the east with the westward expansion of the United States.

According to the map America's youngest universities are Indiana University Fort Wayne and Northern Vermont University, both of which were founded in 2018.

Saints & Sinners of America

Having explored the spatial distribution of towns and villages named for saints, in my Saints Of Europe interactive map, I was intrigued to see which towns in the USA have been given the names of saints.

Saints and Sinners shows the location of towns and villages in the USA which include the prefixes 'St', 'Saint', 'San' or 'Santa'. To add a little spice to the map I also added the location of all roads which include 'devil' in their name. There don't appear to be any towns or cities in the U.S. which have the word 'devil' in their name - but there are a few streets which have been inspired by the devil.


Towns starting with the words 'St' or 'Saint' are mostly found in the eastern states.

As you might expect there is a distinct difference in the spatial distribution of towns with the Spanish prefixes of 'San' and 'Santa' and those with the English prefixes 'St' and 'Saint'. Towns and cities which start with 'San' or 'Santa' can be found almost exclusively in California and in states bordering Mexico (particularly Texas and New Mexico). Towns and cities starting with the words 'St' or 'Saint' are mostly found in the eastern states.

All the data for the map comes from OpenStreetMap. To get the data I used Overpass Turbo. I queried Overpass Turbo to find towns and cities in the USA which included the words 'St', 'Saint', 'San' and 'Santa'. You can see how the Overpass Turbo query is formed in the example below:

[out:json][timeout:185];
area["name"="United States"]->.boundaryarea;
(
node(area.boundaryarea)[place=town] ["name"~"Santa "];
node(area.boundaryarea)[place=city] ["name"~"Santa "];
);
// print results
out body;
>;
out skel qt;

To search for roads named devil you just need to change the word 'node' to 'way' in the query and delete the filter to search for towns and cities (e.g. delete '[place=town]').

The Difference Between Streets and Roads

In the UK you won't find many roads in the centers of many towns and cities. This isn't because they are pedestrianized. It is because the word 'road' was rarely used as part of a toponym before the late 16th Century. Up until the 17th Century roads were called something else, such as 'streets' or 'lanes'. For this reason any city or town in England, which still retains its medieval street patterns, will probably have very few 'roads' in its center. For example the City of London famously has no roads.

Because of the relative modernity of America as a country I wouldn't expect to see the same lack of streets named 'road' in American cities. However, judging by the maps in The Beautiful Hidden Logic in Cities there appear to be very few roads in lots of American cities as well. Data Stuff has created a series of maps on which city roads are colored to show whether they are called 'Avenue', 'Boulevard', 'Street', 'Road' etc. Most cities in these maps seem to be dominated by streets and avenues.

In the USA I know that lots of cities have organized their grid systems by compass direction. So south-north streets might be mostly called 'streets' while east-west streets are called 'avenues' - or vice versa. However this doesn't explain the lack of roads. This 'compass grid' convention could still be maintained by having 'roads and 'streets' or 'roads' and 'avenues'. Besides in some cities this naming convention isn't used. For example in San Francisco (pictured above) we still have mostly roads called 'streets' and 'avenues' however these are split geographically rather than by compass direction. So in San Francisco we find that streets in the west of the city are mostly called 'Avenue' and roads in the west of the city are mainly called 'Street'.

There must therefore be another reason why cities in the USA don't appear to have many streets named 'Road'. The Wikipedia article on Street argues that "a street is characterized by the degree and quality of street life it facilitates, whereas a road serves primarily as a through passage for road vehicles". According to this definition we would therefore expect to see more 'streets' in busy urban environments and more 'roads' in more rural areas. This rural-urban distinction between 'roads' and 'streets' is new to me (and I'm not sure it is true of UK 'roads' and 'streets') however it may be supported by another map from Data Stuff.

Road Suffixes in the USA contains a number of choropleth maps showing the density of road names in U.S. counties. Data Stuff's analysis of road names suggests that roads named 'road' are by far the biggest number of roads by mileage in the USA - with three times as many roads (by mileage) called 'road' than the next most popular name of roads called 'street'. The lack of streets named 'road' in American cities and the fact that there are more 'roads' than any other form of street in the whole of the U.S. suggests that there is a huge urban-rural split in the location roads named 'road' and 'street'.

Someone needs to carry out a spatial analysis of the distribution of streets named 'road' and 'street' in comparison to population density.

The Street Names of Vancouver

Golf courses are more likely to have roads named after them in Vancouver than women. In Vancouver more streets have been given the name of famous golf courses from around the world than have been named for famous or notable women. There are 26 streets bearing the name of a famous golf course and only 16 streets in the whole city which have been named for women. Of Vancouver's 651 streets 276 have been named for men.

CBC News has been investigating how streets have been named in the city of Vancouver. If you discount numbered streets and duplicate names Vancouver has 651 unique street names. These 651 streets are named for people (mostly men), golf courses, geographical features (e.g. 'beach') and lots of dead Europeans (again mostly men).

You can view an interactive map of Vancouver's streets organized into categories of different types of name on the City of Vancouver Open Data Portal. On the map roads are colored and organized by categories such as UK places, people from the UK, the works of Walter Scott, geography etc. You can read CBC News' analysis of the map in The origins of all 651 street names in Vancouver.

Of course Vancouver isn't the only city which has mostly ignored women when naming its city streets. Geochicas in Las Calles de las Mujeres has mapped out streets named for men and women in a number of Latin American and Spanish cities. In Germany Zeit Online has also mapped out streets named for men and women. In Streetscapes: Mozart, Marx and a Dictator Zeit Online  looks at the trends of naming streets for people and historical events.

An analysis of the Street Names in Vienna reveals that 4,269 streets have been named for men. Only 356 have been named for women. Mapbox has also created an interactive map showing the distribution of male and female street names in major cities across the world. According to Mapping Female versus Male Street Names streets in Bengaluru, Chennai, London, Mumbai, New Delhi, Paris, and San Francisco are all much more likely to be named for men than women.

London Squared

The City Intelligence Unit at the London Datastore has released a really interesting visualization of London Commuting Flows. The visualization uses an interactive cartogram to show where the residents in each London borough travel to work within London.

The cartogram repesents every London borough as a small square. Each of these small squares is a mini choropleth map showing where in London the local residents commute to work. In other words the visualization consists of small multiple maps organized geographically. You can actually mouse-over the smallest borough squares within each individual borough square to view the number of commuters who commute between the two boroughs (which makes the cartogram sound a lot more complicated to use than it really is).

I like this visualization a lot. As a static image it would be an effective visualization on its own of the spatial pattern of commuting in London (the majority of commuters from each borough tend to work in central London or in neighboring boroughs). As an interactive visualization, however, it allows you to drill down and explore the commuting flows of individual boroughs and view how many residents from each borough travel to every other borough in the capital.

The  London Commuting Flows visualization was created using After the Flood's London Squared D3 module. This module allows you to easily create your own similar looking interactive cartograms of London.

The Hooky Map of America

The Hamilton Project at Brookings has created an interactive map which visualizes the rates of chronic absence at every school in the country. Chronic absence is when a student misses 10% or more of school. Students who miss this amount of schooling are academically at risk.

Individual schools on the Chronic Absence Map are colored to show the percentage of the students who have a record of chronic absence. The red markers show the schools with the highest percentage of chronic absence and the yellow markers those with the lowest. If you click on individual schools on the map you can view the school ratings for a number of other educational outcomes, for example math / English proficiency, the student / teacher ratio and the rate of teacher attendance.

The map also looks at community factors that affect learning in each zip-code area. On the map zip-code areas are colored to show the level of community support for learning. Zip-code areas colored light blue have more supportive community conditions and zip-codes areas with a darker blue have less supportive community conditions. The level of community support is defined by such factors as the share of children living in poverty, household medium income and local employment rates.



One community factor that the Brookings' map doesn't consider is the rate of school funding. The amount of money that schools have can obviously effect levels of learning. To find out how much each school district spends on education you can instead refer to another interactive map. NPR has created a map which visualizes how much each school district in the USA spends on individual students. Why America's Schools Have A Money Problem colors each school district based on the level of school spending in the district per individual student.

The map shows that local funding is usually dependent on the levels of local property taxes. If a district has a number of successful businesses contributing a lot of money through property taxes then the school district is more likely to have higher levels of school spending per student. In essence schools in affluent areas are likely to be much better funded that schools in less-affluent areas.

Unfortunately the data on the NPR map is a little old now. The NPR map shows spending per student for each school district in the 2013 fiscal year.

D.C. Under Water

A new interactive map shows the projected flooding which could affect America's National Parks in 2050. Reveal has used data from the National Park Service to show the areas which could be inundated if a category 3 hurricane hit one of America's most popular National Parks.

The interactive map allows you to view the affect of a storm surge on ten of the U.S.'s most popular National Parks. The map includes a slide control which allows you to switch between a visualization of the current high tides and the likely storm surge in 2050, after a category 3 hurricane. The map sidebar includes quick links which will zoom the map to points of interest within the selected National Park.

Maps like this can be very powerful illustrations of the disastrous future effects of climate change. For example the screenshot above shows how the map can be a dramatic visualization of the effects of a storm surge. However I think that this particular map might be more effective with a little more information on the data used to calculate the storm surge levels. I also think some explanation is needed on why the year 2050 was chosen and why a category 3 hurricane could have more disastrous consequences for National Parks in that year as compared to now.

If you want to know how sea level rises will effect all locations in the USA then you can refer to Surging Seas. Climate Central's Surging Seas is one of the best interactive mapped visualizations of the likely effects of climate change. This particular map also includes a much better explanation of what is being shown and why this data is being visualized.

The Eel Rents of England

In my childhood jellied eels were a reasonably common part of the diet in East London. You can still find a few Pie, Mash and Jellied Eel shops dotted around the East End. However cafes that sell jellied eels are now a much rarer sight in the East End and the consumption of eels has largely gone out of fashion.

The demise of eels as a staple of the English diet is on the face of it very odd. For centuries eels have been a cheap and nutritious food source, readily eaten by the English. In fact for centuries eels were so much a part of the diet that many landlords would accept rent in the form of eels. This isn't as strange as it sounds. In pre-industrial times rents were often paid in livestock, fish, ale or other types of foods. Eels were therefore no less strange a method of receiving or paying rent than any other common goods or produce.

You can learn more about eel rents on the fascinating Eel-Rents Project. This project includes an interactive map which shows where the mention of eel rents can be found in original documents from the late 10th Century through the 15th Century. On the maps the number of eels mentioned in the rent is represented by the size of the marker and the color of these marker indicates the century of the historical record.

The map comes with a note of caution that this isn't a complete record of eel rents but just a map of where they have been revealed by surviving historical records. Therefore the cluster that seems to exist around the Cambridgeshire fens may just be a result of where the historical record has best survived. Or it may reflect the fact that eels were once plentiful in the fens and were a staple part of the local diet for thousands of years. In fact eels are so much a part of the culture of the fens that they even named one of their most important cities 'Ely'.

Two Degrees Hotter

The 2016 Paris Agreement on Climate Change set a long-term goal to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. Unfortunately many places across the globe have already exceeded a 2 °C rise in average temperatures.

The Washington Post has used data from Berkeley Earth to map the global rise in temperatures compared to the average temperature in the years 1880-99. An animated map at the beginning of the article, Dangerous new hot zones are spreading around the world, visualizes how the planet has heated since the end of the 19th Century. Another map, later in the article, takes a closer look at where temperatures have risen the most. According to the Post around 10% of the planet has already heated by more than 2 °C. Around 20% of the planet has heated by 1.5 °C.

Of course this level of global heating is having an effect on environments around the world. The Post's article takes a closer look at some of the most extreme environmental changes taking place across the globe and how these changes are affecting the lives and livelihoods of the people being affected by climate change.



Last month the Washington Post explored in more detail where in the United States the average temperature had risen above 2 °C. and where climate change is having the most visible effects in the country. In 2°C: Beyond the Limit - Extreme climate change has arrived in America the Post uses historical temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration temperature to map where temperatures in the U.S. have already exceeded two degrees Centigrade.

According to the Post's analysis seventy-one counties have already experienced a rise of 2 degree Celsius. The Post's story includes a more detailed look at some of the regions of America which are experiencing extreme global warming and the effect that this warming is having on local environments. In particular the Post's story concentrates on the North East, where extreme warming has led to rising seas, loss of land, warmer winters and many other environmental problems.

The Wealth Divide in Spain

Spanish newspaper El Pais has mapped out the average income per person across the whole of Spain. The map shows a stark divide between the north and south of the country.

The Map of Spanish Incomes, Street by Street visualizes the average income in every neighborhood in the country. If you hover over an individual neighborhood on the map you can view the average income in the area. Immediately below the map you can also view in which percentile the neighborhood's income resides compared to the whole of Spain. This allows you to compare the local average income to the average income across the country.

The article accompanying the map includes an analysis of the income levels in a number of Spanish cities. For example in the northern city of San Sebastian all the city's neighborhoods have an average income in the top 30% of earners. In Madrid there is a larger wealth divide between some neighborhoods. This divide is marked by the M-30 orbital road. With those living inside the orbital earning, on average, significantly more than those living outside the ring-road.

The city of Almeria, in the southeast of Spain, has a number of neighborhoods with some of the lowest average incomes in the country. Like Madrid there is also a stark wealth divide between some of the city's  neighborhoods. Many of Almeria's poorer areas are immediately adjacent to some of the town's richest neighborhoods.

The Geology of South Limburg

The Geology of South Limburg is an interactive geological map of the South Limburg region of the Netherlands. On the map different colors are used to show the different types of geological features which can be found in the region. The map also provides a guided tour and explanation of these geological features.

The dramatic geology of South Limburg has been formed over the last 300 million years. The geology has been formed by extreme climates, shifting continents and endlessly changing sea levels. The map provides a schematic representation of this geology and a detailed explanation of how the region has been shaped throughout history.

You can take a tour of some of the geological features which are found in the South Limburg region by using the 'vorige' (previous) and 'volgende' (next) buttons on the map. As you progress through this tool the map zooms in on different regions in South Limburg where you can find distinct geological features. The map sidebar provides a detailed explanation of the geology highlighted on the map and how this geological feature was formed.

The Geology of South Limburg is just a part of the much bigger interactive Geological Map of the Netherlands.

If you are a fan of geological maps then you will also enjoy this roundup of Geological Interactive Maps.

The Homeless Should Sleep at Home

Mahatma Gandhi once noted that "the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members." Let's explore a little how the United States treats its most vulnerable citizens.

The City of Los Angeles is currently considering plans to ban homeless people from sleeping on many of the city's streets. These plans will make it illegal to sleep rough within 500 feet of schools, parks, day-care facilities and some popular venues. According to the Los Angeles Times this will mean at least a quarter of Los Angeles will be out-of-bounds to the city's most vulnerable people.

In Could Homeless People Sleep in Your Neighborhood? the LA Times has created an interactive map which shows all the areas of Los Angeles which could be restricted to the homeless under the new plans. The map shows the exclusion zones around every school, park and day-care facility. Enter an address into the map and you can find out what percentage of your neighborhood's streets will be restricted to the homeless under the new plans.



Another way that American cities tries to deal with vulnerable people is by dumping them on other cities. Thousands of one-way bus tickets are given to the homeless every year in the United States. In Bussed out: How America moves its homeless the Guardian newspaper explores the reasoning behind homeless bus relocation programs, their effect on the homeless and the impact on the cities where the bussed out homeless eventually end up.

As you scroll through the Guardian's article an interactive map automatically updates to visualize the results of the homeless relocation programs run by cities across America. This map shows the homeless rate in each state and the number of homeless arriving in cities across the country.

New York city spends the most money of any city on their homeless relocation programs. In fact New York doesn't just bus its homeless problem on to other cities it also give homeless citizens free flights to other cities. As with the bus relocation programs most of the people moved on by plane end up in locations where the residents have a lower than average median income.

Forget Gandhi's words, Americans prefer the saying 'out of sight, out of mind.' In the United States the most vulnerable citizens are treated as a problem which should be passed on to somebody and someplace else. In fact the vulnerable in America are dumped on those who are least able to help solve their problems.