The geography behind the news

The major U.S. news outlets are reporting today that the government plans to close military bases in 33 U.S. states. Various congressional representatives are lining up to defend the targeted bases in their state.

Geography always plays a part in base realignment and closing. The fairly equitable distribution of bases around the country show that. The pain was spread around. To the local communities affected, location is obviously critical to thier lives.

After a base is closed, the facility is analyzed for a whole host of geographically related factors: inventory infrastructure, natural resources, wildlife, and archaeological sites within installations as well as envirnonmenal management related to contaminated soil, groundwater, and wells.

Geography Matters

Why start an entire blog devoted to geography? Because "location, location, location" isn't just a real estate cliche, and not enough people are paying attention to how geography matters to big and little decisions. Governments grasp this implicitly and use that fact to good and ill effect, but people being governed often think geography is something they studied in school and it's about maps.

To get you started thinking differently, here's a few articles culled from Google over the past few days that show how your life was changed by geography—and you didn't even know it.

• Storm-driven waves help clarify new N.C. flood maps (Virginian-Pilot, May 5, 2005)


• Military culture rooted in geography (Boston Globe, May 10, 2005; a new twist on why Bush won a second term)


• British Waterways charts canal data (VNUNetwork, May 4, 2005; geography is used to understanding everything from how canals are used to crime around the waterways)


• Health Geography Study Finds Health Care Resources Distributed Unevenly in Kansas (U.S. Newswire, May 6, 2005). This article comes to the dire conclusion that "At least a third of the state of Kansas resembles an inner city when it comes to local availability of doctors, hospitals, medical personnel and nursing homes."