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James R. Martin's avatar

Some folks here may find this useful.

North American Environmental Atlas

http://www.cec.org/north-american-environmental-atlas/

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James R. Martin's avatar

"Maps are useful, of course, as are wonderful new satellite imagery. But these remain merely mute guides, especially when youโ€™re trying to create a map that may have never existed before. You have to literally โ€œgo there,โ€ see for yourself, explore the body of this world, and then โ€œstudy up.โ€

When you do go to the edge, say standing on a mountain or sitting on the sand of a beach, itโ€™s surprising to find that there are no boundaries there โ€œon the ground.โ€ The world just goes about its business, flowing by continuously, unconcerned about our need for boundary-making. Even so-called โ€œnatural boundariesโ€ on ridgelines, for instance, are not obvious among the welter of peaks and slopesโ€”itโ€™s often hard to tell where the drainage divide runs from โ€œhere to thereโ€ from ridge to ridge.

The problem is exacerbated, of course, when dealing with wholly artificial political boundaries as โ€œlines on a mapโ€ such as the 49th parallel which forms the western boundary between Canada and the United States, or the epitome of strangeness, that intersection of the straight-lined โ€œFour Cornersโ€ region in the American southwest."

-- David McCloskey

from -

https://www.cascadia-institute.org/boundaries_more.html

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