A remote island with just 57,000 inhabitants is becoming a focal point for global competition. Greenland’s retreating glaciers are exposing massive mineral deposits including rare-earths that China currently dominates. Meanwhile, new Arctic shipping routes and strategic military positioning make this Danish territory increasingly valuable to major powers.
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Russian forces have taken about 4,669 km² (1,803 square miles) in Ukraine over the past year. A map comparison shows this pace matches WWI’s Western Front from 1915-16. At the Somme in 1916, four months of fighting gained just 12 km (7.5 miles) and cost over 1 million casualties.
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Wolves once roamed from Mexican deserts to Arctic ice, but their North American range has collapsed dramatically.
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Tough economic hits and political pressures drove over 8 million Venezuelans to new homes abroad, detailed in this eye-opening map. Recent US-backed moves against Maduro might flip the script.
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Greater Los Angeles holds 18.5 million people across seven counties with extremely different densities. Orange County packs 3,345 people per square mile while San Bernardino County has 109. LA County median homes cost over $800,000 versus under $600,000 in Riverside County, driving projections that LA County could lose 1.4 million residents by 2060.
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New Year’s begins on Kiritimati with just 3,547 in that zone, then moves west to reach everyone
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How has Sweden’s white Christmas changed over the past fifty years? This SMHI dataset maps snow presence across the country from 1975 to 2024, showing a geographic divide that’s become more pronounced over time.
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Ever wondered where the world’s richest soils are? This map shows the global distribution of chernozems (a type of black soil). And according to the map, just three countries hold most of these extraordinarily fertile lands.
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Around 300 million people don’t celebrate New Year on January 1st—they wait for March 20 or 21 when spring begins.
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The Sahara wasn’t always sand and heat. Carl Churchill’s map reconstructs what North Africa looked like 8,000 years ago during the African Humid Period—a time when Lake Chad, Lake Darfur, Lake Ahmet, and The Chotts formed a network of waterways across grasslands. Ancient humans traveled these routes before climate shifts turned the region into desert.
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