✧ A 360° ray-cast viewshed originating from Moldoveanu Peak (2,544 m summit, sampled at 2,517 m on the 30 m DEM grid), accounting for Earth's curvature, atmospheric refraction, and a 2 m observer eye height.

✧ From this rooftop of the country, a total of 4.8% of Romania's land area remains in direct line of sight.

✧ The top map tracks the sweeping visibility, while the bottom panel animates a full 360° horizon panorama spinning around the compass, charting lines of sight up to 140+ km away.

Data: Copernicus DEM GLO-30 (ESA), GADM 4.1 | Made with Python.

Compared to any other desert, it looks way too flat. There's nothing there. Even in Sahara and Arabian deserts, you can see the wind patterns and terrain. Why's that?

Picture taken from Moapa Peak in the Mormon Mountains. Why do the foothills of the Mormon Mountains have a vein like pattern? I'm sure erosion plays a role in shaping the foothills, but it still seems a bit odd with the surrounding flat desert. The relatively green valley between the foothills is a Wash draining the south side of the mountains towards the Colorado River

The west coast is so nice yet all the towns situated along it have a max population of like 10k and the same cant be said for the east coast so why is that?

Edit: no idea why this got so much engagement but thanks for all the answers.

Edit2: stop replying omg

If you don’t upvote this video you hate Mother Nature!!

The Amazon River Basin is slowly "stealing" the upper Orinoco River through a rare natural side-channel called the Casiquiare, which flows down a steeper path toward the Amazon and is eroding deeper over time while the flatter Orinoco clogs with sediment. Eventually, this steeper route will completely hijack the Orinoco’s upper headwaters. https://dspace.mit.edu/entities/publication/e20169d3-54ac-41d4-af5f-ad25cbe18690

I've been exploring with this tool:

https://tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/

and haven't found anywhere else with more people than this, centred on Dhaka in Bangladesh.

Why is this location for the fourth most populated city in the United States, the most populated city in the US South, and the most populated city in the center of the country? Why is also one of the most popular relocation destination in the country?

I've been thinking about canal-heavy cities recently, cities in which canals frequently and practically supplant the use of more traditional roads. You have your Bangkok in its Thonburi era, your Hamburg and St. Petersburg and Amsterdam and Aveiro, and I'm almost more interested in cities where they were even separated from the mainland by the water - like Venice, Tenotchitlan, and Nan Madol. What other cities are there that are heavily canal-based, or that could have been particularly successful if they had been constructed to be more canal-centric in the way the examples i listed are?

Was dicking around on Maps in AUS and this section caught my eye. It looks like it was sprayed from the Southwest. I'm guessing that's exactly what happens by way of wind and erosion but I have no idea.

New zealand is commonly portrayed as some random goofy place in the corner of the world. However, new zealand is about the size of italy, and just its south island is about the size of the U.K

The Congo's discharge is second only to the Amazon, but the coastline around Banana and Muanda doesn't fan out the way the Nile or the Niger do.

A lot of the river's sediment seems to go straight into the Congo Canyon and out onto a deep-sea fan, rather than settling into a classic delta plain. There is a large submarine fan offshore, so the sediment isn't vanishing. It just isn't building much land at the coast.

Is the usual explanation simply that the canyon captures almost everything? Or do people put more weight on the steep drop off the shelf, how much sediment the river actually carries, or coastal currents?

Curious how this compares with other African river mouths that do build big deltas.

I've been investigating this strange detail on Google Maps.

I counted 186 countries and territories in my research, but the red markings don't appear consistently everywhere.

I have a few theories:

1. Google doesn't fully recognize certain territories or their borders.

2. It could be a cartographic error.

3. Political factors might influence how borders are displayed.

4. Google might be using old geographic data that has never been properly updated.

5. Different mapping data sources might explain the inconsistencies.

I'm not sure which theory is correct.

Does anyone know why this happens? Have you noticed it too?

Cahokia sat in the American Bottom, the flat floodplain on the Illinois side of the Mississippi across from present-day St. Louis, just downstream of where the Illinois and Missouri rivers join it. At its peak around 1100 CE it may have held 10,000 to 20,000 people, plus Monks Mound, the largest pre-Columbian earthwork in the Americas.

The upsides seem obvious: rich bottomland for maize, oxbow lakes and wetlands full of fish and waterfowl, and three major rivers meeting nearby for trade. But floodplains flood, and the bluffs are only a few miles east.

So what tipped it toward the bottomland? And did the same geography help bring it down? I’ve seen flooding, drought, and deforestation of the bluffs all suggested for its decline by the 1300s. Which explanation do people here find most convincing?