As noted in the previous GeoCurrents post on the “deserts” of Colombia, Colombia is usually considered to be the world’s rainiest country, receiving some 127 inches (3249 mm) of precipitation annually, averaged over the entire country. Learning this fact inspired me to make a map of average annual precipitation by country, which is posted below.
The result is, admittedly, a terrible precipitation map, as patterns of rain and snow obviously do not follow national borders. French Guiana, for example, is a very rainy place, getting on average around 114 inches (2,900 mm) per year, yet on my map it is depicted as relatively dry. It is portrayed in this manner because it is an integral part of France and is mapped accordingly. But although this is a poor way of mapping precipitation, it moderately significant as a political map of a major aspect of physical geography.
On this map, much more of the world is depicted as drier than average (brown) than as wetter than average (green). This is simply because many of the world’s rainiest countries are small while many of its driest ones are large. São Tomé and Príncipe, for example, ranks second, Solomon Islands fourth, Panama fifth, Costa Rica sixth, Samoa seventh, and Brunei ninth. Some rainy island countries, such as the Maldives, are too small to appear on the map. In contrast, the three countries receiving the least precipitation, Egypt, Libya, and Saudi Arabia, are relatively large, as are seventh-placed Algeria and eighth-placed Mauritania. At any rate, there are as many countries falling into the green categories as into the brown ones. Those in the middle of the spectrum are mapped in a neutral shade of grey.
It might be surprising that several heavily forested countries, such as Russia, Finland, and Canada, are significantly drier than average. But as they are also relatively cold, they have low levels of average annual evaporation and transpiration, allowing forest vegetation. Yakutsk, in central Siberia, receives only 9.3 inches/235 mm of precipitation annually, yet lies in the taiga (boreal forest) biome. Fairbanks, Alaska gets just a little more (11.7 inches/296 mm) and is also in a largely forested area.
Given that Colombia is usually considered the world’s rainiest country, with roughly 3,240 millimeters (128 inches) of average annual precipitation, I was surprised to find tourism firms advertising visits to the “Deserts of Colombia.” To be sure, Colombia does have one true desert, as defined by climatological criteria. La Guajira Desert, in the northern Guajira Peninsula of far northern Colombia, receives some 200 to 300 mm of precipitation annually. As “deserts” are often defined as areas that get less than 250 mm (9.8 inches), this area qualifies. Its cactus-filled landscapes certainly match a common American perception of what constitutes a “desert.”
Deserts of Colombia
Colombia Climate Zones Map
As the precipitation map posted below shows, no other part of Colombia climatologically qualifies as a desert environment. The drier areas of the country, depicted in shades of light brown on map below, receive as much as 1000 mm (39 inches) of rainfall annually, a relatively high number. The brown areas around and to the northeast of Bogota are relatively wet, as they sit at high elevations and thus have cool climates with low rates of evaporation. Where then are Colombia’s other “deserts”?
Colombia Average Annual Precipitation
This key issue here is how the English word “desert” is defined. Historically, it could refer to any uninhabited or “deserted” place, regardless of rainfall. It later came to refer to any arid or semi-arid area that had few trees. In the early and mid-19th century, the Great Plains of the United States was often mapped as “the Great American Desert,” but it is now never regarded in such a manner. In popular usage, the term “desert” remains vague, its meaning varying with context. I once heard a story about a group of geographers from the Middle East being taken on a field trip to California’s Mojave Desert where they exclaimed, “Desert! What desert? There are shrubs and grasses everywhere. This is a lush steppe!”
The Great Plains as the “Great American Desert” map
In some contexts, areas with very little plant life can be called “deserts” regardless of how much precipitation they receive. The “volcanic deserts” of Iceland, Hawaii, and several other parts of the world fall into this category. Highly eroded landscapes underlain by soft sedimentary rocks often have bare slopes and can thus be called deserts even if they receive substantial amounts of rain. In the United States, however, the usual term for such landscapes is “badlands.” In Colombia, not surprisingly, they are called “desiertos” (deserts).
Colombia’s well-known Tatacoa Desert in Huila department is a classic example of badlands topography. As can be seen in the photo posted below, the eroded slopes are generally bare, but abundant vegetation can be seen in the background. Here one finds a tropical dry forest, or scrubland, with average annual precipitation or around 1,000 to 1,300 mm (39 to . 51 inches). Relatively high temperatures throughout the year combined with abundant sunshine contribute to the lack of vegetation in Tatacoa’s highly eroded areas.
Colombia’s Tatacoa Desert
The arid and semiarid belt of far northern South America, centered on Colombia’s Guajira Peninsula, is situated in a latitude belt and continental position that should, all other things being equal, receive much more precipitation than it does. It thus constitutes a “problem climate” as identified and analyzed by geographer Glenn Trewartha in his important 1961 book The Earth’s Problem Climates (University of Wisconsin Press). Trewartha accounted for this unusual climate by reference to: persistent northeast trade winds blowing along or across an east/west oriented coast, producing limited orographic lift over the relatively low, flat peninsula; coastal upwelling that cools sea-surface temperatures, stabilizing the lower atmosphere, reducing evaporation and suppressing convection; and the fact that the region lies to the north of the typical seasonal reach of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) for much of the year. Recent research, according to AI, also notes the “Caribbean Low-Level Jet (CLLJ), a persistent easterly wind maximum that enhances evaporation from land, transports moisture westward toward Central America (where it rains), and produces large-scale subsidence over the Guajira peninsula.”
As I wind down the current series on the 2026 Colombian election, a brief post on elevation and the election results seems in order. Colombia has major elevation differences, with relatively densely populated areas located in both lowlands and high plateaus. To see if there is any correlation between elevation and voting patterns, I outlined the parts of the country that are over 1000 meters and then superimposed the resulting outline on the 2026 election map. I did the same with a population density map and with the country’s basic political map. This highland outline is intricate, as Colombia has three great cordilleras (mountain and plateau systems) that are separated from each other by the deep valleys of the Magdalena and Cauca rivers. In the far south, however, the three ranges essentially converge.
As can be seen on “political/elevation” map, there is essentially no relationship between elevation and voting behavior at the national level. In Colombia’s core region, highland and lowland areas alike voted for the rightwing candidate, with important exceptions noted in previous GeoCurrents posts. In far southern Colombia, in contrast, both highland and lowland areas voted for the leftwing candidate.
Colombia Departments and High-Elevation Areas Map
Colombia 2026 Election and High-Elevation Areas Map
Colombia Population Density and High-Elevation Areas Map
At the regional level, however, correlations between elevation and voting can be found. As the paired maps of Antioquia show, the department’s highlands tended to vote for the right while its lowlands tended to vote for the left. There are, again, some significant exceptions to this pattern. Although I am tempted to look into these seeming discrepancies, it is time to move on to different topics.
Antioquia Colombia: Topography and the 2026 Presidential Election
As noted in the two previous GeoCurrents posts, it is challenging to make a map of climate favorability partly because preferences vary significantly from person to person. This problem is largely avoided on the ingenious website myPerfectWeather, which allows visitors to construct personal maps based on their own preferences. Unfortunately, the variables that can be selected are limited to average daily high temperature, daily average dewpoint temperature, and daily average cloud cover. Despite this limitation, it is interesting to see how maps generated on the site differ significantly due to relatively small changes in the desired conditions. The first of these maps posted below surprised me by giving San Diego County a middling ranking, contrasting sharply with nearby top-ranking Los Angeles County. In both the Camelot Climate Index and the Yahoo! “perfect weather” map considered in the two previous posts, San Diego is ranked as having the most ideal climate in the United States.
Maps of “Perfect Climate” 1
Maps of “Perfect Climate” 2
As intriguing as it is, myPerfectWeather is useless for my own climate preference, as I care a lot about seasonality and precipitation, neither of which are considered. But I did enjoy changing the parameters and generating different maps. I wanted to make one that puts mild and cloudy San Francisco County in the top position, which was easy to accomplish (see the map posted below).
“Perfect” MIld Climate Map
I focused on San Francisco in part because it is one of the smallest counties in the United States, coterminous with the city of the same name and covering only 47 square miles. Along the Pacific Coast of the United States, mapping climate at the level of the county is highly misleading,* as conditions vary considerably with proximity to the ocean. Even in miniscule San Francisco County, the west side is distinctly cooler and cloudier in the summer than the east side. In large Mendocino County (3,878 square miles) on California’s northern coast, such differences are pronounced, with a mean July high temperate of 65°F (18.3°C) in coastal Fort Bragg and 91.1°F (32.8°C) in interior Ukiah, the county seat.
To illustrate such county-level climatic variability, I extracted Los Angeles County from two different Köppen climate maps of California, both found in Wikipedia. The first of these maps shows five distinct climate zones in L.A. country and the second shows seven. Two main factors account for these significant differences: distance from the ocean and elevation.
Climate Zone of Los Angeles County 1
Climate Zones of Los Angeles County 2
Although I admire the Köppen climate-classification scheme and use it extensively, it is not without problems. On the final map posted below, note how most of the city of San Diego has a BSh climate (arid steppe hot), but its northwestern neighborhood of La Jolla is placed in the BSk category (arid steppe cold). Although La Jolla is slightly cooler than downtown San Diego, especially in the summer, the difference is too small to merit classifying the former as “cold” and the latter as “hot.” In the Köppen scheme, an annual mean temperature of 18°C (64.4°F) is the cutoff between “hot” and “cold” arid climates, which is essentially that of La Jolla. I think that the system could be improved by adding a “mild” category between these two extremes. Doing so would slightly simplify the climate map of southwestern California.
Climate Zones of Southwestern California Map
* myPerfectWeather acknowledges this problem by noting that “Data is shown at the county level, which may not reflect city-level variation.”
One reason why I like the “Camelot Climate Index Map” (discussed in the previous GeoCurrents post) is the fact that that it is explicitly framed as a climate map rather than a weather map. Most of its competitors claim to show permanent weather favorability, but weather varies from day to day and cannot be predicted beyond a week or two. Such maps actually depict climate patterns, which are relatively consistent from year to year. The Yahoo!News illustration posted below, for example, asks readers to examine the map if they want to find a place with “perfect weather year-round.” Even if one agrees with Yahoo’s evaluation of “perfect weather,” such a place cannot be found anywhere, as the map itself demonstrates.
Yahoo! Perfect Weather (Climate) Map of the United States
Like the Camelot Climate Index Map, the Yahoo! map locates the most favorable climate zone of the United States in coastal California. Unlike it, Yahoo depicts the southeast as having the country’s second-best climate, which may surprise those who dislike warm and humid days. The methodology employed, however, is unduly simplistic, with a “perfect weather day” defined as one in which the daily maximum temperature is between 60°F (15.5°C) and 85°F (29.4°C) and rainfall is below 1 mm. Most people, I think it is safe to say, would not regard a windy, cloudy day with temperatures in the 40s and 50s, peaking briefly at 60°F, as having “perfect weather.” Similarly, an extremely humid rainless day with a high temperature of 85°F and a low of 75°F (23.8°C) would probably be regarded by most people as unpleasant. To assess weather comfortability, wind, humidity, and other factors must be assessed along with maximum temperature and precipitation.
As Jan Null, author of the Camelot Climate Index, emphasizes, weather and climate preferences vary considerably from person to person. Average preferences also differ from culture to culture and region to region. I was recently surprised to learn that in the East Riding of Yorkshire in the United Kingdom, a “heat wave” is officially defined a period of at least three days in which the maximum temperature exceeds 79°F (26°C). In interior California, where I was reared, a three-day period in July or August with high temperatures reaching only 79°F (26°C) would be regarded as an unseasonal cold snap. Although many local people would be delighted by such mild conditions, quite a few would complain, asking “what happened to summer?”
Although maps of “ideal weather” actually depict climate zones, the methods used to construct them do tend to hinge on weather preferences. They are based, in other words, on the perception of what constitutes a single “nice,” “ideal,” or “perfect” day, rather than on preferred average conditions across the entire year. Many if not most people also like variation and would find a climate characterized by an unceasing sequence of “perfect days” somewhat boring. Distinct seasonal change is also highly appreciated by many. A single day of ideal weather, moreover, can be especially sweet if it comes after a period of inclement conditions. Similarly, delight is often found when the clouds clear and the wind drops on an otherwise cool and showery day. Such a change can be inspirational, as perfectly realized in “Here Comes the Sun,” the Beatles’ most streamed song. Such considerations help make sense of the seemingly contradictory statement traditionally attributed to King Charles II: “England has the best climate in the world and the worst weather.” But try mapping that!
My X (Twitter) feed has recently featured a number of maps that delineate and rank climate zones in the United States based on how comfortable or idyllic they supposedly are. I find these maps interesting but inevitably problematic. One of the most intriguing is the “Camelot Climate Index,” devised and mapped by meteorologist Jan Null. The person who posted it on X (VB Knives) claimed that it is a “legit climate quality map, which closely tracks to average preferences,” further arguing that it “rewards warm and sunny [climates].” I objected in my reply, noting that the map puts cool and foggy San Francisco in second place, after San Diego. I also foolishly misquoted Mark Twain, who is often said to have quipped that “The coldest winter I even spent was a summer in San Francisco.” Twain never made this statement, but it does seem fitting.
Embarrassed by my misquotation, I decided to examine the map in more detail. What I found is a well-considered and modest effort by a knowledgeable meteorologist to map his own climate preferences based on rigorous quantitative analysis. As Null frames his “Camelot Climate Index:
In this 1960’s musical King Arthur professes that Camelot has a perfect climate all the year; and by royal decree at that! But actually an “ideal” climate is extremely subjective, with one person’s idea of perfection being met with disdain by others. Some individuals may want warm beach weather all year round, while four distinct seasons are most desirable for others. What follows is just one person’s (the author’s) idea that an ideal climate is sunny and relatively mild with few extremes in temperature, humidity or precipitation. …
Null also notes that his map “is rudimentary at best given the limited dataset,” and concludes by admitting that other climate observers would come up with very different maps: “If a similar project was done by a storm chaser it might be called the Oz Climate Index with a bias towards the number of thunderstorm days, hail and tornadoes.”
At any rate, I have posted Null’s original map below. To make it more legible to those unfamiliar with isoline maps, I have colored in the areas between the lines, as can be seen in the second map.
Camelot Climate Index Map
Revised Camelot Climate Index map
Although my own climate preferences are quite different from those of Null, I admire his index and resulting map. He has taken on a complex task and has produced an interesting and informative map. But if I were to make a climate map based on the song “Camelot,” it would have a very different appearance – if it could be produced at all – because I would interpret the lyrics in a more literal manner. This is again merely a subjective preference, but exploring it might still prove worthwhile.
First, I would give more weight to the first climate-related line: in Camelot, “June, July, and August cannot be too hot.” As a result, the interior southwest would have a lower ranking on my hypothetical map than it does on Null’s. He gives Las Vegas, for example, a measurement of 78, the sixth most favorable in the country. But with an average July high temperature of 104ºF and an average low of 82ºF, Las Vegas seems distinctly “uncamelotic” to me. Its forecast high temperature for this coming Saturday is a blistering 115ºF, with a low of 89ºF.
The song also stipulates a relatively mild winter, one that does not begin until December and ends “March the second on the dot,” and in which there is a “legal limit to the snow.” But although a long and snowy cold season is clearly precluded, the lyrics imply that Camelot does have a distinct winter and does receive snow on a regular basis. As Null acknowledges, many people like a climate with four distinct seasons, and the song’s King Arthur was apparently one of them. By my reading, the coastal strip of southern and central California – which is placed in the top position on Null’s map – would have to be downgraded due to its lack of a real winter.
Precipitation is a particularly tricky issue in determining the climate of Camelot. On Null’s map, a large number of days with measurable rainfall counts against an idyllic climate. As a result, the driest area of the country, the southern interior southwest, has a relatively high ranking, while Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and Hilo, Hawaii are given very low rankings. But the song says nothing about total precipitation, specifying instead that in Camelot’s unique micro-climate rainfall occurs only at night. The common image of Camelot, it seems to me, includes a verdant environment, once that necessarily receives regular rainfall throughout the growing season. By this criterion, which is admittedly not specified in the song, the arid, semi-arid, and Mediterranean climate zones of the American west would have to be downgraded. It is also noteworthy that the areas of the United States that get more rain in the night than during the day include the north and west facing slopes of the Hawaiian Islands and the Great Plains. If this metric were included in the index, the “big” island of Hawaii would have to be upgraded, as would the northern Great Plains.
Regardless of what the song stipulates, my biggest problem with the innovative “Camelot Climate Index” is the way that it groups together areas with dissimilar climates. Eureka, California and Las Vegas, Nevada, for example, have almost identical scores, ranking in the fifth and sixth highest positions nationwide. Yet their climates are very dissimilar. The highest July temperature ever recorded in Eureka is a mere 77ºF, which is 5ºF lower than Las Vegas’s average July low temperature. Cool, cloudy, and windy Eureka, moreover, receives more than an order of magnitude more precipitation than arid, sun-blasted Las Vegas (40.4 inches as opposed to 4.18 inches). I would not want to live in either place, as the former is too cool and cloudy in the summer and latter too hot and dry. Other people, of course, have different preferences. But I doubt that many would view the two cities as having equally appealing climates.
The desiccation of the Aral Sea is a widely reported and well-known environmental disaster. Before the late twentieth century, this so-called sea was vast lake that supported major fisheries. Over the past seventy years, most of the flow of the two rivers that drain into it, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, have been diverted to irrigate cotton and other crops. Now only three remnant water bodies remain, two of which are too salty to support fish. But the third, the North Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, has been revitalized in recent years. The construction of dikes has prevented its waters from spreading across and evaporating over the salt flats that now cover what was once the main body of the lake. Other restoration projects undertaken by Kazakhstan have also had some success. According to a recent report, “the volume of water in the Northern Aral Sea has increased to 24.1 billion cubic metres from 2023 to the present.” The same publication also notes that twenty species of fish that had vanished from the northern lake have recently reappeared.
North Aral Sea and Environs map
Contrastingly, the linked environmental crisis that has devastated the historical Khwarazm region south of the Aral Sea is seldom reported and poorly known. The Wikipedia article on Karakalpakstan, a supposedly autonomous region of Uzbekistan that covers much of this once fertile and prosperous area, starkly summarizes the situation:
Crop failures have deprived about 48,000 people of their main source of income and shortages of potable water have created a surge of infectious diseases. … [C]limate change over the centuries, accelerated by human-induced evaporation of the Aral Sea in the late 20th century has created a desolate scene in the region. The ancient oases of rivers, lakes, reed marshes, forests and farms are drying up and being poisoned by wind-borne salt and by fertilizer and pesticide residues from the dried bed of the Aral Sea. … The rates of incidence of anemia, respiratory diseases, and other health problems have risen dramatically.
Not surprisingly, the impoverished and environmentally ravaged region of Karakalpakstan has experienced periodical political unrest in recent years. Large protests in July 2022 led to hard repression. According to a recent scholarly article: “Uzbekistan’s authorities restricted internet use, cut off the region from the rest of the country, censored media reporting about the protests, and used lethal force against the demonstrators, leaving several people dead.” The same article further notes that the government of Uzbekistan subsequently changed the country’s constitution, “factually depriv[ing] Karakalpakstan, … of its nominal autonomy.”
More recently, Uzbekistan has been trumpeting its effort to bolster Karakalpakstan’s economy and alleviate its environmental crisis. A recent announcement from its president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, paints a positive picture, outlining foreign investment and tourism opportunities and touting recent economic gains and infrastructural investments. Some of Uzbekistan’s plans for Karakalpakstan are surprisingly ambitious, including “projects to establish a modular intelligent computing center in the Takhiatash district for the AI sector…” The Times of Central Asia tells us that “the new phase of IT Park [in Karakalpakistan] will accommodate AI-focused startups and modern data centers equipped with high-performance graphic processors capable of handling large-scale data processing,” while reporting that “authorities are targeting global tech firms such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon to establish data operations in Uzbekistan.” But considering the region’s water crisis and political tensions, such plans seem unrealistic. More credible is a recently announced United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project designed to “facilitate the introduction of upland rice in the Republic of Karakalpakstan, which will reduce water consumption by up to 40% compared to traditional rice cultivation.”
Reports on the environmental devastation experienced by (historical) Khwarazm usually focus on Karakalpakstan, ignoring the rest of this region located further to the south and east (Daşoguz in Turkmenistan and Khorazm in Uzbekistan). Most of the settled areas of these two regions are upstream from Karakalpakstan and are thus farther away from the bed of the former Aral Sea, the source of the pesticide- and salt-laden dust storms that plague the region. Presumably, they also have better and more reliable water supplies. As a result, I have assumed that these regions have experienced less environmental degradation and damage to human health than Karakalpakstan.
For a crude and preliminary test of this hypothesis, I carefully examined satellite images from the region, looking mostly for evidence of abandoned agricultural fields. I found many such signs in Karakalpakstan, especially in areas that are relatively close to the former Aral Sea. Contrastingly, I found few indications of field abandonment in either Daşoguz or Khorazm, regions that ad formed the core of historical Khwarazm. (I captured some of these images and have placed them at the end of this post, along with a map showing their locations.)
Such simple evidence, of course, would have to be subjected to rigorous “ground-truthing” to be given credence. It is, however, suggestive. I have included four satellite images of apparently abandoned fields in Karakalpakstan at the end of this post, along with a map that shows their approximate locations. For comparative purposes, I have also included a satellite image of an upstream area in Uzbekistan’s Khorazm region, located near the core of ancient Khwarazm. Here one sees many active farms along with several rural residential areas.
I also looked for reports on environmental and health issues in Daşoguz and Khorazm, but had little luck. As I am eager to move on to other issues, I turned to AI as a final expedient. Grok told me that although “Karakalpakstan is the epicenter” of the Aral agricultural disaster, the same problems blight the entire area. As it reported: “Salt storms in 2018, for example, affected Karakalpakstan, Khorezm, and Dashoguz simultaneously. In short, the degradation is not isolated to Karakalpakstan—it is a regional crisis rooted in the shared hydrology and history of the Khwarazm/Aral Sea basin. The problems are very much present (and actively addressed) in Khorazm and Dasoguz as well.”
I do not doubt this AI assessment. But I still suspect that the crisis is significantly less pronounced in the upstream areas than it is Karakalpakstan. This would make an interesting research project for a younger scholar, although I somehow doubt that it would be welcomed by local and national officials.
Locations of Satellite Images of Abandoned Fields in Karakalpakstan
The previous GeoCurrents post harshly criticized several climate maps for extending the subtropical zones too far toward the poles. But after doing a little casual research, I was chagrined to discover that these maps largely fit the formal, or “geographical,” definition of the term. The Wikipedia article on the subtropics states that “they cover the middle latitudes from 23°26′09.3 to approximately 35° to 40° north and south.” Both ChatGPT and Grok give the same figures. But in the United States, the subtropics are seldom if ever imagined in such terms. The idea that Chattanooga, Tennessee (35°N) is subtropical, let alone Columbus, Ohio (40°N), would strike most Americans as absurd. It is also noteworthy that very few maps that purport to depict the subtropics follow this latitudinal definition – and for good reason.
Problematic Latitudinal Definition of the Subtropics in the United States
The main reason why the common conception of the subtropics does not match the formal definition is because the former is based on climate and climatic zones do not rigidly follow latitudinal belts. As can be seen below, the Wikipedia map of subtropical climates strays far from the lines of latitude that supposedly bound them. Although the Wikipedia article on the subtropics does not specify that the latitude-based definition of the term is quite different from the climatological definition, both ChatGPT and Grok do so. As a result, they give a better sense of what the term actually means.
Wikipedia Map of the Subtropics
But even if we limit ourselves to the climatological subtropics, conceptual problems remain. To begin with, the definition of the term varies significantly from source to source. Such definitions, moreover, are often too vague to be useful. ChatGPT, for example, tells me that “Some meteorological sources define the subtropics as the region where [the] mean annual temperature is above 18°C (64°F) [and] winters are not cold enough for snow to be reliable,” but as this definition also includes the tropics. ChatGPT further claims that subtropical summers are hot, but that is not the case in many west-coast locations. In Walvis Bay, Namibia, which at 22°57’ is just north of the Tropic of Capricorn, not a single month has a mean daily maximum temperature above 68.5° F (20.3° C). Grok’s climatological definition of the subtropics, in contrast, is precise and seemingly scientific: “Regions where the average temperature of the coldest month is between 0–18 °C (32–64 °F) and the average temperature of the warmest month is above 22 °C (72 °F), following modified Köppen climate classification criteria.” But the “0–18 °C (32–64 °F)” coldest-month range is how the Köppen system defines temperate climates, not subtropical ones.
Walvis Bay Climate
The Wikipedia article on the subtropics rests on more solid climatological grounds. It follows the Trewartha climate classification system in defining a subtropical climate as one “that has at least eight months with a mean temperature greater than 10 °C (50.0 °F) and at least one month with a mean temperature under 18 °C (64.4 °F).” The main problem with this definition is that it fails to exclude areas with short but chilly winters that have regular bouts of extreme cold – conditions that few people would regard as “subtropical.” Chattanooga, Tennessee, for example, easily slots into Trewartha’s humid subtropical zone, but its mean monthly minimum temperature in January is a frosty 15.9° F (-9.5° C) and its record low is a frigid -10° F (-23° C).
Chattanooga Climate
Another way to define the subtropics is by the geographical ranges of certain perennial plants, generally those that require a long period of relatively warm weather but can tolerate cool winters with occasional light frost. The Wikipedia article, for example, tells us that “These [subtropical] climates do not routinely see hard freezes or snow due to winter on average being above freezing, which allows plants such as palms and citrus to flourish.” By this criterion, my own home on the Stanford campus near Palo Alto, California (37° N), is definitely subtropical. But I doubt that anyone who grew up in the area would regard it as such. Most local people whom I queried seemed puzzled that I would even ask such a silly question. Several of them replied that Hawaii is the quintessential subtropical location. Actually, Hawaii is fully tropical (the northernmost point on Kauai is at 22°13′ N latitude).
My own personal definition of the subtropics is keyed to a more comprehensive botanical list found in the same Wikipedia article: “plants such as palms, citrus, mango, pistachio, leechee, and avocado are grown in the subtropics.” Avocado trees cannot be successfully cultivated in Palo Alto, as they succumb to periodic frosts (Palo Alto’s mean annual minimum temperature is 28.1° F [-2.2° C]). When driving south, I can only start to imagine that I have entered the subtropics when I have rounded Point Conception and see the avocado orchards of southern California. Santa Barbara’s mean annual minimum temperature is 36.6° F (2.3° C) and frost-sensitive plants abound. But good luck with mangos and leechees.*
I do think that the “subtropics” is an indispensable geographical category. But it is necessary to clearly distinguish the “latitudinal subtropics” from the “climatological subtropics.” I also think that it is essential to consider regularly occurring extremely low temperatures when defining the subtropics on climatic grounds. These topics will be considered in greater length in coming GeoCurrents posts.
* As the map posted below shows, avocado orchards are found north of Point Conception in San Luis Obispo County, but I have never seen them.
**ChatGPT tells me that “You can grow mango trees in Santa Barbara if you have a warm microclimate and are willing to protect the tree during cold spells. They are not guaranteed producers…” It essentially gives the same answer for leechees.
As earlier GeoCurrents posts in the current series on educational geography have noted, sun angles, which are determined by latitude, play a huge role in shaping the geography of climate. Simply put, the lower the latitude of any given location, the more solar radiation it will receive and the warmer it will be. Historically, latitude has been considered the prime determinant of climate. It often still is.
The actual situation, however, is far more complicated. Climate is not just a matter of average temperatures, nor are average temperatures just a matter of latitude. Even equatorial locations can have cool climates if they sit at high elevations; Quito, Ecuador, at 0° latitude and an altitude of 9,350 ft (2,850 m), has a mild annual daily mean temperature of 60.1° F (15.6° C). And even tropical lowland areas can have seemingly non-tropical climates. Consider, for example, the coastal city of Lima, Peru, which, at 12° S, is well within the tropics. Yet in December, a month with high sun angles, Lima’s mean daily maximum temperature is only 74.9° F (24.4° C), and in August it is only 66.6° F (19.2° C). Unlike most tropical locations, moreover, Lima receives very little rainfall and has nothing that even approaches a rainy season. In August, the city’s “wettest” month, average precipitation is a meager 0.06 inches (1.5 mm). But despite its extreme aridity, with only 0.25 inches (6.4 mm) of rain annually, Lima remains humid throughout the year. In its driest months (December-January), the average relative humidity is 81%.
Climate Table of Quito, Ecuador
Climate Table for Lima, Peru
Lima owes its mild temperatures, lack of precipitation, and humid air to the cold Humboldt Current that courses off its coast. Besides latitude, altitude and proximity to ocean currents are thus key influences on the geography of climate. But they are still not the only ones. Other important considerations include location relative to mountain ranges and prevailing winds, and position within continental landmasses (coastal vs. interior and west coast vs. east coast). These factors will be explored in later posts. For now, I will remain focused on the understandable but simplistic notion that latitude alone determines climate.
Equating climate with latitude with goes back to the ancient Greeks, whose geographical knowledge was largely restricted to the greater Mediterranean world. The term “climate” derives from the Greek term klima, which originally meant “inclination” or “slope.” Greek geographers divided the world into distinct bands called “the climes,” which were strictly defined by latitude, which in turn was defined by the seasonally changing inclination of the sun. In their simpler five-clime model*, used by Aristotle and others, a hot “torrid zone” extended from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn. On either side of this tropical (or equatorial) swath lay two temperate belts, which extended to the Arctic and Antarctic circles. Beyond the circles were the frigid, or arctic and Antarctic, zones. Most ancient Greek geographers agreed that only the temperate zone was inhabitable, as the torrid zone was too hot for human habitation and the arctic zone too cold. The existence of the vast torrid zone meant that the ecumene (or oikoumene), the inhabited temperate portion of the world, was isolated from any possible human societies living in the southern temperate belt.
[This] chapter first examines how and why the Greeks and Romans developed the concept of uninhabitable frigid and torrid regions denoting the limits of the oikoumene [ecumene]. In the process it demonstrates why these climatic limits became conceptual margins that hindered exploration for nearly two thousand years. It looks at the reevaluation of authority which still saw the Greeks and Romans as the arbiters of knowledge, but enabled non-canonical classical authors to become important in revising attitudes to the climatic zones which had once been thought to define the edges of the oikoumene. In the new geography, the arctic and equatorial regions were believed to play key roles in allowing the different parts of the world to interact with one another. Without this shift in mind-set about the frigid and torrid zones, it would have been impossible for Europeans to begin to think of the world as a single, exploitable, global unit, created by God for human dominion.
Margaret Small, Framing the World
The actual contours of global climate were gradually revealed during and after the sixteenth century, and the process was nearly completed with the pioneering research of geographer Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1869). Unfortunately, however, the original latitude-focused model never disappeared in pedagogical circles. In preparing this post, I was surprised to find many educational climate maps that are not merely outdated but are filled with misinformation. Several of these maps will be examined in the next post.
* Ptolemy used additional lines of latitude to delineate seven climes, based on periods of daylight on the summer solstice. This scheme gained considerable importance in medieval Europe and in the Islamic realm.
People vary greatly in their ability to orient themselves by the cardinal direction. But even those with a good sense of direction tend to get confused in certain places. In my experience, Stanford University is a particularly bad place for direction perception. I never use cardinal directions when describing locations or giving directions on campus, as doing so tends to generate confusion.
Several factors contribute to these difficulties in direction perception on the Stanford campus. The problem begins with the general northwest/southeast orientation of local landforms, which is often perceived to run instead from north to south (see the previous post). As a result, most* people in Stanford are surprised to learn that the east bay city of Berkeley, home of the main rival school, is located to the west of Palo Alto, which is on the west side of the San Francisco Bay. The eastward swing in this topographic orientation as one moves to the south exacerbates the problem. Consider, for example, the two freeways, U.S. Route 101 and Interstate 280, that run between San Francisco and San Jose, providing access to Stanford and the nearby town of Palo Alto. The general southward directions of these roads veer well to the east in several locations. Between Cupertino and San Jose, Interstate 280 essentially runs east/west. But as is difficult to make mental adjustments as directions shifts, many people perceive these highways as retaining their north/south orientations.
Stanford Is East of Berkeley
This same issue characterizes the Santa Cruz Mountains, located between the southern Bay Area and the Pacific Ocean. Near Stanford, the range is oriented from northwest to southeast. If one could drive directly west from the campus, one would cross the mountains and soon reach the coast. But to the south, both the Santa Cruz Range and the coastline swing to the east. As this change tends to escape perception, the city of Santa Cruz is usually thought to be southwest of Stanford, although it is actually located to the southeast.
Santa Cruz Is East of Stanford
Local road angles contribute to the directional confusion. Most visitors to the campus take Palm Drive, which begins at the storied road called El Camino Real (“the King’s Highway”). Palm Drive is often perceived as perpendicular El Camino, but actually intersects it at a 57° degree angle. Because northwest/southeast oriented El Camino is commonly regarded as running north to south, Palm Drive, perceptually perpendicular to it, is often regarded as running from east to west. But as can be seen on the map posted below, when one enters the Stanford campus on this palm-lined street, one is actually heading slightly to the south of south-southwest. Stanford’s central campus maintains this same orientation. Jane Stanford Way, perpendicular to Palm Drive, thus runs in a mostly east/west directions. Builings on it, such as Encina West Hall, are named accordingly. In my experience, however, many people find this name confusing, as they tend to think of Encina West Hall as being located to the north of Encina Hall proper.
Directional Confusion at Stanford University
West Confused with North at Stanford University
* These arguments are based merely on anecdote and personal experience and would have to be supported by survey data to have solid grounding.
The gray wolf is usually seen as a wilderness species, an animal that needs vast expanses of habitat far from human concentrations, as well as sizable populations of large herbivores to prey upon. Yet many distribution maps, including one featured in the Wikipedia article on the species, shows gray wolves currently inhabiting some densely populated places. In the eastern Mediterranean region, for example, wolves are depicted as living in southern Lebanon, northern Israel, the West Bank, northwestern Jordan, and southwestern Syria (see the paired maps posted below). Other distribution maps show the gray wolf’s range as currently extending across the entire Arabian Peninsula, including the hyper-arid Rub’ al Khali, a large region of shifting sand dunes with little water and scant wildlife (see the second set of maps below).
Wolf Distribution and Human Population in the Eastern Mediterranean Region map
ScreenshotExaggerated Maps of the Range of the Gray Wolf
Such maps do not fit the common perception of wolf habitat and may therefore seem fraudulent. But although these maps exaggerate the range of the gray wolf, they also convey an element of truth that confounds expectations. The solution to this seeming paradox is found in the different habitat requirements of different wolf subspecies. The Arabian gray wolf (Canis lupus arabs) that inhabits some parts of the Arabian Peninsula is the smallest subspecies, weighing on average only 45 pounds (20.4 kg). In contrast, wolves in the American northwest generally weigh between 99 and 159 pounds (36 to 72 kg). Arabian wolves are thus closer in size to coyotes, which typically between 15 and 45 pounds (7 to 20 kg) and have reached 75 pounds (34 kg). Arabian wolves are also similar to coyotes in diet and social structure, typically hunting in pairs rather than in packs. As noted in the Wikipedia article on the animal:
Arabian wolves are mainly carnivorous, but also omnivorous and in some areas largely dependent on human garbage and excess products. Their native prey includes ungulates … as well as smaller animals like hares, rodents, small birds, and reptiles. They also eat cats, sweet fruits, roadkill, and other carrion. Opportunistically, almost any small animal including fish, snails, and baby baboons can be part of their diet.
The reasonably accurate distribution map of the Arabian wolf found in the same article shows that its remaining populations are concentrated in the southern Arabian Peninsula, sandwiched between the more densely populated coastal areas and the more arid interior. Populations are also found in southern Israel, Jordan, and the southern Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. Numbers are relatively small, however, with Saudi Arabia supporting roughly 250-700 wolves, Jordan some 200, and Israel around 100 to 150. The Arabian wolf population of Israel is reportedly stable, while that of Jordan is said to be decreasing due to hunting pressure.
Current Range of the Arabian Wolf Map
Remarkably, Arabian wolves also inhabit, or did until the current war, the densely populated Gaza Strip. A recent article on the wolves of Gaza outlines the situation as of 2023:
According to old Gazans, the Arabian Wolf was present in the Gaza Strip 7-8 decades ago, and after that its numbers decreased to zero. After the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the uprooting of its settlements in late 2005, dozens of Arabian Wolf and other carnivores crept intermittently through gaps in the border to the east of the Gaza Strip. The Arabian Wolf often arrives at night, looking for food, and it returns again in the morning hours to the Gaza Envelope. Many individuals have been captured or killed by Gazans at night using live traps “Maltash“, leghold traps “Fakh“, or even rifles and cartridges. Some healthy specimens have been sold and kept in cages at local zoos. Many plausible factors encouraged the infiltration of Arabian Wolves and other canids into the eastern Gaza Strip, such as the abundance of wildlife prey attracted by solid waste dumps, sewage treatment plants, and agricultural production activities of various crops, in addition to the abundance of animal pens and poultry farms.
The wolves of northern Israel, Lebanon, and Syria are of a different subspecies, the endangered Indian wolf (Canis lupus pallipes). Indian wolves are intermediate in size between the Arabian wolf and the wolves of northern Eurasia and North America. Up to 7,000 Indian wolves inhabit the mountainous areas of eastern Turkey, but populations are smaller and more precarious in the eastern Mediterranean. According to the Wikipedia article on the subspecies, 80-100 Indian wolves live in the Golan Heights, where they are “well protected by the military activities there.” The same article also reports that “Israel’s conservation policies and effective law enforcement maintain a moderately sized wolf population, which radiates into neighbouring countries.”
Range of the Indian Wolf Map
It might seem odd to see military activities described protecting wildlife. Armed conflict is indeed associated with “detrimental effects on wildlife habitat and populations.” But the situation in the Golan Heights is not unprecedented. Korea’s so-called Demilitarized Zone, surrounded by heavy fortifications and littered with landmines, has become nothing less than an “accidental wildlife paradise.”
One of the most surprising aspects of the recovery of the gray wolf in the United States is the return of the species to California. Wolves had been eliminated from the state in the 1920s and were not expected to return any soon time, if at all. But in 2011, a single wolf made the arduous journey from northeastern Oregon to northeastern California, remarkably tracked by wildlife officials (see the map posted below). Other wolves followed, and before long several breeding packs had been established. California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife recently announced that in 2024 “a minimum of 30 pups born across five or six packs and that’s the largest annual litter count we’ve had thus far in the state.” Although most California wolves are found in the state’s northeastern reaches, in 2023 a new pack was confirmed in the southern Sierra Nevada Mountain Range some 200 miles to the south.
Return of Gray Wolves to California map
Gray Wolf Distribution in California 2024 map
The first map in this post also shows potential wolf habitat the United States (excluding Alaska), as well as the approximate range of wolves at roughly the time when California was reinhabited. Although it is not surprising that many areas marked as habitat are still without wolves, it is perplexing that wolves are depicted as living in areas outside their supposed habitat zone. Determining what constitutes “wolf habitat” is a difficult task, but I still do not think that the cartographer has done a good job on this map. The small dots of “habitat” scattered across Nevada, Utah, and Idaho are especially suspicious, as these areas are too small to support viable packs. I suspect that a much larger portion of the U.S. is potential wolf habitat, at least to the extent that people would allow wolves to repopulate it.
Even mapping the historic range of the grey wolf in the United States is a difficult and contentious issue. As can be seen in the figure posted below, different maps show very different distribution patterns. Most uncertain is the historical range of the gray wolves in the eastern United States. Much of the uncertainty here stems from the presence of a closely related but smaller species, the red wolf. But it is not even clear whether this critically endangered animal is a separate species or merely a gray-wolf subspecies. Red wolves have, moreover, hybridized extensively with coyotes in recent decades, adding to the general taxonomic and distributional confusion.
Historic Range of the Gray Wolf in North America maps
Historic Range of the Red Wolf
Another striking aspect of the historic distribution of the gray wolf depicted on these maps is the absence of the animal from central and western California (except the German-language map produced by the World Wildlife Fund). The reported lack of wolves here is curious, as California’s vast Central Valley and surrounding foothills had roughly 500,000 tule elk circa 1800, which could have supported a large wolf population. It seems most likely that the conventional mapping of the historic distribution of the gray wolf in California is simply incorrect. At any rate, the chatbots that I consulted all agreed that grey wolves were historically found across most the state. Grok, for example, informed me that:
GROK: Yes, wolves historically lived in the western areas of California. Gray wolves (Canis lupus) were once widespread across the state, including the western regions, such as the Sierra Nevada, coastal ranges, and Central Valley. Historical records, including accounts from early European settlers and Native American tribes, indicate their presence throughout California before the 20th century. However, due to habitat loss, hunting, and extermination campaigns, wolves were largely eradicated from California by the 1920s.
The best potential wolf habitat in California is probably located in the larger and more remote parts of the state that currently support elk (wapiti, or Cervus canadensis; see the map posted below, which probably exaggerates the current range.) But although elk are now widely distributed in California, their numbers remain small. According to current estimates, California has some 12,700 elk, whereas Idaho has around 120,000 and Montana up to 175,000. Due in part to the paucity of elk and other potential prey species larger than the black-tailed deer, California’s wolves have been extensively preying on domestic livestock. As can be seen in the “depredation report” posted below, such kills are occurring roughly every other day. It is thus hardly surprising that California ranchers are worried about the state’s expanding wolf packs.
Elk (Wapiti; Cervus canadiensis) Range in California map
Wolf Depredation Report California May 2024
The map entitled “U.S. Gray Wolf Distribution and Habitat” that is posted above depicts the central Sierra Nevada as one of the state’s largest areas of wolf habitat. This extensive and heavily forested area does not, however, have any elk. Its thick seasonal snowpack would be a challenge for both elk and wolves, requiring extensive areas of winter habitat in the more densely populated western foothills, presenting another challenge. I doubt that it is coincidental that California’s existing wolf packs are concentrated in the drier and more sparsely populated lands found to the east of the northern Sierra and southern Cascades, which I have illustrated on the final map posted below.
Gray Wolf Range in California and Precipitation map
As discussed in the previous post, the gray wolf has made a remarkable but controversial recovery in Europe. The same is true in the United States. In the mid twentieth century, wolves were found only in Alaska, far northeastern Minnesota, and the western half of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A few may have lived in northern Wisconsin, but the state’s Department of Natural Resources claimed that the species had been locally extirpated by 1960. The western U.S. was essentially without wolves. The map posted below shows the range of the gray wolf terminating precisely along the U.S.-Canada border in western North America in the 1960s. Using a political border to delimit the range of a species is usually a lazy and misleading expedient, but it is probably appropriate here. At the time, wolves living in mountainous areas of southern British Columbia and Alberta occasionally crossed the border, but breading packs had been systematically eliminated from the western United States.
Range of the Gray Wolf in the U.S. Circa 1965
Wolves began to return to the western U.S. in the 1980s. In 1979, a lone female was encountered near Glacier National Park, and two years later she evidently mated with a migrant male. The so-called Magic Pack that they formed quickly expanded, forming the nucleus for wolf repopulation in northwestern Montana. In the 1990s, wolves were intentionally reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park, located mostly in northwestern Wyoming. Enjoying federal protection as an endangered species in all U.S. states but Alaska and Minnesota, wolves continued to expand their range and numbers over the next several decades, mostly through natural population increase and dispersion. Captive breeding programs for the smaller and almost extinct Mexican subspecies allowed its reintroduction into the mountainous area along the Arizona-New Mexico border.
Wolf numbers and ranges in the United States are carefully tracked by wildlife managers, allowing the creation of reasonably accurate distribution maps. Synthesizing spatial information from all the maps I could find and using numerical data from a Wildlife Informer article, I have mapped the distribution of wolves in the U.S. as of 2024 (see below). As can be seen, Alaska and the Lake Superior region in the upper Midwest still support the largest populations. In the western “Lower 48,” Montana and Idaho stand out.
Gray Wolf Distribution and Population in the U.S. 2024
The wolf resurgence is as controversial in the United States as it is in Europe. In 2020, Colorado voters opted to reintroduce the species by a razor-thin margin; since then, 25 wolves have been released in the state. But in the following year, federal protection was removed, letting some states manage their own wolf populations and allow hunting and trapping.
Currently, the governments of Montana and Idaho are seeking to substantially reduce their number of wolves. Over the past few years, some 200 to 300 wolves have been annually hunted or trapped in Montana, with the total state population, around 1,100, remaining roughly stable. Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks is now proposing an increased cull, hoping to reduce the population to around 450. Similarly, Idaho’s Gray Wolf Management Plan calls for a reduction from around 1,200 to roughly 500, with a minimum of 350. Environmental activists opposing the Idaho plan argue that the actual numbers may be significantly less than current estimates. Ranchers point to the more than 200 annual livestock predation deaths in contending that the wolf population is too large, regardless of precise numbers. In response to such concerns, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game recently adopted a new statistically and genetically sophisticated method of population estimation called “Approximate Bayesian Computation,” which came up with a figure of 1,150.
Such wolf-reduction plans appall most environmentalists, who believe that wolves are important for ecosystem integrity. As argued in a recent article from the Center for Biological Diversity:
Most insidiously, some Republicans are trying to roll back the protection wolves do have, which would turn western states into bloodbaths like those in the northern Rockies, where wolves aren’t federally protected. But the current threats to legal protections for wolves are more than just an attack on a beloved wild animal. They have broader, more devastating implications for western lands. Wolves are an essential part of healthy, functioning wild landscapes. Like other keystone species, such as bears, beavers, bison and birds, wolves contribute to ecosystem restorations and help build a wilder landscape.
The argument that wolves help maintain ecosystem health by limiting the grazing and browsing activities of large herbivores, especially along watercourse, is well substantiated. The idea that “birds” are a “keystone species,” on the other hand, is both ecologically and taxonomically illiterate (although the alliteration is nice).
The wolf-reduction plans of Montana and Idaho are characteristic of the more conservative attitudes found in these Republican-voting, or “red,” states. As a left-leaning (if purple-trending) state, Minnesota is taking a different path. “Objective 1B” of its current management plan is to “maintain a population comparable to recent estimates (2,300-3,000, well above the federal recovery goals) and distributed across the majority of current wolf range.” Intriguingly, although wolf numbers in Minnesota have declined slightly since 2004, the species’ range in the state has continued to expand, as demonstrated by the figure posted below.
Gray Wolf Range and Population in Minnesota Map
Although the current wolf policies of Montana and Idaho seem harsh when compared to that of Minnesota, they seem positively pro-wolf when compared to that of Sweden, a country with a strong “green” reputation. As noted in the previous post, Sweden intends to reduce its wolf population from roughly 400 to only 170, whereas Idaho has set a far more robust target population of 500. Sweden, moreover, is almost twice as large an Idaho (173,860 sq mi vs. 83,571 sq mi), and a larger percentage of its land is potential wolf habitat.
As I was preparing to resume posting on GeoCurrents after a short hiatus, I decided to examine recent posts on the fascinating but unfortunately named Reddit site called “MapPorn.” As always, I was struck by many contributions, but what really caught my eye was a five-map sequence on the decline and resurgence of the grey wolf in Italy. I have simplified this map sequence and posted it below.
Maps of the Decline & Resurgence of Wolves in Italy
The story that these three maps tell is familiar but rarely illustrated so clearly. In most developed countries, the ranges of most large mammals retreated drastically in the early 1900s before readvancing a century later. As can be seen, wolves were widely distributed in Italy in 1900 but had been virtually extirpated in 1973; by 2020, however, they occupied a larger area than they had 120 years earlier. Wolves have not, however, returned to Sicily, which would entail crossing the perilous Strait of Messina. The core wolf territory in all three periods was the Apennine Mountains of the central peninsula. Intriguingly, the Alps appear to have been essentially without wolves in 1900 and still have relatively few packs. (I have no way to assess the accuracy of these maps, but I do suspect that ranges are somewhat exaggerated on both the 1900 and 2020 maps; the fact that all coastal regions are depicted as wolf-free in 2020 but not in 1900 strikes me as odd.)
A similar story of wolf decline followed by resurgence can be told for other parts of Europe, as indicated by the map posted below. As can be seen, wolves had been eliminated from much of northwestern Europe by 1800. Most sources claim that England’s last wolf was killed around 1500, and that by the late 1600s the species was extinct in Scotland as well. By the mid 20th century, wolves had been wiped out almost everywhere in Western Europe, with remnant populations found only in northwestern Iberia in central Italy. Yet as this map also shows, viable wolf populations remained at the time in large areas of eastern, central, and southeastern Europe, mostly in what was then the communist zone, including East Germany. This was less a matter of preservation in the east than of less effective eradication efforts.
Map of the Changing Distribution of Gray Wolves in Europe
Wolf populations began to rebound and expand in Western Europe with the growth of environmentalism in the late 20th century. As the next map shows, secure wolf populations are now found in southeastern France, across most of the Nordic countries, and in northern Germany. In southern Europe, wolves are found mostly in mountainous areas (but note the species’ general absence in the Pyrenees). In northern Europe, in contrast, wolves appear to be more widespread in lowland areas. Although wolves were not seen in the Netherlands – the lowest of the Low Countries – until 2015, the country had an estimated 63 individuals in September 2023, with another 28 in neighboring Belgium. I find it remarkable that the Netherlands now supports wild wolf packs, considering its high population density, intensive agriculture, and subdued topography.
Map of Wolf Population in Europe 2017-2023
The return of the wolf has generated intense controversies in Europe, as it has in the United States (as we shall see in a later post). Farmers are furious at the depredation of their livestock herds, and some rural people worry that wolves may become a danger to humans if they grow too numerous. In 2023, the government of Sweden decided to address such concerns by reducing the number of wolves in the country from more than 400 to a target population of some 170. Not surprisingly, this move has encountered widespread opposition from environmental groups, which argue that the reduction of the wolf population threatens ecosystem integrity. Animal-rights activists also oppose wolf hunting, favoring non-lethal methods of protecting livestock. Such controversies are increasingly encountered across much of Europe. In early 2025, the Berne Convention, which guides Wildlife Conservation in Europe, downgraded the status of wolves from “strictly protected” to “protected.”
Somalia (including Somaliland) is widely known as an arid and drought-plagued land. Climate maps depict most of the country as having a hot and dry desert climate (“BWh” in the Köppen classification system). Much of southern Somalia, as well as a portion of the far northwest (southwestern Somaliland), in contrast, receives enough precipitation to be classified as having a hot and semi-arid steppe climate (“BSh” in the Köppen classification system). Only a small area in the far southeast is mapped as having a tropical wet-and-dry savannah climate (“Aw” in the Köppen classification system).
Climate Map of Somalia
Precipitation maps of Somalia are difficult to find. Those showing annual rainfall across Africa generally depict northern Somalia (Puntland and eastern Somaliland) as receiving less than 200 millimeters (7.8 inches) of annual precipitation. A rainfall map of Somalia’s political divisions shows similar but more finely differentiated totals. In this map, the Erigavo region (Ceerigaabo in Somali), currently contested between Somaliland and SSC-Khaatuno (see the two previous GeoCurrents posts), is depicted as receiving 191 millimeters (7.5 inches) per year.
Precipitation Map of Somalia
Such mapping is imprecise, as it fails to show the much higher levels of precipitation found in areas of high elevation. By the same token, climate maps of the same region do not show the much lower temperatures found in the same elevated areas. As the topography and elevation map posted below shows, sizable areas of far northern Somalia are mountainous. Importantly, these relatively wet highlands provide water for a much wider area.
Somalia topography Cal Madow Mountains map
Consider, for example, the contested city of Erivago, situated just to the south of the Cal Madow range, situated at an elevation of 2,000 meters (6,560 feet). As the Wikipedia climate table posted below shows, Erivago has a mild and moderately semi-arid climate, receiving on average 435 millimeters (17.1 inches) of annual rainfall, more than twice the amount shown on the precipitation map for the larger Erivago region. The city has an odd seasonal precipitation pattern, with one rainfall peak in May and June and another in September. As the table indicates, hot weather is rare in Erivago, and humidity levels are generally moderate. Such conditions generate productive pasturelands, although drought vulnerability in pronounced.
Wikipedia Climate Table Erivago, Somalia
North of Erivago, the Cal Madow mountains receive significantly higher levels of precipitation. According to the Wikipedia article on the range, annual totals run as high as 750–850 mm (30–33 in). With frequent fog in the dry season (November-February), as well as relatively low temperatures, the Cal Madow range supports woodlands and even forests in the more favorable locales. These wooded areas are part of the Somali Montane Xeric Woodland ecosystem, which is found in highlands areas scattered across northern Somalia. The flora of these woodlands has affinities with those of both the Mediterranean region and southern Arabia. Particularly valuable are two plants in the latter category, frankincense (Boswellia sacra) and myrrh (Commiphora myrrha). As noted in a NASA Earth Observatory article on the forests of Cal Madow, “The city of Ceerigaabo [Erivago] serves as a key hub for gathering, sorting, and storing frankincense and myrrh in Somalia, which is one of the world’s leading exporters of the prized resins.”
Woodlands in Northern Somalia
Some of Somalia’s Montane Xeric Woodlands have been degraded by over-cutting and heavy browsing by domestic stock. But as the World Wildlife Organization notes, rugged topography offers some protection:
[Many of Somalia’s Montane Xeric Woodland] habitats are fairly intact due to the low human population and the inaccessibility of the escarpment and plateau areas, but populations of larger mammals have been greatly reduced by hunting. However, the difficult topography and long-running political problems mean that much of the region is unexplored biologically (WWF and IUCN 1994).
Erigavo and Cal Madow Somalia Satellite Image
As these “unexplored biologically” areas are essentially inaccessible to outsiders due to their politically chaotic conditions as well as their challenging topography, information about them is sparse. Such a condition is not unusual. Although we are often told that globalization and technological developments have made the entire Earth both knowable and known, the truth is far different. Although one can use Google Earth to peer in at almost any place, many mysteries abound. An intriguing YouTube genre documents such areas; see, for example, “The Most Impossible to Reach Places on Google Earth” and “Even MORE Impossible to Reach Places on Google Earth.”
