Lab week 1

Map1:
                            

 

Travel time to major cities (in hours and days) and shipping lane density  

http://bioval.jrc.ec.europa.eu/products/gam/index.htm

  This map was made for the World Bank's World Development Report 2009 Reshaping Economic Geography and it is about the travel time to major cities in the world. The blue lines between each continent represent the main flight line. 

  The map, colored the popular cities with bright yellow, makes those cities looks like they are on fire. We can see that there's only a little wildness left, people can go to almost everywhere on the earth within one day. It is interesting that we can tell some significant nature landmarks on the map by colors such as the Himalayas in the middle of Asia and the Sahara in North Africa. Because of those landmarks, the time to get to two very close places can have a difference of two or three days.

Map2:

http://jys.hfjy.net.cn/showtopic.jsp?id=1789

  This is a map for that distribution of Chinese population. The red parts represent the high density of population and the white parts mean the low density of population. 

  On this map, the darker the color is, the higher the density of population is. Therefore, we can tell that most Chinese people are living on the east coast and beside two rivers. The place with highest density is usually one the big cities. It is interesting that the red line on the map divided China into two part. The bigger south part has 57% area of China but only has 6% of the population, yet the east part just has 43% area of China but has 94% of the population.

Map3:

http://nalakagunawardene.com/tag/el-nino/

These two maps show what usually happens during El Niño and La Niña. The red part in the first map represents warm water and the dark blue part in the second map represents cold water.

  With the help of those two maps, even the person who doesn't know what is El Niño and La Niña can clearly understand the cause and effect of those to complicated phenomenon. From the first map, we know that El Niño is the warm current on the middle of Pacific Ocean. It can bring drought to Australia and India and heavy rain to east Africa. From the second map, we learn that La Niña is the cold current appears in the middle of Pacific Ocean. It can bring heavy rain to Australia and India and drought to east Africa. It is interesting that those two phenomenons are just totally opposite and La Niña usually happens right after El Niño ends.