Trey Huneycutt Fall '25 World Geography Blog

Lab 10, Oceania Our final module for the semester was on Oceania, which includes Australia, the realms of the Pacific Islands, Polar regions of the Arctic and Antarctic.  This is the only world region not connected by land to another region. The region of Oceania is connected more by its isolation than by a shared physiography or human experience.  The region is dominated by Australia, not only by its size but also its economics and population.  Australia and New Zealand are culturally similar; however, their physical landscapes are quite different.  Australia's outback consists of extensive grassland that supports one of the world's largest sheep and cattle industries.  It is also home to the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef, that stretches over 1400 miles.  Australia is geographically stable, while New Zealand is on the boundary of the Australia and Pacific plates and is prone to both earthquakes and volcanoes.  The Pacific islands ...

Lab 9 East and SE Asia  EEZ and Piracy This week we discussed East and Southeast Asia.  This area contains the world's most populous country and the most populous metropolitan area.  This region has experienced internal disparities and has an ever-changing landscape.  These two regions share a common economic and political history.  Asia's largest river, the Yangtze, flows through central China and economic activity that surround the river accounts for one fifth of the country's GDP.  In 2003, the Chinese government built the Three Gorges Dam, and it is the world's largest hydroelectric power station.  This dam greatly changed the local landscape, displaced millions of people, and submerged an ancient city.  Humans settled the area at least 80,000 years ago, and around 10,000 years ago several cultural groups emerged during the New Stone Age.  Around 6500 BCE, humans along the Yangtze first domesticated rice.  Indonesia, Malaysia, and th...

Lab_8 India Dot Density Flooding   This week's discussion was on the geography of South Asia, the area made up of the countries of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh.  Most of the physical geography is the result of tectonic activity with the Inda Plate still pushing against the Eurasia Plate.  This collision resulted in the formation of the Himalaya Mountain Range and the two largest mountains in the world, Mount Everest and K2.  Even though K2 is the smaller of the two, it has fewer people successfully make it to the summit and has a death rate of 25%.  The lowland region is formed by the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra rivers where they provide the necessary water for agricultural irrigation and an abundance of fish.  These rivers have had significant environmental concerns, and the Ganges is ranked as the most polluted river in the world. The most important climatic feature of the region is the monsoon, which our lab covers the destruction of...

     Lab 7 North Africa-SW Asia This week we focused on North Africa and Southwest Asia.  These two regions are combined into the same module since both have more in common in the sense of geography and religion than North Africa has with much of the rest of the continent.  This area was where the first ancient civilizations were built including the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Babylonians.  It is also the birthplace of three of the world's largest religions including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  We discussed the harsh and arid landscape and the need for these civilizations to build around water sources.  The Persians were able to develop quants, or underground tunnels used to extract groundwater from below mountains and transport it downhill where it could be used as irrigation.  We learned that much of the world's oil supply comes from this region with Saudi Arabia being the largest exporter in the world.  We discussed how 2000-...

  Lab 6 Sub-Saharan Africa This week we learned about Sub-Saharan Africa. Africa is the second largest continent after Asia and the only continent crossed by both the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The Sahara stretches across most of Northen Africa and creates a barrier between the Muslim and Arab North Africa and the traditional African cultures to the South.  Africa was the center of the supercontinent Pangea. Still today, the movement of tectonic plates is changing the geography of Africa.  The Great Rift Valley is slowly splitting away at a rate of about 1/4 inch per year.  We discussed the Nile River and its basin. How it is regarded as the longest river in the world and has been key to transportation in the area.  Its floodplain allows for farming in a very arid area. Sub-Saharan Africa also includes the Congo and its basin.  The Congo is Africa's largest river by discharge and the deepest river in the world.  This area is a biodiversity h...

  Lab_ 5 Middle and South America This week in Geography1000 we discussed Middle and South America.  This area normally consists of the Isthmus of Panama, the Caribbean, and South America.  In this case, because Mexico shares so much culturally with this are it is included in Middle America.  Tectonic collisions have helped shape the landscape of Middle America with impressive mountain ranges including the Siera Madre Occidental, Oriental, and del Sur.  These plates also create earthquakes and volcanos in the Caribbean.  South America's Andes Mountains stretch from Venezuela to Chile and along with other ranges include altitudinal zones which allows for cultivation on numerous types of crops and livestock.  The rest of South America is fairly flat and includes the continent's longest river, the Amazon.  This river is the largest in the world in terms of discharge, equating to about 210,000 cubic meters of water every second.  Middle and ...