As noted in the two previous GeoCurrents posts, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are a single body of water, forming the world’s largest freshwater lake (by surface area) by a considerable margin. The Wikipedia article on this greatest of the Great Lakes explains the situation: Lake Michigan–Huron (also Huron–Michigan) is the body of water combining Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, which are joined through the 5-mile-wide (8.0 km), 295-foot-deep (90 m), open-water Straits of Mackinac. Huron and Michigan are hydrologically a single lake because th ..read more

Wikipedia’s article on the world’s largest lakes by surface area features a fantastic map of the fifteen largest, using the dymaxion projection devised by the inimitable Buckminster Fuller. As can be seen, more than half fit into the category of the “Greater Great Lakes of North America” as defined in the previous GeoCurrents article. It is interesting that all these lakes except Ladoga are arrayed along a single sinuous curve that extends from Lake Malawi in southern Africa to Lake Ontario in eastern North America. But intriguing though it is, this arrangement is essentially just a feature of ..read more

It is difficult to deny the greatness of the Great Lakes, which together form the largest aggregation of large lakes on the planet.  Although almost all sources include five lakes in this collection – Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario – controversies persist. By geological criteria, Michigan and Huron form a single lake, reducing the number of Great Lakes to four. Yet some observers insist that there are actually six Great Lakes, adding Lake Champlain to the list. In 1998, the United States Congress went so far as to pass a bill giving Lake Champlain official Great Lakes status ..read more

Tobacco use is plummeting over most of the world. This decline is easily seen on a map showing the change in the percentage of the adult population that uses tobacco from 2000 to 2020. If the World Health Organization data used to make this map are accurate, only five reporting countries saw an increase in tobacco users during this period: Croatia, Jordan, Oman, Republic of Congo, and Indonesia. Several countries, most notably China and France, reported small drops. But most saw major declines; in Bolivia, the percentage of adult tobacco users went from 37.1 to 12.7. Screenshot The regional pa ..read more

Although both tea and coffee are consumed over most of the world, there is little overlap in the lists of the top tea and coffee consuming countries. This pattern is easily seen on the map posted below, which shows the world’s 16 top tea and coffee consuming countries on a per capita basis. Only the Netherlands makes both lists. Screenshot The top tea consuming countries are more geographically dispersed than the top coffee consuming countries. High levels of coffee consumption are found primarily in Europe, particularly in the Nordic countries. Outside of Europe, only Brazil and Canada make t ..read more

Almost all data sources rank Turkey (Türkiye) as the world’s top tea-drinking country, and by a considerable margin. According to Wikipedia’s article on the subject, annual per capita tea consumption in Turley is 3.16 kg (6.96 lb), far overshadowing second-place Ireland’s 2.19 kg (4.83 lb). Yet according to a World Population Review article that lists 2024 tea consumption by country, the people of southern South America drink much more tea than those Turkey. Here the per capita tea consumption of Argentina is mapped as seven times greater than that of Turkey. What gives? Sc ..read more

Maps of alcohol consumption in the United States reveal several regions with very low drinking rates. The most prominent is the LDS (Mormon) cultural region focused on Utah and eastern Idaho. The so-called Bible Belt of the southeastern and south-central states is also clearly visible, although most of its coastal counties are excluded. More surprising are several heavily Native American counties in the northern Great Plains and Southwest. Many tribal governments restrict alcohol sales, but actual consumption rates may be higher than the map indicates. Comparing the maps posted here, several i ..read more

I am currently teaching a class for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program on the history and geography of natural psychoactive substances. Over the next nine weeks, I will be posting GeoCurrents articles derived from these lectures. I have mapped the global distribution of each substance under consideration at the beginning of the early modern era (circa 1500). Creating these maps was tricky, and I cannot vouch for their accuracy. In many cases, the only information I was able to find was through ChatGPT. The responses that I received from the chatbot the were often too vague to be ..read more

Dear Readers, After much consideration, I have decided to disable the comments section (Disqus) on GeoCurrents. Relatively few constructive and engaging comments are received, minimizing the utility of the function. I also find the occasional insults from offended readers quite dispiriting, especially when they focus on something that I have merely quoted rather than advocated. Readers who want to engage in serious discussion about GeoCurrents posts are welcome to email me at mwlewis@stanford.edu. Just before disabling Disqus, however, I received a constructive comment from Pete Morris, which ..read more

Dear Readers, I have posted two essays on environmental philosophy and politics under the “Featured Essays” drop-down menu located above and to the right of this post. They were initially designed to be the introduction and first chapter of a book that would be called Middle Path Environmentalism: Taking Climate Change and Other Environmental Problems Seriously without Crushing the Working Class and Undermining Rural Life. But after circulating these essays among a group of friends and colleagues and receiving almost no encouragement [1], I decided to put the project on indefinite hold. Writte ..read more