While city lights at night serve as a good proxy for population density, North Korea provides a dark exception.
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Global news with a spatial perspective: Interesting, current supplemental materials for geography students and teachers. http://geographyeducation.org
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Seth Dixon
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Seth Dixon's insight:
This image is appears to be a regional inset of the classic Earth at Night composite image however this nighttime remote sensing image was taken from Sept. 2012. The Earth at Night image is typically used in classrooms to discuss what this actually means for human geography (Population density? Development? Consumption? Where? How come?). However, this particular portion of the global image focused on the Korean Peninsula highlights two other specific issues:
- the impact of a totalitarian state can actually be seen from space as South Korea has a per captia income level 17 times higher than that of North Korea.
- the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) can be seen in the Yellow Sea as fishing vessels form a line approximately 200 nautical miles off the coast of South Korea.
Tags: economic, political, resources, water, sovereignty, coastal, territoriality, states, unit 4 political, remote sensing.
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I can´t stop smiling from a photo I stumbled upon on the facebook page of Nomaden (a Norwegian travel store) – I just love it! I tried to find the source of the photo, but no luck. I found it sprea...
Seth Dixon's insight:
I think this is my new litmus test for potential friends. If this picture from Mongolia doesn't bring a smile to your face, I just don't think that we can be friends. If anyone can find the original source (or a hi-res version), I'd love to hear about it. 
chris tobin's comment,
February 21, 1:33 PM
Great happy photo. This is a possible National Geographgic photo
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With desertification, drought and a booming mining industry, Mongolians are leaving the traditional life of herding. Herdsman Bat-Erdene Badam says he will be the last in his family to tend livestock.
How is globalization changing the traditional pastoral society of Mongolia? As China's industrial production was ballooned, their need for mineral resources has need towards more mining jobs in Mongolia. For more information and pictures on this topic, see: http://www.npr.org/series/152995168/mongolia-booms Delete the scoop?
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Through his Vanishing Cultures Project photographer Taylor Weidman documents threatened ways of life. About his work in Mongolia, he states: "Mongolian pastoral herders make up one of the world's largest remaining nomadic cultures. For millennia they have lived on the steppes, grazing their livestock on the lush grasslands. But today, their traditional way of life is at risk on multiple fronts. Alongside a rapidly changing economic landscape, climate change and desertification are also threatening nomadic life, killing both herds and grazing land."
Seth Dixon's insight:
In times of ecological hardships and global economic restructuring, many children of nomadic herders are seeking employment out of the rural areas and in the urban environment. The cultural change that this represents is for Mongolia enormous and is captured wonderfully in this photo gallery. Pictured above are the ger (yurt) camps that ring the capital city Ulaanbaatar. Ulaanbaatar houses a permanent population of displaced nomads. During the winter, Ulaanbaatar is the second most air-polluted capital in the world due largely to coal burning. Tags: Mongolia, images, indigenous, culture, globalization. 
Adrian Bahan (MNPS)'s curator insight,
March 12, 6:44 PM
What factors are threatening pastoral herders way of life? Why? Delete the scoop?
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This cliché image of "North Korea in the dark" reinforces preconceived ideas about the "totalitarian" state and how terrible life must be without electricity. Well, one aspect of this political geography is the effect of US-backed sanctions against North Korea and the severe ecological and energy crisis under which it has struggled for the last two decades. Just as electricity is not simply a "natural" resource, neither is energe consumption nor shortage.
This image is appears to be a regional inset of the classic Earth at Night composite image however this nighttime remote sensing image was taken from Sept. 2012. The Earth at Night image is typically used in classrooms to discuss what this actually means for human geography (Population density? Development? Consumption? Where? How come?). However, this particular portion of the global image focused on the Korean Peninsula highlights two other specific issues:
the impact of a totalitarian state can actually be seen from space as South Korea has a per captia income level 17 times higher than that of North Korea. the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) can be seen in the Yellow Sea as fishing vessels form a line approximately 200 nautical miles off the coast of South Korea.Tags: economic, political, resources, water, sovereignty, coastal, territoriality, states, unit 4 political, remote sensing.