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Discover habitats, biomes, plants and wildlife in geographic context.
Ecosystems & wildlife · Explainers
Rainforest does not always mean the Amazon. Along the eastern Black Sea, Georgia has rain-soaked forests with broad-leaved trees, evergreen shrubs and a long ecological history. Nearby peatlands…
Countries & regions · Map guides
An Amazon map can show a river, a watershed, a rainforest region, or an administrative territory. Those outlines overlap, but they are not interchangeable. Reading them separately makes…
Ecosystems & wildlife · Comparisons
A biome is a broad ecological grouping associated with characteristic life and environmental conditions. An ecosystem includes organisms, their nonliving surroundings and the interactions among them. A habitat…
Climate · Explainers
Imagine palm-like forests and crocodile relatives living far closer to the poles than today—and seas warm enough to reshape currents worldwide. That’s the Eocene: a long stretch of…
Ecosystems & wildlife · Lists & data
On most world maps, Lake Baikal looks narrow and remote. In reality, it is a giant rift lake in southern Siberia whose depth, age, clarity, and endemic wildlife…
Climate · Explainers
If you draw a band across Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia, you trace one of Earth’s most important habitats: the taiga. This subarctic forest stores enormous amounts of…
Canada · Climate · Comparisons
Imagine looking out of an airplane window as you fly over northern Canada or Siberia. For hundreds of miles (hundreds of kilometers), you see dark green forests, and…
Ecosystems & wildlife · Explainers
Bees don’t all live the same length of time. A worker honey bee hatched in July might last only a few weeks, while a “winter bee” lives for…
Georgia · Ecosystems & wildlife · Explainers
The scent of fermenting chakvad (grape must) rising from buried qvevri is part of Georgia’s wine identity, but the country’s deeper distinction is its extraordinary vine diversity. Saperavi…
Ecosystems & wildlife · Lists & data
If you’ve ever pictured a “big ant” as something the size of a grain of rice, the world’s giants will reset your scale fast. But here’s the reason…
Tbilisi · Ecosystems & wildlife · Place guides
Khudadov Forest is a planted urban woodland on Tbilisi’s left-bank slopes, with a history that reaches from nineteenth-century greening to revolutionary memorials and present-day restoration. Named for physician…
Ecosystems & wildlife · Explainers
The hyacinth macaw is the longest among living parrot species, while the kākāpō is the heaviest. Both are remarkable birds, but they hold different size records. Comparing their…