Maps Show How Water Can Be a Precious Lifeline—or a Deadly Weapon

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Maps Show How Water Can Be a Precious Lifeline—or a Deadly Weapon

A new atlas by "guerrilla cartographers" explores the importance of water in everything from ancient mythology to modern warfare. 

In the recent conflicts in Iraq and Syria, water has often been used as a weapon. When ISIS seized the Fallujah Barrage, a dam on the Euphrates River, in 2014, they raised the floodgates to deprive downstream cities of water.

Later, they released water from the dam in an attempt to flood approaching Iraqi forces, which eventually recaptured the dam in 2016. 

g cart.jpegWater touches every aspect of human life, sometimes in unexpected ways, says Darin Jensen, a cartographer at the University of California and founder of a nonprofit group called Guerrilla Cartography.

The group’s latest project,  Water: An Atlas , takes an unconventional look at the importance of water through more than 80 maps, including one showing the sites where water has played a role in the conflict with ISIS. 

The maps in the atlas come from artists, activists, academics, and other mapmakers. Like the group’s first atlas, which focused on food issues, it was a crowdsourced effort. Organizers picked the theme and solicited contributions.

“It’s a very bottom-up process where we don’t look to publishers or academics to tell us what people want to read on a map,” Jensen says. “We announce a theme and let people who are passionate about it tell us what should be in the atlas."

Many of the maps focus on climate and environmental issues. One depicts the impact of alternating cycles of drought and flooding in North Korea in recent years; several others show the effects of rising sea levels on places and populations around the world. 

Read full article and see the maps: National Geographic

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