Bab el Mandeb

CONNECTING THE RED SEA with the Gulf of Aden and the ARABIAN SEA, bounded by DJIBOUTI, ERITREA, and YEMEN, the Bab el Mandeb is a STRAIT and CHOKE POINT. It separates the Arabian Peninsula from East Africa (HORN OF AFRICA). As its Arabic name implies (“Gate of Tears”), it is a place of worry for any ship’s captain navigating the narrow passage. It has historically been coveted by anyone wishing to control the flow of trade between the MEDITERRANEAN SEA and the INDIAN OCEAN. Egyptian barges, Arab dhows, and Portuguese caravels have all plied this narrowing passage. Each controlling nation has fought others that attempted to wrest it from them.

Britain vied for dominance of the area with both the OTTOMAN EMPIRE and FRANCE. The British seized Aden in 1839 and the Ottomans returned to the northern portions of Yemen in 1849. France focused on the African coast and established the colony of French Somaliland in 1888. With the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869, the increase of shipping made the Bab el Mandeb all the more important. The French remained in Djibouti, while the British departed Yemen and the port of Aden in 1967. Yemen remains an unstable area. In the decade of the 1990s, a full-scale civil war exploded, and internal factions and international terrorist groups launched attacks against government and commercial targets. The attack on a Frenchflagged oil tanker by a small boat filled with explosives in October 2002 in the Bab el Mandeb points to continuing concerns.

The Bab el Mandeb is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, handling the vast majority of all oceangoing trade between Europe and Asia. An estimated 3.2 million barrels of oil passed through this strait every day in 2000. The Bab el Mandeb is about 17 mi (27 km) wide at its narrowest point between the Arabian and African coasts. The island of Perim sits astride the strait, creating two channels. The eastern channel is known as the Bab Iskender (Gate or Strait of Alexander), which speaks to the ancient lineage of navigation in these waters. This channel is some 2 mi (3 km) wide and about 98 ft (30 m) deep. The western channel has a width of about 16 mi (25 km) and a depth of 1,017 ft (310 m). There are a group of small islands lying just off the African coast.

Azores

THE AZORES IS AN archipelago of nine islands situated in the middle of the North ATLANTIC OCEAN, usually divided in three groups according to geographic proximity: the Eastern Group (Santa Maria and São Miguel), the Central Group (Terceira, Graciosa, São Jorge, Pico, and Faial), and the Western Group (Flores and Corvo). The Azores constitutes, along with Madeira, the only two autonomous regions of PORTUGAL, each with its own parliament and government.

These lush green islands (897 square mi or 2,322 square km, with a population of 241,763) are the peaks of an oceanic mountain chain, and their volcanic origin is associated with the clash of the American, European, and African tectonic plates. The area is subject to frequent EARTHQUAKES and has current manifestations of volcanic activity with geysers and sulfur springs. The latest eruption occurred in 1957–58 on the island of Faial. On several of these islands, volcanic cones have collapsed originating rings of landforms called caldeiras.

PORTUGUESE SETTLEMENT

It is assumed Diego de Silves was the first to explore these uninhabited islands in 1427. Their combination of fertile soil, abundant water, and mild climate contributed to a successful settlement by the Portuguese in 1443. Most of the land is hilly and covered by cropland, pastures, and forests of introduced cryptomeria conifers and acacia trees and native cedars and dogwood. Because of the proximity of the GULF STREAM, the climate is humid and temperate, with an abundance of rain throughout the year. However, weather can vary widely during the course of a single day.

Until recently, the regional economy depended on an export-oriented agriculture, subjecting the islands to alternating cycles of prosperity and decline according to external demand for their products. Main commodities have included oranges and sugarcane, with corn replacing wheat as the main cash crop at the end of the 19th century. Cattle grazing became the main agricultural activity around the 1960s, as the humid climate favors development of rich pastures. Current regional products include milk, cheese, corn, with tobacco and pineapples on the island of São Miguel and wine on Pico.

The average area of farms is very small (4 acres or 2 hectares), with fields divided by hedges of hydrangeas or azaleas, forming a typical patchwork, which has become a hallmark of the islands. Most of the population concentrates on small coastal towns. The seat of the government ministries and largest city is Ponta Delgada (population 44,000), on the island of São Miguel.

The Azores’s islands have benefited from strategic importance since the 16th century, through the age of discoveries to modern times. Because of its central position between North America and Europe, the archipelago has played important role as a resupply outpost during the development of both navigation and aviation. Nevertheless, the isolation led to intense emigration to the UNITED STATES and CANADA and a consequent population decline between the 1960s and 1990s. That tendency has recently reversed thanks to rising living standards and development, made possible in part by support programs from the EUROPEAN UNION.

Azerbaijan

AZERBAIJAN, A FORMER Soviet republic, now officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a nation with a Turkic and majority Muslim population. It regained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It is located in the region of the SOUTHERN CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS, and borders the CASPIAN SEA to the east, GEORGIA and RUSSIA to the north, IRAN to the south, and ARMENIA to the southwest and west. A landlocked nation, Azerbaijan has three dominant physical features: the Caspian Sea, whose shoreline forms a natural boundary to the east; the Greater Caucasus Mountain range to the north; and the extensive flatlands at the country’s center. Of the three Transcaucasian states (Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan), Azerbaijan has the greatest land area. A small part of Nakhichevan also borders TURKEY to the northwest.

The capital is the ancient city of Baku, which has the largest and best harbor on the Caspian Sea and has long been the center of the republic’s oil industry. The country’s elevation changes over a relatively short distance from lowlands to highlands; nearly half the country is considered mountainous. Notable physical features are the gently undulating hills of the subtropical southeastern coast, which are covered with tea plantations, orange groves, and lemon groves; numerous mud volcanoes and mineral springs in the ravines of Kobustan Mountain near Baku; and coastal terrain that lies as much as 92 ft (28 m) below sea level. Except for its eastern Caspian shoreline and some areas bordering Georgia and Iran, Azerbaijan is ringed by mountains. To the northeast, bordering Russia’s Dagestan Autonomous Republic, is the Greater Caucasus range; to the west, bordering Armenia, is the Lesser Caucasus range.

To the extreme southeast, the Talysh Mountains form part of the border with Iran. The highest elevations occur in the Greater Caucasus, where Mount Bazar-dyuzi rises 15,551 ft (4,740 m) above sea level. Eight large rivers flow down from the Caucasus ranges into the central Kura-Aras lowlands, alluvial flatlands, and low DELTA areas along the seacoast, designated by the Azerbaijani name for the Mtkvari River and its main tributary, the Aras. The Mtkvari, the longest river in the Caucasus region, forms the delta and drains into the Caspian a short distance downstream from the confluence with the Aras.

Partly because of the great range of altitude in the country, there is a variety of climate, vegetation, and soil conditions. Climate varies from subtropical and dry in central and eastern Azerbaijan to subtropical and humid in the southeast, temperate along the shores of the Caspian Sea, and cold at the higher mountain elevations. Because most of Azerbaijan receives scant rainfall—on average 5.9 to 10 in (15.2 to 25.4 cm) annually—agricultural areas require irrigation.

Azerbaijan shares all the formidable problems of the former Soviet republics in making the transition from a command to a market economy, but its considerable energy resources brighten its long-term

prospects. A continuing conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region may be an obstacle to economic growth.

Austria

LANDLOCKED AUSTRIA (Österreich in German) is located at the cultural and geographical crossroads of Central Europe. It is also situated in between the three major cultural spheres of Europe. To the south is ITALY, to the north GERMANY, and to the east several Slavic countries. This relatively small country (about the same size as MAINE) borders no less than eight other countries. Austria itself is overwhelmingly Germanspeaking and Roman Catholic (although, as is most of Europe, relatively secular in orientation).

Today’s Austria was created as what can be described as a historical accident. Before countries, or nation-states, existed in the modern sense, local rulers controlled small territories that sometimes grew to large empires. Seated in Austria, the Habsburg dynasty became one of the most powerful in Europe as early as the medieval era and governed a territory that included parts of today’s FRANCE, Italy and Germany. Over time,the Habsburg empire lost control over some of these western territories and instead expanded eastward, and after 1867 it became the Austro-Hungarian Empire, two separate states under one common ruler. The name Austria then simply referred to the predominantly German- speaking territories, which previously were not considered a coherent territorial unit. The eventual demise of Austria-Hungary was triggered by its involvement in the Balkans. Several European powers struggled for influence in southeastern Europe, which subsequently led to World War I. Austria-Hungary was on the losing side in the war, and along with a rewriting of the political map of large portions of Europe, modern Austria, now a republic, was born in 1918.

What emerged as the state of Austria was several small regions that had some basic cultural attributes in common—language and religion—but nevertheless lacked a distinct national identity. Part of this has to do with Austria’s fragmented geography. The most dominant landform is the ALPS—the mountains that cover the entire western portion of the country and stretch deep into central Austria. Like many populations that inhabit mountainous areas, the Alpine dwellers have historically been localist in their orientation rather than identifying with a larger nation. The remaining parts of Austria are lowland and river valleys, more populous, and dominated by the capital of Vienna. As Austria has been a state for almost a century, national media, a national educational system, and other nationwide institutions have created a greater sense of common identity over time.

Vienna is a classic example of a primate city—a city that dominates in a country in terms of size and political, economic, and cultural importance. Vienna has approximately 1.5 million inhabitants, while the second- and third-largest cities, Graz and Linz, have populations of only approximately 200,000 each. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Vienna was one of the most important cities in Europe, even a world city. As the capital of a large multi-ethnic empire, the city became a diverse political and economic power thriving on immigration from both German and non-German regions. This diversity also made Vienna an intellectual and creative center in many divergent endeavors, such as philosophy, arts, and economics.

Australia

THE COMMONWEALTH of Australia is the world’s sixth-largest country and is located on the world’s smallest continent between the INDIAN OCEAN and the South PACIFIC OCEAN. The countries surrounding Australia are NEW ZEALAND to the southeast, PAPUA NEW GUINEA to the northeast, and INDONESIA and EAST TIMOR to the north. Australia is a democratic federation under the Commonwealth of Nations, which recognizes the British monarch as the head of state, who is represented through the governor-general. Australia is divided into six states and two territories, including the island of Tasmania. The legislature is a bicameral federal parliament that provides popular and state representation. The prime minister serves as the head of government.

Australia is roughly the size of the continental UNITED STATES. Due to millions of years of erosion, its coastline is generally even, with few indentations. Constant wind and water erosion give Australia the distinction of being the flattest continent. Australia’s interior consists of the Great Western Plateau, the Central Lowlands, and the Eastern Highlands. Much of the Great Western Plateau is desert, particularly, the Great Sandy Desert, Gibson Desert, and Great Victoria Desert, where much of Australia’s mineral wealth is located. The Central Lowlands contains the Great Artesian Basin, which holds 670,000 square mi (1,735,300 square km) of underground water. The Great Artesian Basin serves as pasture land for Australia’s traditional sheep ranching industry. The major cities of Australia are located in the Eastern Highlands, along the eastern and southeastern coast, which consists of plateaus, hills, and low mountains.

Australia’s climate, while it varies greatly, does not suffer extreme temperatures because it lacks physical barriers. Beyond its northern coast is the GREAT BARRIER REEF, one of the great natural wonders of the world, which is in danger from pollution. The climate is generally arid to semiarid. In the north, the climate is tropical, while temperate in the south and east. The tropical region has a hot and rainy season from February to March and a warm dry season. The deserts in central and western Australia receive only 10 in or 25.4 cm of rain. Because of Australia’s position in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons occur opposite to those experienced in the Northern Hemisphere. In the south, January and February are the hottest months, with temperatures averaging between 65 and 70 degrees F (18.3 and 21.1 degrees C). June and July are the coldest months, with temperatures averaging 50 degrees F or 10 degrees C.

The first humans who settled in Australia came over from a land bridge that once connected Australia to Asia. The Aborigines, who are the descendants of those first settlers, are a hunter-gatherer society that roamed about the land. They spoke about 250 languages and all of their property was communal. Before the arrival of Europeans, Aborigines numbered between 250,000 and 1 million. The first European to sight Australia was Captain James Cook in 1770. He circumnavigated the Australian coast and landed in Botany Bay, claiming the land for Britain. After the loss of the thirteen North American colonies, the British government saw Australia as a new destination to which it could send convicts.

In 1787, the First Fleet, under the command of Captain Phillip Arthur, set sail from Portsmouth, England, to Australia, consisting of 11 ships carrying 1,487 people, of whom 736 were convicts whose crimes were mostly petty theft. In January 1788, the First Fleet landed on what became Sydney Harbor. The penal settlements of New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania), and Port Phillip District (later Victoria) were established, while Western Australia and Southern Australia were created as free settlements. In 1851, gold was discovered in Victoria, sparking an influx of immigrants from all over the world. The population grew from 450,000 in 1850 to 1 million in 1858. The effects of the gold rush were the growth of national wealth, a spirit of egalitarianism, and the spark of nationalism.

By the end of the nineteenth century, Australia evolved from penal settlements to self-governing units where settlers took part in local affairs. In the 1890s, Australia was at a crossroads in its relationship to the mother country. Some circles called for independence from Britain, while others called for self-government within the BRITISH EMPIRE. Economic forces such as a worldwide depression and increasing unionization called for uniform laws and regulations On January 1, 1901, the Commonwealth of Australia was born, which fused British and American models. The Commonwealth would be a parliamentary government like Britain, but it would have a federal system like the United States, where there would be state and popular representation in its legislature.

Not long after, Australia gained the distinction of having a progressive government by establishing a minimum wage, ensuring safe conditions for workers, and granting suffrage for women. Yet at the same time, the new government maintained the “White Australia” policy which limited immigration to Europeans and mostly British.

Australia maintained its loyalty to Britain by contributing troops to the Boer War, World War I, and World War II. Australian troops distinguished themselves bravely during the famous Gallipoli campaign of World War I. However, after the end of the war, the troops who came home had difficulty readjusting to civilian life, partly because of well-meaning but, in the end, inadequate government policies. Australia suffered greatly during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when as much as 28 percent of the workforce was unemployed. 

By World War II, Australia’s traditional links to Britain and the empire began to weaken. In 1939, Australia sent troops to Europe to fight Nazi GERMANY. However, JAPAN loomed as a larger threat to Australia’s security. Australia fell under the protection of the UNITED STATES. After the war, Australia entered into the ANZUS alliance with New Zealand and the United States and began looking to Asia as a source for new markets. In 1972, the “White Australia” policy was replaced with an immigration policy that stressed multiculturalism and accepted immigrants from other areas of the world. In 1999, Australians once again faced the terms of their relationship with Britain, voting whether to keep the queen as head of state or declare itself a republic; a slim majority maintained the status quo. In 2002, after the terrorist bombings at Bali, Australia joined the United States as one of its coalition partners in the war against terrorism, providing troops to Iraq in 2003.

Despite the official end of “White Australia,” the population remains generally homogeneous, with 92 percent of European origin, 7 percent of Asian origin, and 1 percent of Aboriginal origin. However, since the end of World War II, Australia has accepted immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, adding to the old English stock. Australia’s relationships with the Aborigines have not been easy. European colonialism had wiped out much of the original population through disease and assimilation. While Australians have become more sensitive to the plight of the Aborigines, many have remained at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Australia has a prosperous free market economy that is ranked with western European economies. Services make up 71 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), while industry makes up 26 percent, and agriculture makes up 3 percent. In 2000, Sydney hosted the Olympic Games, 44 years after its rival, Melbourne. The Australian economy suffered during the global economic slowdown in 2001, but it has been undergoing a recovery since 2003. In 2004, the Australian government debated whether to approve a free trade agreement with the United States.

Aurora Borealis

NORTHERN LIGHTS, or the aurora borealis, are shimmering lights that shine above the Earth near the geomagnetic North Pole. The lights, often bright enough to read by, are usually green or red. The phenomenon is caused when a solar storm discharges high-energy particles that are channeled into a ring by the Earth’s magnetic field. The solar particles energize atoms in the thin ionosphere, which cause emissions of light. 

The solar particles travel from the sun in a field called, at different stages, a plasma or solar wind. Because the solar wind and the magnetic field of the Earth are constantly interacting, the northern lights may appear as an arc, a curtain, or an undulating sheet. When the electrons from the sun excite oxygen atoms, those atoms glow green. If they get extremely excited, red is the color produced. Blue and violet lights result from interaction with nitrogen radicals, a pink glow comes from neutral nitrogen, and excited hydrogen shows as blue and green. Each color glows at a particular altitude as well. Thus, the auroras can actually serve as a map of the composition of the ionosphere.

The aurora borealis usually glows from 50 to 100 mi (80 to 160 km) above the ground, but it can occur at lower altitudes and, on rare occasions, at ground level. Astronauts, the only persons who get to see the lights from above, have flown through auroras and report that even with eyes closed, they see flashes of light from the charged particles as those particles pass through their eyeballs. The solar particles that react with Earth’s atmosphere to form the lights circle the geomagnetic poles, so the aurora borealis is usually seen in places above a latitude of 30 degrees. The land areas that see most displays of northern lights include northern ALASKA, the Hudson Bay region, ICELAND, and northern Scandinavia. Clear nights in these areas are dark enough to view the lights from September to April. Since the lights are brightest following solar storms, several websites provide updated forecasts of such activity. Following earlier research, scientists in 1957 and 1958—the International Geophysical Year—mapped an oval band, about 310 mi (500 km) wide, that circles Earth’s magnetic poles. Within this band, about 1,250 mi (2,000 km) from the pole, the aurora borealis can be seen on almost every dark night.

Areas as far south as the New England portion of the UNITED STATES may see an aurora borealis several times during the year, but sightings farther south are rare. Very large solar storms have resulted in lights being seen far south of the usual viewing range, but this happens only once per decade, on average. An aurora in 1859 was observed as far south as Honolulu, HAWAII.

Observations of the northern lights date back to the time of Aristotle, who described an aurora around 349 B.C.E. A Viking record titled Kongespeilet (King’s Mirror), written circa 1250 C.E. states that the light blazes like a living flame. Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Browning, and Sir Walter Scott, among others, have mentioned the aurora borealis; in the 1600s, philosopher René Descartes suggested that sunlight scattered from ice particles in the upper atmosphere was the cause of the northern lights.

MAGNETISM

Astronomer Edmund Halley proposed in the early 18th century that the lights were caused by Earth’s magnetism. One hundred years later, in 1825, C. Hansteen indicated a link between the lights and geomagnetism. In 1860, Elias Loomis, an American, mapped out the distribution of northern lights geographically and showed that they formed a ring around the North Pole. In his 1881 work Das Polarlicht, Swiss physicist and engineer Herman Fritz extended Loomis’s research. Both men identified a correlation between the auroras and sun spots, noting that the lights grew stronger and weaker following the 11-year cycle of sunspot activity.

In 1896, Norwegian physicist Kristian Birkeland showed with models that electrons from the sun would bend toward the Earth’s magnetic poles and enter the ionosphere, where they decelerated and emitted light. Current research shows that the electrons thrown by the sun generate currents as great as a million amperes. This was also proposed by Birkeland, but in 1896 the idea was ignored. A similar phenomenon occurs around the southern geomagnetic pole and is called the aurora australis.

Atlas Mountains

THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS of northwest Africa are an elaborate assemblage of mountain ranges that trend from southern coastal MOROCCO and the CANARY ISLANDS, through ALGERIA into coastal TUNISIA. Extending more than 1,500 km (932 mi) and chiefly composed of sedimentary and igneous rocks that have been folded and faulted over the past 85 to 150 million years, the Atlas peaks are a part of the Tethyan Mountain network, an immense mountain group that extends roughly 6,700 mi (11,000 km) and includes the ALPS and Carpathians of Europe, and the CAUCASUS, ZAGROS, Pamir, and the HIMALAYAN mountains of Asia. Furthermore, earthquakes occur regularly along this complex chain, indicating that mountain-building is still taking place.

In Morocco, the Atlas Mountains (“Idrren Dnren” in Berber) consist of four chains: the High, Middle, Anti, and Rif ranges separated by fertile and productive plains. Although the Rif Mountains are traditionally considered not a part of the Atlas system, their uplift epoch, or orogeny, and general trend indicate that they are related. Likewise, although the Middle (Moyen) Atlas are considered a separate range, topographically they are a lower extension of the High (Haute) Atlas complex, where the great Jebel Toubkal rises tallest in the chain at 13,665 ft (4,165 m).

As the mountains bend into Algeria’s arid backcountry, the steep peaks flatten into distinctive plateaus. Here, the range has two particular spines: the northern, coastal Tell (or Maritime) Atlas chain and the southern, inland Saharan Atlas Mountains. As they head to the northeast, these ranges encircle the Chott Plateau before consolidating into a single range that follows the coast across Algeria into northern Tunisia. The Atlas chain also plays an important role in modifying the climate throughout the region. Dividing the mild Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts from the SAHARA DESERT’s harsh environment, western and northern slopes receive greater amounts of rain and snow, sustaining numerous farms and orchards along the headwaters of Morocco’s and Algeria’s ephemeral rivers and wadis (dry riverbeds except in the rainy season). The slopes to the east and south, however, commonly support xeric vegetation like grasses and shrubs and common arid land features like salt pans and dry lake beds influenced from the rains shadow of the mountains.

The Atlas Mountains are also rich in minerals and oil. Phosphate, and metal ores including lead, zinc, copper, silver, manganese are productive commodities, while important coal deposits and petroleum reserves are managed in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Into the 2000s, as tourism and recreation programs develop throughout the region, the Atlas Mountains are attracting thousands of travelers during the winter each year to ski and trek in the snow, and in the warmer months, tourists can backpack, tour, and hike all across the vast area. The highest peaks of the Atlas Mountains include Jebel Toubkal in the High Atlas Range; Jebel Siroua in the Anti-Atlas Range, 10,843 ft (3,305 m); Jebel Tidiquin in the Rif Mountains, 7,835 ft (2,448 m); Jebel Chelia in Saharan (Aures) Atlas, 7,638 ft (2,328 m).