Minnesota in Maps
Compare population, historical growth, race and ethnicity, age, income, and poverty at different geographic scales.
The collection
Geography labs & investigations
Change a map, test a model, or make a decision. Browse by course or topic, then open the activity your instructor assigned.
38activities
38 activities
Times are estimates for the activity and its built-in responses. Extra essays, discussion, and field visits may take longer.
Sense of Place
Explore how memory, daily routines, belonging, and different people turn the same location into different places.
The Geographer’s Question Lab
Examine four landscapes through four geographic lenses and build questions that go beyond simply naming a place.
True Maps, False Impressions
Change projections, map measures, and scales to see how cartographic choices change the story.
Where Does Minnesota End?
Change the evidence used to define Minnesota and see how cultural regions cross the state boundary.
1.4 Billion—and Still Counting?
Change fertility and migration, advance India’s population pyramid, and explain demographic momentum.
Crossing Lines
Follow four travelers and investigate how legal status, networks, money, and safety change their options.
How Does a Pandemic Travel?
Trace reported COVID-19 cases across U.S. states and compare contagious, hierarchical, and network diffusion.
Newton’s First Law of Migration
Make gravity-model predictions, then compare distance, population, and the friction that shapes migration.
One India, Many Geographies
Compare regional patterns within India and use several maps to challenge a single national story.
A City Through Time
Change the historical layer to investigate how earlier decisions remain visible in the present city.
A City Without Cars?
Allocate street space and test how transportation, accessibility, and urban form interact in different cities.
Reading the Urban Landscape
Read Colorado Springs and Saint Paul from above, plan a field walk, and test explanations against evidence.
Segregation Lab: Three American Metros
Compare a residential sorting model with housing constraints and the different histories of three metropolitan areas.
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Choose expansion cities for baseball and compare threshold, market areas, travel, and institutional advantages.
The Coastline Was Built
Reconstruct six American coastlines across 1890, 1973, and 2024, then advise on a proposed coastal expansion.
The Disappearing Front Range
Compare metropolitan growth around Colorado Springs, transfer the choices to Minnesota, and negotiate a planning decision.
Aid Has Geography
Advise four crisis-response teams and compare food, cash, local purchasing, and transport under different conditions.
Development Detective
Build and disturb a development ranking, then test what national averages leave out.
Food for Thought
Unfold the geography of a grocery basket through agricultural landscapes, commodity chains, water, and land use.
Help Wanted: Three Regions, One Job Shock
Send the same employment shock through three regions and compare specialization, multipliers, and economic leakage.
The Afterlife of a T-Shirt
Follow a used garment through trade, reuse, work, and waste, then compare the consequences of different decisions.
The Container’s Journey
Build a global product journey, disrupt its route, and weigh alternative ways to make the network more resilient.
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
Test rules for Yugoslavia’s breakup and confront the mixed settlement patterns and human consequences hidden by border lines.
Do Orange and Green Clash?
Map Belfast after the Troubles and explore why peace, residential separation, religion, and political identity follow different timelines.
Draw the Line
Swap district boundaries, judge representation, compare state cases, and make a redistricting commission decision.
Iraq: Layered Geographies
Layer identity, religion, oil, rivers, and cities, then compare alternative ways to organize the Iraqi state.
Strait of Hormuz Crisis Lab
Manage a shipping and energy crisis, investigate alternative routes, and weigh imperfect infrastructure choices.
SWANA Geography Lab
Build a regional definition, test a shipping chokepoint, and identify different forms of diffusion.
Preserving the Planet
Change population, affluence, and technology, trace the Aral Sea’s transformation, and weigh northern Minnesota resource decisions.
Put It Somewhere
Site a necessary facility, reveal neighborhood context, and judge efficiency, cumulative burdens, and protective measures.
Sustainable, or Painted Green?
Compare environmental claims with the evidence needed to judge whether a project changes the underlying system.
The Map Beneath the Map
Test water-point locations against access, physical conditions, and community needs in a composite planning map.
Who Owns the Water?
Negotiate river-basin water allocation and compare institutions, upstream advantages, drought, and downstream needs.
Geo Cascade: Monsoon Machine
Match geographic forces to build the five-link causal chain that produces a summer monsoon.
Rain to River: A Watershed Lab
Change land cover, soil, and storm depth; trace the water through a basin and compare the resulting hydrographs.
The South Asian Monsoon Calendar
Change the date and compare early, typical, and late seasons to investigate the advancing southwest monsoon.
Why the Subtropics Are Dry
Follow rising equatorial air and dry descending air to explain the Sahara and Arabian dry belt.
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