6 best biology of horses

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Start dreaming of you next adventure

Rand McNally Road Atlases

For generations, Rand McNally has been compiling accurate, detailed maps and travel information into the ultimate road trip accessory.

The 2021 editions feature fully updated maps, mileage charts, road construction and tourism information, city detail maps, and more.

It's no wonder savvy travelers take the wheel with our Road Atlas by their side.

ISBN-10: 052802244X

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Get there with the new, 2021 National Geographic Road Atlas: Adventure Edition

Travel across North America using easy-to-read, accurate maps showing highways, secondary roads, scenic routes, mileage markers, recreation areas, and points of interest. Navigate urban areas with detailed downtown city maps and metropolitan area insets. Take the guesswork out of traveling and trip planning with a comprehensive place name index, mileage charts, and cross-referenced pages. This atlas has the quality and accuracy you expect from an organization that has been mapping the world since 1915.

Built to last

This atlas features a heavy duty black plastic spiral binding and a durable clear/frosted plastic protective cover. These enhancements greatly extend the lifespan of the atlas. No more covers falling off and pages pulling out from everyday use. This atlas is built to last.

America’s 100 top outdoor destinations

Make your next road trip extraordinary by visiting one of America’s top 100 destinations for hiking, backpacking, climbing, cycling, paddle sports, skiing, snowboarding, and birding as selected by National Geographic Editors.

America’s 24 favorite National Parks

Plan your next visit using the park profile section that includes maps, photos, tips on top sights, popular trails, campgrounds, and lodging for 24 of the most popular National Parks in America.

Great design leads to great road maps

The cartographers at National Geographic spent months developing the design specifications for the state road maps included in this atlas. They carefully chose the colors, line weights, typography, and feature compilation to create the most accurate and easy-to-read road maps in the market today.

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Reasons why you need this Atlas

National Geographic's flagship Atlas of the World, now in its 11th edition, provides maps of every country, ocean, and region of the world, as well as thematic maps and accompanying graphics showing population, environmental, and economic patterns. This atlas is a reference for schools and libraries, as well as the latest resource for home browsing and study. This volume of world maps has been completely revised and updated with visualizations of international trends and global conditions.

Accretion

When a heavy ocean plate bends below the edge of a continental plate or island arc, bits of sediment and melted mantle collect, or accrete, where the plates meet. Barbados accretes up to .45 mm of land each year.

Collision

Mountains often rise at the zone of impact where two continents collide. The Himalayan range formed when the Indian and Eurasian plates crashed into each other 55 million years ago, and it still grows a half inch a year.

Faulting

Stress builds when two plates move against each other. As one gives way, the resulting fault, or crack, triggers earthquakes. In Sumatra in 2004 a 1,450 kilometer-long fault unleashed a deadly magnitude 9.1 earthquake and tsunami.

Spreading

New ocean crust is born where tectonic plates spread apart, allowing lava to flow out between them. Along the northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the North American and Eurasian plates are moving apart about an inch a year.

Tracking Storms

Atlantic and eastern Pacific hurricanes and their counterparts—typhoons in the western Pacific and cyclones in the Indian Ocean usually draw energy from warm tropical waters, forming primarily near the Equator in regions with prevailing easterly winds. If a storm tracks toward the poles, it becomes extratropical but can still retain hurricane-force winds of 120–240 kilometers an hour. These storms shift heat and moisture away from the Equator, and the resulting wind and rain may cost thousands of human lives and billions in property damage.

Lightning Strikes

Thunderclouds produce lightning when frozen raindrops collide and create electrical charges. As positive and negative charges separate and connect, lightning appears and is often drawn to positive charges on the ground. Places where the climate is warm and conducive to thunderstorms experience the most lightning strikes. Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela sometimes sees thousands of lightning strikes per hour. India’s Brahmaputra Valley and the mountains of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are also among the world’s most lightning-prone places.

Extreme Weather

Extreme weather includes hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, tornadoes, and other deadly events. Scientists have tracked a significant increase in catastrophic weather of all kinds in the 21st century, with vulnerable islands and coastal areas suffering most. From 1997 to 2016, the nations most affected by extreme weather were in the developing world, including Honduras, Haiti, and Myanmar. Climate change contributes to extreme weather by lengthening droughts and increasing the intensity of hurricanes.

Calculating Ocean Health

Data from 220 countries and territories are analyzed each year to measure the overall health of the oceans, including ecological, economic, and political factors. In 2017 the global score remained steady at 70 out of 100, but many areas, especially near the coasts of poorer African nations, achieved scores of less than 50. Tourism and the production of food and natural products, including seashells and sponges, earned the lowest scores for long-term sustainability.

Sustaining Seafood Harvests

Sustainability of world seafood harvests in 2017 was low, with wild-caught seafood scoring 51 of 100 points and ocean-farmed scoring only 28. Overfishing to the point where populations of fish are not able to recover is a problem that can be solved politically and economically. Decreasing pollution and eliminating techniques that destroy habitat or have high levels of bycatch—animals caught unintentionally—can improve marine ecosystems and help feed the world’s billions.

Fishing Activity

The global pattern, or footprint, of fishing boats documented in data from Global Fishing Watch reveals that fish harvesting takes place in at least 55 percent of ocean waters and covers four times as much of the planet as agriculture. With a billion people dependent on fish as their primary source of protein, overfishing is a growing threat, especially in Asia. But regions with a light fishing footprint offer hope as conservation zones where fish populations can regenerate.

Age of the Seafloor

One large ocean, Panthalassa, and a smaller ocean inlet, Tethys, surrounded supercontinent Pangaea until 200 million years ago, when Earth’s crustal plates shifted and split Pangaea. Today moving plates create new seafloor along boundaries (lightest red areas below). As plates move apart magma rises from inside Earth and fills the gap. Older ocean crust sinks beneath dense continental crust on either side of the Atlantic and in the western Pacific. The oldest seafloor is a remnant of Tethys in the Mediterranean Sea.