As you celebrate Geography Awareness Week and its theme, “Geography: The Adventure in Your Community,” take time to recognize the scale associated with the term “community”—from the intimate geographies of your local neighborhood, and your favorite places to explore there, to the Earth and the treasures and issues it holds for the current 7 billion human inhabitants living on it, and the stories we all share.

Esri, through the lens of several of our colleagues, Allen Carroll (former chief cartographer at National Geographic) and others, has created a place on the Web where Map Stories covering the range of geographies are coming to life and light. These geostories seek to relate to important issues of the moment and others that speak to more enduring, and at times, dismaying topics.

One Map Story that communicates the beauty of our human experience and the planet upon which we depend invites you to explore UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The nearly 1,000 locations around the world are a mix of cultural and natural areas and features of outstanding value and importance to past, present, and future generations. While individual locations may be half-a-world away from where you are, others are near and dear to our hearts here in the United States such as the Olympic National Park that I explored with my wife this summer, or the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site about 10 miles from where I grew up in Illinois.

Another way to explore the UNESCO data is by using the Web map in the ArcGIS Online Map Stories group that Allen and colleagues have set up. Using the Web map I can expand on the focused Map Story content, change basemaps, and begin to add my own data while highlighting UNESCO sites such as two I have had the opportunity to hike and be inspired by—Uluru and Kata Tjuta, southwest of Alice Springs, Australia.

It’s also important to recognize that these nearly 1,000 locations spread across the expanse of the Earth represent but a sliver of the numerous places that help describe and sustain us as a curious species. There are similarly endowed human-formed and natural locations closer to home for each of us. Consider exploring the UNESCO global representative sample and then identify and map sacred places of importance to you. Explore, protect, and share them with others in your community, whatever its size.

- George Dailey, Esri Education Manager