GEOLOGIC FRAMEWORK OF POLITICAL DIVISION

Areal extents of geologic, topographic, and sociopolitical entities that exist across the Earth's surface are determined by a myriad of complexly interrelated natural and cultural contingencies. As such, size distributions of each class of division are well modeled by aggregates of nearly randomly delimited areas of political, geological, climatic, biogeographic, topographic, and/or agricultural homogeneity. Corresponding area-frequency relations apparent for each of global large river basins, nations, and lithologic units are closely approximated by density functions in which diameters of individual areas are distributed exponentially, and that incorporate only the sum and total number of all individual areas. The equivalency of area frequencies among these disparate entities implies a nontrivial component of geologic influence on the partitioning of continental surfaces into major political divisions, and it suggests that cultural and economic factors operate to the same end within a geological framework. In spite of the complexity of interrelations that must exist between cultural and economic factors that influence the placement of political boundaries, the statistical predictability of nation areas from net country number and net land area suggests that partitioning of political entities may proceed by more or less random division. This is in part because those processes that lead to political separation or unification are themselves largely indeterminate, but mostly because old and new boundaries that define nation size are not infrequently coincident with topographic barriers that themselves reflect the complex interplay between tectonic and hydrologic processes.