Though barely 100 miles apart, Leicester in the English Midlands and York in the country's northern reaches have widely differing claims.
Since the 1890s the black soils lining the Adelaide's lower reaches have been used for agricultural experiments—vegetables and rice- and cattle-farming projects.
Already the political paralysis has sapped the weak central government in a country whose untamed reaches have become a base for Islamist militants linked to Al Qaeda.
The great Siberian rivers, flowing northward into regions of increasingly deferred thaw, habitually cause extensive flooding in their lower reaches, which remain ice-covered when upstream reaches have already thawed and are receiving the meltwaters of late spring and summer.
For the Great Barrier Reef, which a poll found two-thirds of Australians want to see declared a national emergency, its southern reaches have not been as significantly affected by thermal stress as it has further north.
Its upper reaches have the intimate feel of a Catskill trout stream.
