<p>Jeffrey Jung is right. Both are correct.</p>
<p>But how is that possible, what about “the region’s” in question 1. Shouldn’t the apostraphe be omitted, since as it is now, it doesn’t refer to something possessive. “'s” is a shorter form for “is”, isn’t it?</p>
<p>And on question 2, how is that possible too? in “are visible”, shouldn’t it be changed to “are as visible” then complemented with “as smog”, to make a correctly structured form of “as something as something”.</p>