Transcript What is geography?

Thinking
Geographically
Why is Geography important?
“War forces people to learn geography”
-example: Russian invasion of Georgia
• Geography and your community:
– Water supply
– Pollution
– Growth management
– Housing
Example:
Loudoun Water
– Look at environment/ water conservation
How does this connect to Brambleton?
What is geography?
• Coined by Eratosthenes
• Geo= earth
• Graphy= the study of, to write
Key Concepts and skills
• interpret maps, graphs, tables,
• Space
• Place
• Location
• Scale
• regions
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charts, and other spatial data
Understand and interpret the
implications of relationships
among observable facts in
places
Recognize and interpret
relationships among patterns
and processes at different
scales
Define regions and evaluate
the regionalization process
Characterize and analyze
changing interconnections
among places
Studying Human Geography
• Study of Geography
• Study of the earth as created by
natural forces and modified by
human action
– Physical Geography
• Deals with the Earth’s natural
processes and their outcomes.
– Concerned with climate,
weather patterns, landforms,
soil formation, and plant and
animal ecology
– Human Geography
• Deals with the spatial organization of
human activities and with people’s
relationships to their environments.
– Covers a wide variety of
phenomena
– Example: agricultural
production and food security,
population change, ecology of
human diseases, resource
management, environmental
pollution, regional planning, and
symbolism of places and
landscapes
Studying Human Geography
• Regional Geography
– Combines both physical
and human geography
– Concerned with the way
that unique combinations
of environmental and
human factors produce
territories with
distinctive landscapes
and cultural attributes
– Concept of region used by
geographers to apply to
larger-sized territories that
encompass many places
5 Themes of Geography
• Location
• Human environment
interaction
• Region
• Place
• movement
 Explains where something is
on the Earth and the effects
that position has on human life
– Absolute location
 Lines of latitude
 Measured in degrees north or south of the
equator
 Equator serves as the baseline
 Lines of longitude
 Measured in degrees east or west of the
prime meridian
 Prime meridian runs through Greenwich,
England
– Relative location
 Is described by something’s
relationship to the places around it
 Site
 Refers to a place’s internal physical and
cultural characteristics
 Situation
 Refers to the location of a place relative to
the physical and cultural places around it
Location
Site
 The site is the actual location of a settlement on the
earth and is composed of the physical characteristics of
the landscape specific to the area.
 Site factors include things like landforms (i.e. is the
area protected by mountains or is there a natural
harbor present?), climate, vegetation types,
availability of water, soil quality, minerals, and even
wildlife.
 Historically, these factors led to the development of
major cities worldwide.
 New York City, for example, is located where it
is because of several site factors. As people
arrived in North America from Europe, they
began to settle in this area because it was a
coastal location with a natural harbor.
 There was also an abundance of fresh water in the

nearby Hudson River and small creeks as well as
raw materials for building supplies.
In addition, the nearby Appalachian and Catskill
Mountains provided a barrier to movement inland.
 The site of an area can also create challenges for its
population and the small Himalayan nation of Bhutan
is a good example of this.
 Located within the world's highest mountain
range, the terrain of the country is extremely
rugged and hard to get around.
 This, combined with the incredibly harsh climate
in many areas of the country has made much of
the population settle along rivers in the
highlands just south of the Himalayas.
 In addition, only 2% of the land in the nation is
arable (with much of it located in the highlands)
making living in the country highly challenging.
Situation
 Situation is defined as the location of a place
relative to its surroundings and other places.
 Factors included in an area's situation include
the accessibility of the location, the extent of a
place's connections with another, and how close
an area may be to raw materials if they are not
located specifically on the site.
Though its site has made living in the nation
challenging, Bhutan's situation has allowed it to
maintain its policies of isolation as well as its
own highly separated and traditionally religious
culture.
 Because of its remote location in the Himalayas
getting into the country is challenging and
historically this has been beneficial because the
mountains have been a form of protection. As
such, the heartland of the nation has never been
invaded. In addition, Bhutan now controls many
of the most strategic mountain passes in the
Himalayas including the only ones into and out
of its territory, leading to its title as the
"Mountain Fortress of the Gods."
Like an area's site however, its situation can also
cause problems. For example Canada's
Eastern Provinces of New Brunswick,
Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia,
and Prince Edward Island are some of that
country's most economically downtrodden
areas due in large part to their situations.
These areas are isolated from the rest of
Canada making manufacturing and the little
agriculture possible too expensive. In
addition, there are very few close natural
resources (many are off the coast and due
to maritime laws the government of Canada
itself controls the resources) and many of
the traditional fishing economies they did
have are now crashing along with the fish
populations.
Human Environment Interaction
Describes how human
activities affect their
environment and how
environmental changes
impact human life
Cultural ecology
– Studies the aspects and
outcomes of humanenvironment interaction
Region
A region is a spatial unit, or
group of places, that share
similar characteristics
Three types of regions
– Formal
 Area that has common cultural and
physical features
 “uniform” region
 Examples:
 The Sahara
 Map displaying where Islam is
practiced
– Functional
 Group of places linked together by
some type of movement or function
 “nodal” region
 Examples:
 Map showing a group of places all
infected by a type of disease
 The node is the place in the functional
region where the movement started
– Perceptual
 Group of places linked together
because of perceptions about those
places
 Example:
 “The South”
-Boundaries are based on opinions
Place
Place refers to all of the
human and physical
attributes in a location
– Human attributes of place
include:
 religions, languages, political
organizations, clothing, and
artwork present in a location
– Physical attributes include:
 Climate, terrain, and natural
resources
– Human and physical traits
in a location give it a “sense
of identity”
Movement
 Movement of information, people,
goods, and other phenomena
– Spatial interaction
 Analyzing how places interact with each other
 Friction of distance
 Degree to which distance interferes or reduces the
amount of interaction between two places
– Distance decay
 occurs when the intensity of some phenomenon
decreases as distance increases
 Example: sound at a concert decreases as you walk
away from the stage
– Space-time compression
 Increasing sense that the world is becoming
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“smaller”
Humans in distant places can feel closer together
because of improved communication and
transportation the technologies, which reduce
the friction of distance