Understanding Geography: The Five Themes and Essential Tools for Geographers
This chapter delves into the fundamental aspects of geography, highlighting the five key themes: location, place, human-environment interaction, movement, and regions. It explores absolute and relative locations using latitude and longitude, detailing the significance of physical and human features in places. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the importance of maps as tools for geographers, including different types of projections such as Mercator and Robinson, and explains how to interpret map elements like compass roses and keys.
Understanding Geography: The Five Themes and Essential Tools for Geographers
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Presentation Transcript
Chapter 1 The World of Geography
Section 1 The Five Themes of Geography
Geography • Is the study of the Earth
Geographers are guided by two basic questions: • Where are things located??? • Why are they there???
To find the answers, geographers use themes to organize information • Location: where a point exists • Place: a location’s physical and human features • Human Environment interaction: how people affect their environment • Movement: How goods, ideas, and people get from one place to another • Regions: Large areas that are linked by similar characteristics
Absolute location A places exact position on Earth (geographic address) Uses latitude and longitude Relative location Explains where a place is by describing places near it. “I live in Bismarck, 190 miles west of Fargo” Location
Location • Lines of Latitude: • East-West circles around the globe • Parallels: • Another name for lines of latitude, because they are parallel to one another • Degrees: • Unit used to measure location on maps • Equator: • A parallel in the middle of the globe
Location • Lines of Longitude: • Lines that circle the globe from North-South • Meridians: • Another name for lines of Longitude • All run through the North and South Poles • Prime Meridian: • Runs though Greenwich, England • Is 0 degrees longitude
Latitude and Longitude • Latitude • Measured North and South of Equator • Longitude • Measured East and West of Prime Meridian • (Greenwich, England) • Measured in degrees, minutes, seconds • Degree - 69.1 miles • Minute - 1.15 miles • Second - 101 feet
Place • Physical features • Climate - hot or cold • Land is hilly • Human features • How many people live there • What these people do
Human - Environment Interaction • How have people learned to survive in the area? • How do they deal with the environment? • Are they helping or hurting the environment?
Movement • Helps people understand cultural changes • Goods and people move: bringing their culture with them • Immigrants to America
Regions • Used to make comparisons • Deserts, forests, plains, mountains • Plain • A region of flat land
Section 2 The Geographer’s Tools
Maps • Globe • The most accurate description • Hard to carry around • Scale • Size of an area on a map compared to the actual size of an area (1 in= 100 miles) • Flat maps • Easy to carry around • Shows some distortion. (misrepresentation) • Change in the accuracy of the shapes and distances
Maps • Projection - method of putting a map of the Earth onto a flat piece of paper • Mercator Projection • Gerardus Mercator • Flat map - used by sailors • Shows correct shapes of landmasses, but not true distances or sizes • Robinson Projection • Arthur Robinson • Best world map available • Distorted around the edges • WAS Official projection for National Geographic – now Winkle Tripel
More Maps • Interrupted projection map • “Orange Peel” • Hard to figure distances correctly • Distortion • Flat maps distort land masses because the Earth is round. • Subject of a Map = Title
Parts of a map • Compass rose • Shows the cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west. • Key • “legend” explains the symbols for features such as roads and cities. • Grid • Helps people find things on the map • Parallels and meridians • Letters and numbers
