Chapter One Thinking Geographically

m/video/player/specials/sitewide- redesign/ngm-7billion.html Why study human geography?

Key Issues How do geographers describe where things are? Why is each point on Earth unique? Why are different places similar? Brainstorm on your own a response to each question for your daily entry.

What is geography? Geo means earth/ Graphy means to write Geography is the study of the earth and where things are located and why

What is geography? Physical geography is the study of where and why natural forces occur Human geography is the study of where humans and human activities are located and why These two interact (think of the situation with Hurricane Katrina in 2005)

New Orleans before Katrina

New Orleans after Katrina

New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina Fig. 1.1: Most of the area of New Orleans flooded after Hurricane Katrina was majority African American. Physical and political geography intersect in analyzing the impacts of the natural disaster

5 Themes of Geography Location- where something is Place- a unique point on earth Region- places bound together by common characteristics Movement- how people/activities interact across space Human-Environmental Interactions- how humans and their environment influence one another

How do geographers describe where things are? Place: a specific point on earth distinguished by a particular characteristic like exact location (position on earth’s surface) Region: an area of earth distinguished by a combination of cultural and physical features that tie its parts together (lots of places in a region)

How do geographers explain similarities? Scale: the relationship between the portion of earth being studied and earth as a whole Space: the physical gap between two objects or places Connections: the relationships among people and objects across earth

How do geographers describe where things are? Cartography: the science of mapmaking Maps: two-dimensional or flat-scale models of the earth’s surface or a portion of it Maps store reference information and communicate information

History of mapmaking Earliest surviving maps are from the Babylonians from around 2300 BC- they were on clay tablets Maps have been around much longer though Thales and his student, Anaximander, of Eastern Europe, started applying geometry and showing the world as a cylinder back in the sixth and seventh centuries BC

History of mapmaking The Greek, Aristotle, was the first to show the world was spherical (300s BC) Eratosthenes (200s-100s BC) was the first to record the word geography and is often called the Father of Geography He calculated the earth’s circumference within.5 percent accuracy and also said the world was spherical The Roman Empire in the first several centuries AD advanced mapmaking

History of mapmaking The Greek, Ptolemy, (AD 100s), wrote a Guide to Geography, and advanced that the earth was spherical and the center of the universe (geocentric) After the fall of the Romans, the Dark (Middle) Ages set mapmaking back a while in Europe- Asia and the Middle East continued exploring more The Chinese, led by Phei Hsiu, advanced Chinese knowledge

History of mapmaking The Muslim world, led by al-Idrisi continued the work of many European scholars and safeguarded what they had learned centuries before After the Middle Ages ended, the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration in the 1400s-1800s led to a revival in the study of geography and mapmaking Columbus, Magellan, and other explorers explored more and more of earth and recorded this on maps

History of mapmaking Cartographers like, Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius in the 1500s collected the information from explorers and made more and more accurate maps Copernicus worked to prove that the sun, not earth, was the center of our part of the universe Johannes Keppler used math to help prove it and Galileo Gallilei used his modern telescope to use astronomy to help Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitation helped cement these ideas By the ends of the 1500s, we knew much more about our earth

History of Mapmaking Latitude lines (go east to west) were fairly easy to establish on maps through astronomy and the sun’s positioning on earth and a compass (been around since around 1100) Longitude lines (go north to south) were much harder to establish- many tried using astronomy, but we had to have a chronometer (a clock that could keep time at sea- no small feat)- this was created in the 1700s

History of Mapmaking By the 1800s most of earth’s shorelines had been explored and accurate maps were being made By 1900s even better maps were perfected By 2000, GPS, remote sensing, and GIS have made huge improvements to mapmaking- very accurate and accessible to more people!

World Political Boundaries (2007) Fig. 1-2: National political boundaries are among the most significant elements of the cultural landscape

Obstacles in Modern Map-Making 1. Projection- what distortion to allow 2. Simplification- can’t show everything 3. Map scale- focus big or small 4. Aggregation- what size of geographic units are we looking at (state, local, etc) 5. Type of map- reference, topographical (isoline), thematic, choropleth (color gradient), dot maps,

Map Scale When making a map, one must decide what is going to be mapped Scale- the relationship of a feature’s size on a map to its actual size on earth It can be written as a fraction, ratio, or a written statement For example, a scale of 1:24,0000 means that one unit on the map represents 24,000 of the same unit on earth

Map Scale Large scale- shows lots of detail, a small area in big detail 1:5,000 meters Small scale- shows little detail, a large area in little detail like 1: 5 million meters

Scale Differences Maps of Washington State Fig. 1-3: The effects of scale in maps of Washington State. (Scales from 1:10 million to 1:10,000)

Projection Projection is the scientific method of transferring locations on earth’s surface to a flat map No map is perfect There is always some distortion: either shape, distance, relative size, and/or direction Types of maps: Mercator (p. 19), Robinson (p. 31), equal area, etc…

Why is map projection choice important to all of us? 8zBC2dvERM

Ways to Divide Lands Up Natural land features Bodies of water Longitude Latitude Man-made lands and borders

Township & Range System in the US Fig. 1-4: Principal meridians & east-west baselines of the township system. Townships in northwest Mississippi & topographic map of the area.

Principal Meridians & Baselines U.S. Land Ordinance of 1785

Types of Maps Political Topographical Photographic

Contemporary Tools of Geographers Maps will always be contemporary- the form they take changes GIS- Geographic Information Systems is a computer system that captures, stores, queries, displays, and analyzes geographic data It must be coded in- the position of anything on earth can be measured and coded in- a map can then be created

Contemporary Tools of Geographers GIS is so much more efficient at map-making It can be layered and added to and manipulated easily New codes can be written It is so useful in so many different fields of study from city planning to civil engineering to the military to the local EMT squads

Basic GIS application from National Geographic cation/mapping/interactive- map/?ar_a=1&ar_r=1 cation/mapping/interactive- map/?ar_a=1&ar_r=1

Contemporary Tools of Geographers It can calculate and study relationships It can provide so many new opportunities (and jobs)

Layers of a GIS Fig. 1-5: A geographic information system (GIS) stores information about a location in several layers. Each layer represents a different category of information.

Contemporary Geography Tools Remote Sensing: this is the acquisition of data about Earth’s surface from a satellite orbiting Earth or other long range methods It uses satellites to scan earth’s surface and transmit images in digital form It can create a photographic map like on Google Earth

Hurricane Irene- Remote Sensing looks-terrifying-space-astronaut-says html looks-terrifying-space-astronaut-says html

Google Map Chicago pizza restaurants

Contemporary Geography Tools GPS- Global Positioning System It is a system that accurately determines the exact/precise position of something on Earth In the US we have over 24 satellites that are in orbit and transmit signals back to earth and can track things It has revolutionized shipping, flying, and driving to your eighth cousin’s house

Geography and other fields Geographers have to use knowledge from many other fields to come to accurate conclusions about issues being addressed such as history, geology, biology, anthropology, political science, math, astronomy, physics, physical science, economics, religion, etc…

To understand the situation in Haiti, we need to understand the outline of faultlines

Evolution of Maps First maps showed you how to get from point A to point B Today they can show so much more- patterns, trends, etc… They also were tangible maps- today we can use electronic maps Maps have really changed

How this stuff helps us! p p gp38 gp38

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