 Key Issue #2: Why is Each Point on Earth Unique? AP Human Geography

Place: Unique Location of a Feature  Sense of Place: Everything place is unique  When you think of “home,” what do you see?  Identifying Location  Geographers use four ways to identify location (the position that something occupies on Earth’s surface)  Place Names  Site  Situation  Mathematical Location

Place Names (a.k.a. Toponyms)  Commemorative  Person, religion, ancient history (Jamesville)  Out West  Pioneers descriptions—Eureka, Disaster Point  Nature  Stone Mountain  Changes  Former names, Fall of USSR

Site  The physical character of a place  Can include (humans can modify characteristics of a site)  Climate  Topography Manhattan, 1884  Water sources  Elevation  Vegetation  Soil  Latitude Modern Manhattan

Situation  The location of a place relative to other places  Importance  Finding an unfamiliar place and understanding why it’s important  Many locations are important because they are accessible to other places Why was Constantinople’s situation important?

Mathematical Location  Description of a place using  Meridians of Longitude —Prime Meridian  Parallels of Latitude —Equator

Telling Time from Longitude  Each time zone ~15 degrees of longitude  1884-the local jeweler would keep time until railroads

Regions—an area of Earth defined by one or more distinctive characteristics  Unified character comes from a combination of cultural (language & religion), economic (agriculture & industry), and physical features (climate & vegetation)  Cultural Landscape -how humans have impacted the physical landscape  Carl Sauer—an area fashioned from nature by a cultural group  We “people” are the most important agents of change on Earth’s surface  Agree or Disagree?

The Two Scales of Region  Several neighboring countries that share important features  Latin America  Many localities within a country  The “South”

Formal Region  aka Uniform or Homogeneous Regions  An area within which everyone shares in common one or more distinctive characteristics  Language, economics, climate, etc.

Functional Region  aka Nodal Region  An area organized around a node or focal point  Central point, connecting point where lines/pathways cross  The dominant characteristic diminishes in importance as you move away from the node

Vernacular Region  aka Perceptual Region  A place that people believe exists as a part of their cultural identity  Mental Map  Your internal representation of a place  How do you think your “mental map” of this school will change by the end of the school year?

Vernacular Region

Spatial Association  Explains why regions have distinctive features—such as higher cancer rates  Example—Baltimore, MD has higher levels of cancer due to lower income and education  Or regions near factories may have higher cancer rates Risk of Mortality Map

Regional Integration of Culture  Definition of Culture  The body of customary beliefs, material traits, and social forms that together constitute the tradition of a group of people  Cult vs. Cultivate  Cult —to adore or worship something; “to care about”  Cultivate —to nurse or look after something; “to take care of”

What People Care About

What People Take Care Of  MDCs (Most Developed Countries) and LDCs (Less Developed Countries)

An Interesting Perspective

Cultural Ecology  The geographic study of human-environment relationships  Environmental Determinism  climate was major determinant of civilization  Possibilism  people have the ability to adjust to their environment  Resources