5 THEMES OF GEOGRAPHY

What is Geography? Geography is the study of the Earth, including its features: 1. The effects the land has on the people, animals, and plants that live on it 2. The effects those living things have on Earth 3. The 5 Themes of Geography provides a way to study the Earth and organize the information you learn about it. 4. The 5 themes are Location, Place, Human-Environment Interaction, Movement, and Region.

Location Location refers to where on Earth a place is. Two forms of Location: Absolute Location and Relative Location Absolute Location: is a place’s exact position on Earth. It can be thought of as a place’s “address” on Earth. (Earth doesn’t have streets everywhere.) Geographers use “lines of latitude” and “lines of longitude” to identify an Absolute Location.

Lines of Latitude: circle the Earth in an east-west direction and identify a location’s distance north or south of the Equator. (PARALLEL LINES) Lines of Longitude: run between the poles and measure a location’s distance east or west of the prime meridian. Together a place’s latitude and longitude identify its exact position on Earth. Relative Location: describes where it is in relation to other places, or what it is near. For example, the relative location of Denver, Colorado, could be described as near the Rocky Mountains. A certain school might be described as being near a train station. (People often use relative location when giving directions.)

Place Place refers to the physical and human features of a location. Physical Features include a location’s climate, landforms, bodies of water, vegetation, and animal life. Climate is the average type of weather over a period of time. People who live in location determine its human features. Which include how people live, their occupations, their pastimes, their language, their government, their traditions, the population, and more.

Human-Environment Interaction Human-Environment Interaction deals with how humans interact with or change the environment in which they live and how the environment shapes the way humans live. Many times this theme looks at the effects (both positive and negative) people’s actions have on the earth. Changes that occur because of human-environment interaction usually fit into one of three categories: Adaptation, Modification, or Dependence.

Adaptation: involves making an adjustment of some kind in order to live in a particular environment. For example, people in northern Alaska wear very different clothing from the clothing people wear in Hawaii. Both groups have adapted to the climate in which they live. Modification: involves changing the environment to fit people’s needs. For example, in some steep areas construction workers blast through rock in order to build roads that are flatter than the area they pass through. The workers modify the land to fit the needs of the people living in the area. Dependence: refers to relying on some aspect of the environment in order to live a particular way. For example, people in the Great Lakes area depend on the lakes as a means of transporting goods.

movement Movement, or how people, goods, information, and ideas move from one place to another. All of these movements have, over time, changed various aspects of cultures around the world, such as foods, clothing, languages, goods and services, music, art, occupations, religions, laws/government, economies, and much more. Migration refers to movement from one country or location to another. Immigration refers to moving into another country. Emigration refers to moving out of one country in order to move to another.

People move from place to place for many different reasons People move from place to place for many different reasons. Push Factors and Pull Factors are some of those reasons. Push Factors: are reasons people emigrate. For Example: natural disasters, war, unemployment, and famine. Pull Factors: are reasons people immigrate. For Example: peace, job opportunities, climate, and religious freedom.

Region Region can be defined as an area of land made up of places with specific characteristics in common or a unifying feature. Regions are often classified as physical or cultural. Physical Regions refer to natural divisions on Earth, such as landform regions ( the Great Plains) or vegetation regions (the Corn Belt) Cultural Regions are based on human features, such as language or religion. A particular location may belong to more than one region, and regions vary in size from small (a neighborhood) to large (the Middle East). The identification of places’ regions allows people to make generalizations about and comparisons between the places.