World Regional Geography Instructor: Afton Clarke-Sather TA: Stephanie Booker

Today in Geography Obama sits down with someone clearly uncomfortable in his chair AFP Getty Images

Today in Geography Protests in Xinjiang 705px-China_Xinjiang.svg.png

Please fill out an index care with: 1. Name, age, hometown 2. Major ( and minor / concentration) + year in school 3. Academic Strengths (2 - 3) 4. Academic Weaknesses (2 - 3) 5. Why are you taking this course? 6. Your expectations of the course? 7. Travel Experience

Our Plan for Today Course Logistics Course Webpage What is world regional geography? Regionalization activity

Okay, lets take a break and look over the syllabus and webpage

How Geographers think

image: NASA

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Abstraction Abstraction is how we tell Music from noise Ebola from a head cold A functional bridge from just some stuff going over a river.

Abstraction The world contains too much information for us to process Abstraction is the process of how we make sense of this world by selecting what is important What we remove in abstraction is a necessary choice This choice shapes how we see the world

Geographic Abstraction Geographical Abstraction is the process of using geographical tools or lenses to make sense out of what we see in the world. So what are geographical tools?

What is Geography? geo--earth graphy--writing Geography=Earth Writing logy--study Geology=earth study (rock, this is not what we’re doing)

What is Geography Everything that economist ignore--Gary Gaile What geographers do Geography is the study of the Earth as created by natural forces and modified by human action.

What is Geography Working Definition A process of abstraction which is concerned with the location of human and physical phenomena and the spatial relationships between those phenomena.

Tools of Abstraction Maps Regions Scale Space

Maps

Maps are representations of the world They are not the world

Maps must include A projection (how is the round earth made flat) Data (data what do you display) Symbology (how are things represented)

Map Projections Map projection is used to portray all or part of the round Earth on a flat surface. This cannot be done without some distortion. Distortions: conformality, shape, distance, direction, scale, and area Projections minimize distortions in some of these properties at the expense of maximizing errors in others.

Cartograms

Symbology How we represent data has an effect on what people think about it. =225152&title=Snoutbreak-'09---The-Last-100-Days =225152&title=Snoutbreak-'09---The-Last-100-Days

Maps project a point of view

Regions Formal--A area sharing a common characteristic (e.g. the corn belt, the bible belt) Functional--Regions that are defined and classified by by patterns of spatial interaction or spatial organization. (e.g. Newspaper distribution, state government) Vernacular Region--a region that exists because we say it does (e.g. the South)

Scale A level of abstraction or representation of reality In cartography: the relationship between the distances show on the maps and the actual distances on the earth’s surface. e.g. resolution, relationships, level of detail In human geography: a partitioning of space within which human or social processes take on particular characteristics, i.e., levels at which social processes are occurring -- 2 people is a fight, 3 or more is a brawl, … riot, … war

The Interdependence of Geographic Scales Geographic Scales - Global Overlap World Regions States Supranational Organizations - European Union (EU) - North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) - Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)

Space Spt Space tells us where things are, but not all things space can mean many different things

What you should now know after this lecture What Geographic Abstraction is What differentiates if from other forms of abstraction The use of and problems with Maps Regions Scale Space