1. Chapter 1: Basic Concepts
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Chapter 1: Basic Concepts
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The Cultural Landscape:
An Introduction to Human Geography

2. Taking Notes
In your notebook, you will take notes from the PowerPoint and from your readings in each chapter. The following is a kind of Cornell Note-taking method. You do not have to follow this method of notetaking; however your sophomore, junior, and senior social studies classes do require it, so you might want to start getting used to it. The PowerPoint notes go on the left hand side of each page, and your reading notes will go on the right hand side of each page. The PPT notes and your reading notes about the same topic/concept should align with each other on the page. Any unknown vocabulary and its definition will go at the bottom of the page.
If you have any questions, me. I will get back to you as quickly as I can. If you do not hear from me within two days, send me a reminder.

3. Thorough Reading
Have you ever read something where you are ten pages into it and have no idea what you have just read? I know I have, and it is so frustrating because I just had to start over. We do not want to do that here (or anywhere as far as that is concerned) because it is a waste of our time. I don’t know about you, but I would rather be doing something else than reading the same thing over, and over, and over again.

4. Thorough Reading--Continued
So the way you get it done the first time is by having a strategy—or in this case, several strategies. The following strategies have been used by many of us over the years, but Salisbury University in Maryland put them together in a nice checklist that you will find along with explanations at the following link

5. Thorough Reading Or—I have provided a summary on the next few pages
7 CRITICAL READING STRATEGIES
1.  Previewing: Learning about a text before really reading it.
A. How it is organized ? B. What you can learn from the head notes or other introductory material? C. Skim to get an overview of the content and organization D. Identify the rhetorical situation.
 2.  Contextualizing: Placing a text in its historical, biographical, and cultural contexts.
When you read a text, you read it through the lens of your own experience. Your understanding of the words on the page and their significance is informed by what you have come to know and value from living in a particular time and place. This will not figure so much in Human Geography because much of our material is current.

6. Thorough Reading
3.  Questioning to understand and remember: Asking questions about the content. (History and Science books are great for turning the titles of each section into a question. Then you can answer the question as you read, and you won’t be wasting your time). Especially in difficult academic readings, you will understand the material better and remember it longer if you write a question for every paragraph or brief section. Make sure you answer it in your own words.
4.  Reflecting on challenges to your beliefs and values: Examining your personal responses.
The reading that you do for this class might challenge your attitudes, your unconsciously held beliefs, or your positions on current issues. As you read a text for the first time, mark an X in the margin at each point where you feel a personal challenge to your attitudes, beliefs, or status. Make a brief note in your notes about what you feel or about what in the text created the challenge. Now look again at the places you marked in the text where you felt personally challenged. What patterns do you see?  

7. Thorough Reading
*5.  Outlining and summarizing: Identifying the main ideas and restating them in your own words.
Outlining and summarizing are especially helpful strategies for understanding the content and structure of a reading selection. The main ideas form the backbone, the strand that holds the various parts and pieces of the text together. If you take good notes as you read, you should not have to reread the text; you will be able to study from your notes.
-Summarizing begins with outlining, but instead of merely listing the main ideas, a summary recomposes them to form a new text. Whereas outlining depends on a close analysis of each paragraph, summarizing also requires creative synthesis. Putting ideas together again -- in your own words and in a condensed form -- shows how reading critically can lead to deeper understanding of any text. 

8. Thorough Reading
6.  Evaluating an argument: Testing the logic of a text as well as its credibility and emotional impact. (We will not have to deal with this too much—but you may find some writer bias; it is difficult to find a written manuscript without some bias).
7.  Comparing and contrasting related readings: Exploring likenesses and differences between texts to understand them better. You will find as we read ongoing chapters in the book how they much of what we read will relate back to a previous chapter. So do not skip a chapter or you may find yourself struggling later on.

9. Thorough Reading
As you read your book, do not skip those sections in the front that tell you about your book. The entire format and logic behind that format is explained. This will make finding information much easier on you in the long run. So look over that table of context to see the types of things which are covered in each chapter; notice that each chapter begins and ends with a case study, has four sections referred to as key issues, vocabulary referred to as key terms, and a higher thinking skills section “Thinking Geographically”. The book, furthermore, has a map appendix, key terms section, and an index (do you remember how to use one?). If not, relearn.
Internet access will make this class much easier on you; however, if you do not have it at home, plan accordingly. The public library offers free Internet. Most restaurant now offer free Internet. During the school year, you may plan a couple of days a week to arrive early and stay late to use a computer in my room or to visit the public library. The Internet is essential to success in the modern classroom.

10. Defining Geography
Your notes should begin with the introduction even before Key Issue one.
I believe all of the vocabulary words in here are also included on your vocabulary list. However, if you find a word here that is NOT on your vocabulary list, add that word to your vocabulary words. Also, let me know, so I can make adjustments to the list.
Word coined by Eratosthenes
Geo = Earth
Graphia = writing
Geography thus means “earth writing”

11. Contemporary Geography
Geographers ask where and why
Location and distribution are important terms
Geographers are concerned with the tension between globalization and local diversity
A division: physical geography and human geography

12. Geography’s Vocabulary
Place
Region
Scale
Space
Connections

13. Maps Two purposes As reference tools As communications tools
To find locations, to find one’s way
As communications tools
To show the distribution of human and physical features

14. Early Map Making
Figure 1-2

15. Maps: Scale Types of map scale Projection Ratio/fraction Written
Graphic
Projection
Distortion
Shape
Distance
Relative size
Direction

16. Figure 1-4

17. U.S. Land Ordinance of 1785 Township and range system
Township = 6 sq. miles on each side
North–south lines = principal meridians
East–west lines = base lines
Range
Sections

18. Township and Range System
Figure 1-5

19. Contemporary Tools Geographic Information Science (GIScience)
Global Positioning Systems (GPS)
Remote sensing
Geographic information systems (GIS)
Figure 1-7

20. A Mash-up
Figure 1-8

21. Place: Unique Location of a Feature
Place names
Toponym
Site
Situation
Mathematical location

22. Place: Mathematical Location
Location of any place can be described precisely by meridians and parallels
Meridians (lines of longitude)
Ex. Prime meridian
Parallels (lines of latitude)
Ex. The Equator

23. The Cultural Landscape
A unique combination of social relationships and physical processes
Each region = a distinctive landscape
People = the most important agents of change to Earth’s surface

24. Types of Regions Formal (uniform) regions Functional (nodal) regions
Example: Montana
Functional (nodal) regions
Example: the circulation area of a newspaper
Vernacular (cultural) regions
Example: the American South

25. Culture Origin from the Latin cultus, meaning “to care for”
Two aspects:
What people care about
Beliefs, values, and customs
What people take care of
Earning a living; obtaining food, clothing, and shelter

26. Cultural Ecology
The geographic study of human–environment relationships
Two perspectives:
Environmental determinism
Possibilism
Modern geographers generally reject environmental determinism in favor of possibilism

27. Physical Processes Climate Vegetation Soil Landforms
*These four processes are important for understanding human activities

28. Modifying the Environment
Examples
The Netherlands
Polders
The Florida Everglades
Figure 1-21

29. Scale Globalization Economic globalization Cultural globalization
Transnational corporations
Cultural globalization
A global culture?

30. Space: Distribution of Features
Distribution—three features
Density
Arithmetic
Physiological
Agricultural
Concentration
Pattern

31. Space–Time Compression
Figure 1-29

32. Spatial Interaction Transportation networks
Electronic communications and the “death” of geography?
Distance decay
Figure 1-30

33. Diffusion
The process by which a characteristic spreads across space and over time
Hearth = source area for innovations
Two types of diffusion
Relocation
Expansion
Three types: hierarchical, contagious, stimulus

34. Relocation Diffusion: Example
Figure 1-31

35. The End.
Up next: Population