1. Thinking Geographically
Chapter 1
Thinking Geographically

2. An in-depth Social Science
Many people have misconceptions about geography and think of the discipline as simply an exercise in memorizing place names.

3. Where we find Geography?
Geography exist in the global issues receiving attention at this time things such as
Population growth
Terrorism
Cultural diffusion.
Diffusion is defined as the spread of linguistic or cultural practices or innovations within a community or from one community to another.

4. Location, Location, Location
Geography's importance can also be established by looking at community issues, such as:
Water supply
Pollution
Growth management
Housing
Retail
Openings
Closures

5. Thinking Geographically
In addition to political rule, boundaries can be drawn based on various components of culture including language, religion, values.

6. Questions to Ponder
Where would the most desirable places to live be located?
What impacts would this population increase cause?

7. Every Story Can be approached from a Geographers Perspective
Consider natural events and natural disasters. Do humans choose to live in harm’s way?

8. Spatial analysis
Geography by its nature is a spatial science. Geographers therefore study space in order to locate the distribution of people and objects. Geographers ask two main questions, “where” and “why.” Spatial analysis is concerned with analyzing regularities achieved through interaction. Regularities result in a distinctive distribution of a feature. Distribution has three properties:
Density
Concentration
Pattern

9. World Political Boundaries (2004)
Fig. 1-1: National political boundaries are among the most significant elements of the cultural landscape

10. How Geographers Address Location
Maps
Early mapmaking
Map scale
Projection
Land Ordinance of 1785
Contemporary Tools
GIS
Remote sensing
GPS

11. Ptolemy’s view of the world c150AD

12. Old Islamic Maps
Fulfilling the duties of formal prayers and the pilgrimage, Muslims need to find the direction and routes leading to al Ka'ba from virtually any spot on the globe. The Ka'ba is the house of Abraham in Mecca. And it is the point at which Muslims must face when they perform prayers.
Left - map of the world in 1154 by Idrissi
Right - map of the world made by the Muslim geographer Jihani in the 10th century of the Christian era.

13. Maps of the Marshall Islands
Fig. 1-2: A Polynesian “stick chart” depicts patterns of waves on the sea route between two South Pacific islands. Modern maps show the locations of these Marshall Islands.

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

15. Examples of Map Projections
Mollweid - Equal Area Map

16. Map Projections
Conformal Maps: Maps that distort area but keep shapes intact.
Ex. Mercator Maps
Useful for determining distance on the surface of the earth, but greatly exaggerates the landforms around the polar regions.
All lines of latitude and longitude meet at right angles.
This distorts the polar regions.
Mercator maps are part of the cylindrical class (shows true direction but loses distance).
Equal Area Projection: tries to space out the distortion equally.
Keeps the size or amount of area intact but distorts shapes.
Ex. Goodes-Homsoline-breaks up the globe into continents and separates the oceans.

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

18. 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.

19. GPS

20. Uniqueness of Places and Regions
Place: Unique location of a feature
Place names
Site
Situation
Mathematical location
Regions: Areas of unique characteristics
Cultural landscape
Types of regions
Regional integration of culture
Cultural ecology

21. Site: Lower Manhattan Island
Fig. 1-6: Site of lower Manhattan Island, New York City. There have been many changes to the area over the last 200 years.

22. Situation: Singapore
Fig. 1-7: Singapore is situated at a key location for international trade.

23. Djibouti & Lahore

24. World Geographic Grid
Fig. 1-8: The world geographic grid consists of meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude. The prime meridian (0º) passes through Greenwich, England.

25. World Time Zones
Fig. 1-9: The world’s 24 standard time zones are often depicted using the Mercator projection.

26. Election 2000: Regional Differences
Fig. 1-10: Presidential election results by county and state illustrate differences in regional voting patterns.

27. Formal and Functional Regions
Fig. 1-11: The state of Iowa is an example of a formal region; the areas of influence of various television stations are examples of functional regions.

28. Vernacular Regions
Fig. 1-12: A number of factors are often used to define the South as a vernacular region, each of which identifies somewhat different boundaries.

29. Vernacular Region - Kurdistan

30. Spatial Association at Various Scales
Fig. 1-13: Death rates from cancer in the U.S., Maryland, and Baltimore show different patterns that can identify associations with different factors.

31. What is Culture?
Your book defines culture as a body of customary believes, material trades, and social forms that together constitute the distinct tradition of a group of people.
The Latin root of culture is cultus, which means to care for. Example Agriculture (term for growing things)

32. Cultural Ecology
Geographers also consider environmental factors as well as cultural factors, when looking at regions.
This is cultural ecology.
Basically, this is the geographic study of human-environmental relations.
In the 19th Century – some geographers said that human actions were caused by environmental conditions. (environmental determinism)
This is rejected by modern geographers that say some environmental conditions limit human actions. (possibilism)
Of course now we are realizing that humans can actually adjust their environment. (For good or bad)

33. World Climate Regions
Fig. 1-14: The modified Köppen system divides the world into five main climate regions.

34. Geomorphology
This is the branch of geology that studies the characteristics and configuration and evolution of rocks and land forms.

35. Environmental Modification in the Netherlands
Fig. 1-15: Polders and dikes have been used for extensive environmental modification in the Netherlands.

36. How have the Dutch modified their environment?
The Dutch have modified their environment through the construction of polders to reclaim land that is below sea level (mostly use for agriculture, but also some housing and airport construction) and dikes to hold back the North Sea from flooding much of the country (see figure 1-11 on p. 21).

37. Environmental Modification in Florida
View of Miami Beach
The barrier Island - Orchid Island – in the town I grew up in.
Fig. 1-16: Straightening the Kissimmee River has had many unintended side effects.

38. How have Floridians modified their environment?
Built seawalls and jetties to fight erosion along the barrier islands (actually causing erosion along the down current side of the islands).
The Everglades was a shallow fresh water river flowing south from Lake Okeechobee. In the late 1940’s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers drained the northern 1/3 for sugar cane production and made the southern a National Park.
They also built a series of levees, canals, and pumping stations to protect the sugar cane fields and south Florida cities like Miami from flooding during wet summers. Most fresh water no longer reached the National Park, but was pumped out to sea and the remaining fish began to die from high levels of mercury, phosphorous, and other contaminants.

39. Similarity of Different Places
Scale: From local to global
Globalization of economy
Globalization of culture
Space: Distribution of features
Distribution
Gender and ethnic diversity in space
Connections between places
Spatial interaction
Diffusion

40. Globalization of the Economy
Fig. 1-17: The Denso corporation is headquartered in Japan, but it has regional headquarters and other facilities in North America and Western Europe.

41. Globalization of culture
What are the major Elements of culture?
Customary beliefs
Social customs
Material traits
Affects of globalization of culture
Fewer local differences
Enhanced communications
Unequal access
Difficulty in maintaining of local traditions
There is also globalization of environment
Sensitive and insensitive environmental modification

42. Density, Concentration, and Pattern
Housing density in Hong Kong
Fig. 1-18: The density, concentration, and pattern (of houses in this example) may each vary in an area or landscape.

43. Density and Concentration of Baseball Teams, 1952–2000
Fig. 1-19: The changing distribution of North American baseball teams illustrates the differences between density and concentration.

44. Space-Time Compression, 1492–1962
Fig. 1-20: The times required to cross the Atlantic, or orbit the Earth, illustrate how transport improvements have shrunk the world.

45. Spatial Interaction
Interdependence exists among places based upon the degree of spatial interaction.
Spatial interaction is established through the movement of people, ideas, and objects between regions.
For example, Travel has changed considerably over the last 500 years.
In the past, most forms of interaction among cultural groups required the physical movement of settlers, explores, and plunders from one place to another.
Today travel by car or plane is much faster and communication is instantaneous.
When places are connected to each other through a network, geographers say there is a spatial interaction between them.

46. Airline Route Networks
Fig. 1-21: Delta Airlines, like many others, has configured its route network in a “hub and spoke” system.

47. Diffusion
Diffusion is the process by which a characteristic spreads across space from one place to another over time.
The place of origin of the characteristic is called the hearth.
For example – US, Canadian, and many Latin cultures can be traced back to the European Hearth.
There are two basic types of diffusion:
Relocation diffusion
Expansion diffusion
Expansion Diffusion includes-
Hierarchical diffusion
Contagious diffusion
Stimulus diffusion

48. AIDS Diffusion in the U.S., 1981–2001
Fig. 1-22: New AIDS cases were concentrated in three nodes in They spread through the country in the 1980s, but declined in the original nodes in the late 1990s.