1. AP Human Geography Parkview High School

2.  What is Geography?  Geography is a representation of the whole known world together with the phenomena which are contained therein  Ptolemy, Geographia, 2 nd century A.D.  Definition  Scientific study of the location of people and activities across Earth, and the reasons for their distribution

3.  Historians  When and why?  Geographers  Where and Why?

4.  Globalization – cultural and economic interaction amongst the world  Local Diversity – cultural traditions and economic practices

5.  Eratosthenes – first to use geography  Geo = “Earth” Graphy = “to write”  Physical Geography  Where and why natural forces occur  Human Geography  Where and why human activities occur

6.  Physical Geography  Human Geography

7.  Place  Specific point on Earth distinguished by a particular characteristic  Region  Area of Earth distinguished by a distinctive combination of cultural and physical features  Scale  Relationship between portion of Earth being studied and the Earth as a whole  Space  Physical gap or interval between two objects  Connections  Relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space

8.  How do Geographers Describe Where Things Are?

9.  Definition: two-dimensional or flat scale model of Earth’s surface  Cartography – science of map making  2 Purposes  1. tool for storing reference material  2. tool for communicating geographic information

10.  Earliest surviving maps – clay tablets from Babylon (2300B.C.)  Miletus – port in Turkey – became a center for geographic thought  Ancient Greeks – Aristotle(first to accept that Earth was spherical) and Eratosthenes (map that was within.5% accurate and had climatic zones

11.  Roman Times  Greek Ptolemy traveled the Roman Empire – 8- volume “Guide to Geography”  Codified mapmaking – more fanciful maps  Outside Europe  Phei Hsiu(A.D. 276) – father of Chinese cartography  Ibn-Battutah (1304-1368) 30 years and 75,000 miles of travels – mapped Mediterranean and Asia  Age of Exploration  Columbus & Magellan

12.  3 Representations  What is Appropriate?  Depends on the information being portrayed  Downtown area – 1:10,000  State – 1:10,000,000  World – 1:100,000,000

13.  Definition – method of transferring locations on Earth’s surface to a flat map  Result of being flat = distortion of some type: shape, distance, relative size and direction  Mercator  Shape distorted very little, direction is constant  Area is grossly distorted toward the Poles  Robinson  Useful for information across the oceans  Land areas are much smaller

16.  Western land in early United States divided into townships and ranges  Township – square 6 miles on each side  Divided into 36 square mile sections  Each section divided into 160 acres – then sold to pioneers  Explains – How states, streets, farms etc got their shape and location

18.  Geographic Information Science  Study helping geographers create more accurate and complex maps, can also measure changes  GIS (Geographic Information System)  The computer system that can capture, store, query, analyze, and display geographic data – each type of information is stored as a “layer”  Remote Sensing  The acquisition of the data from satellites  GPS (Global Positioning System)  device used for navigation from aircraft, ships, now common in cars