Welcome to AP Human Geography!Today many elementary and middle schools no longer teach geographical reasoning, so our first unit will help introduce us to spatial thinking and reasoning. To help us get a jump start into thinking spatially there are a few assignments to be completed over the summer. I would recommend doing these assignments towards the end of the summer, so the material is fresh. 1.) Geography in Review:

a. Read the section “Geography in Review” (the last four pages in this packet). It discusses the basics of physical geography and human geography. Hopefully some of these ideas/concepts should be familiar from earlier studies of geography in social studies courses.

b. As you are reading, mark the text using the following system: underline key points/main ideas, place a ‘!’ next to anything that surprises you, and place a ‘?’ next to anything you do not understand. Marking the text will help you to determine where you need to go back and re-read or ask questions when we return to school.

c. Also, feel free to write ideas/questions in the margin to help locate information in the text.

d. Bring your reading on Thursday, August 25 th .

If you have any questions throughout the summer please feel free to email me at rtortolero@bcps.orgI hope you have a great summer! Mr. T P.S. -- Some helpful supplies for Human Geography are as follows: a spiral notebook (for your chapter notes), color pencils (for maps), index cards (for vocabulary), and a highlighter.

Geography in ReviewThe following reading is a compilation of various resources we will be using this year. It discusses the basics of geography and human geography. Hopefully some of these ideas/concepts should be familiar from earlier studies of geography is social studies course. As you are reading, mark the text using the following system: underline key points/main ideas, place a ‘!’ next to anything that surprises you, and place a ‘?’ next to anything you do not understand. Marking the text will help you to determine where you need to go back and re-read or ask questions when we return to school. Also, feel free to write ideas/questions in the margin to help locate information in the text. Human Geography

Human geographers study people and places. The field of human geography focuses on how people make places, how we organize space and society, how we interact with each other in places and across space, and how we make sense of others and ourselves on a local, regional, and world-wide scale.

Advances in transportation and communication technologies are making people and places more interconnected. One hundred years ago the fastest modes

of transportation were the steamship, the railroad, and the horse and buggy! Today, we can cross the globe in record time, with easy access to automobiles, airplanes, and ships. Aspects of popular culture, such as fashion and architecture, are making many people and places look more alike. Despite all these changes encouraging us to be more alike, our world still encompasses a multitude of ways in which people identify themselves and others. Understanding and explaining the diversity is the mission of human geography.

Globalization is a set of processes that are increasing interaction, deepening relationships, and heightening interdependence without regard to country borders. It is also a set of outcomes that are felt from these global processes- outcomes that are unevenly distributed and differently manifested throughout the world. Today we see globalization and its impacts on local culture in many parts of the world. For what happens on a global scale, affects the local, regional, and national scales as well. Some argue that understanding globalization is critical to understanding the world today; while others argue it is over hyped.Geographic Questions

Geographers study human phenomena such as language, religion, and identity, and they also study physical phenomena, such as landforms, climate, and environmental change. Geographers also examine the interactions between humans and the environment. Human geography is the study of human phenomena on Earth, and physical geography is the study of physical phenomena on Earth. Geographers are trained in studying both the human and physical worlds, but most focus on one more than the other. We ask similar questions but focus on different phenomena.

Geographer Marvin Mikesell defined geography in shorthand as the “why of where.” Why and how do things come together in certain places to produce particular outcomes? Why something’s are found in certain places but not in others? To what extend do things in one place influence those in other places? To these question, we add “so what”? Why does it matter that things are different across the world, and what does that mean for the people? Questions such as these are the core to geographic inquiry and they are of crucial importance in any effort to make sense of our world.

If geography deals with some many aspects of our world, ranging from people and places to coastlines and climates, what do the various facets of this wide-ranging discipline have in common? The answer lies in a term that both human and physical geographers use: SPATIAL. All geographers are interested in the spatial arrangement of places and phenomena, how they are laid out, organized, and arranged on the Earth, and how they appear on the landscape. Mapping spatial distributions of phenomenon is typically the first step to understanding it. By looking at a map of how something is distributed across space, a geographer can raise questions about how the arrangement came about,

what processes create and sustain the particular pattern or the distributions, and what relationships exist between different places and things. Geography, and being geographically literate, is much more than memorizing places on a map. In this sense, the disciplines of geography and history have much in common. History is not merely memorizing dates. To understand history is appreciate how events, circumstances, and ideas came together at particular times to produce certain outcomes. Knowledge of how events have developed over time is thought to be critical to understanding who we are and where we are going. Understanding change over time is critically important, and understanding change across space is equally as important. Human geographers use a spatial perspective as they study a multitude of phenomena ranging from political elections and urban shantytowns to religious unrest and folk music. The five themes were developed from the spatial perspective of geography. Five Themes of Geography

Location. Highlights how the geographical position of people and things on the Earth’s surface affects what happens and why. A concern with location underlies almost all geographic work, for location helps to establish the context within which events and processes are situated.

Absolute Location: A latitude and longitude (a global location) or a street address (local location).   -- Florence, AL is 34o46' North latitude and 87 o40' West longitude

--Paris, France is 48o51' North latitude and 2 o20' East longitude Relative Location: Is described by landmarks, time, direction or distance from one place to another and may associate a particular place with another.

Human Environment. A spatial perspective invites consideration of the realization among phenomena in individual places, including relationships between humans and the physical world. There are three key concepts to human/environmental interaction: (1) Humans adapt on the environment, (2) Humans modify the environment, and (3) Humans depend to the environment.Region. Phenomena are not evenly distributed on the surface of the Earth. Instead, features tend to be concentrated in particular areas, which we call regions. Geographers use fieldwork, qualitative, and quantitative methods to develop insightful descriptions of the different regions. There are many ways to describe regions, some of the more common are as follows. Formal regions are those defined by governmental or administrative boundaries, for example the United States, Reisterstown, MD or Brazil- since these all of universally recognized boundaries. Functional regions are those defined by a function or service, for example the Baltimore Sun or a local television news show, these are used by a more localized area. A perceptual region is more loosely defined by people’s perception, for example the South, the states that are considered in this region can differ due to what people’s perception for these Southern states are.

Place. All places on the Earth have unique human and physical characteristics, and one of the purposes of geography is to study the special character and meaning of places. People develop a sense of place by infusing a place with meaning and emotion, by remembering important events that occurred in a place, or by labeling a place with certain character. Since we experience and give meaning to places, we can have a feeling of “home,” when we are in certain places.Movement. Refers to the mobility of people, goods, and ideas across the surface of the planet. Movement is an expression of the inter-connectedness of places. Spatial interaction between places depends on the distance among places, the accessibility of places, and the transportation and communication connectivity among places. Interactions of many kinds shape the human geography of the world, and understanding these interactions is an important aspect of the global spatial order.

Cultural Landscape

In addition to the five themes, landscape is a core element of geography. Geographers use the term landscape to refer to the material character of a place, the complex natural features, human structures, and other tangible objects that give a place a particular form. Human geographers are particularly concerned with the cultural landscape, the visible imprint of human activity on the landscape. Carl Sauer, is the geographer most closely identified with this concept, he believed that cultural landscapes are comprised of the “forms of superimposed on the physical landscape” by human activity.

Any cultural landscape has layers of imprints from years of human activity. As successive occupiers arrive, they bring their own technological and cultural traditions- and transform the landscape accordingly. Yet successive occupiers can also be influenced by what they find when they arrive and leave some of it in place. This term sequent occupance is used to refer to such cultural succession and its lasting imprint.

Mathematical Location

The location of any place on the Earth’s surface can be described precisely by meridians and parallels, two sets of imaginary arcs drawn in a grid pattern on Earth’s surface. A meridian is an arc drawn between the North and South poles. A parallel is a circle drawn around the globe parallel to the equator and at right angles to the meridians.

The location of each meridian is identified on Earth’s surface according to a numbering system known as longitude. The meridian that passes through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England, is 0° longitude, also called the prime meridian. The meridian on the opposite side of the globe from the prime meridian

is 180° longitude. All other meridians have numbers between 0° and 180° east or west, depending if they are either east or west of the prime meridian. For example New York City is located at 74° west longitude, while Lahore, Pakistan at 74° east longitude.

Longitude plays an important role in calculating time. Earth makes a complete rotation every 24 hours and as a sphere is divided into 360° of longitude. Therefore, traveling 15° east or west is the equivalent of graveling to a place that is 1 hour earlier or later than the starting point (360° divided by 24 hours equals 15°).

The number system to indicate the location of a parallel is called latitude. The equator is 0° latitude, the North Pole is 90° north latitude, and the South Pole 90° south latitude. New York City is located at 41° north latitude and Wellington, New Zealand at 41° south latitude. Latitude and Longitude are used together to determine absolute location.

The mathematical location of a place can be designated more precisely by dividing each degree into 60 minutes (‘) and each minute into 60 seconds (“). For examples, the official mathematical location of Denver, Colorado is 39°44’ north latitude and 104° 59’ west longitude. The state capitol building is located at 39° 42’52” north latitude and 104°59’04” west longitude. GPS systems typically divide degrees into decimal fractions rather than minutes and seconds. ScaleMap scale is the ratio of the distance on the map to the distance on the ground, where both are measured in the same units. Scale can be represented in three different ways: Representative Fraction. The map distance to ground distance ratio is written as a simple fraction (e.g., 1/50,000) or ratio (1:50,000). In this example, it simply means that one unit (inches, centimeters, etc.) on the map represents 50,000 of the same units on the ground. Verbal Scale. Words instead of numbers are used to express the scale. The verbal scale can thus be thought of as a “translation” of the representative fraction into words. For example, the scale of 1:100,000 can also be expressed as “one centimeter to one kilometer,” or “one centimeter represents one kilometer.” This is because there are 100 centimeters in 1 meter, and 1,000 meters in 1 kilometer.

cm m cm100 ____ X 1,000 ____ = 100,000 _____

m km kmMultiply 100 by 1,000 and cancel the m’s on top and bottom and you get 100,000 centimeters in a kilometer. Therefore, in a map with a scale of 1:100,000, one centimeter on the map represents 100,000 centimeters, or one kilometer, on the ground. Likewise, a verbal scale of “one inch to one mile” translates to a representative fraction of 1:63,360 because there are 63,360 inches in a mile:

Inches Feet inches12 ______ X 5,280 ______= 63,360 _______Foot mile mile

Graphic Scale. This normally appears as a line or bar divided into conveniently numbered segments. You can think if this as a picture of the words in the verbal scale. In the following example, 1 inch represents 1 mile (use a ruler to test it out!). Scale in Maps. When viewing scale on a map, you can actually see a different spatial process at work. Below are two maps of Baltimore City. Map A is an example of a small scale map, it appears to be a “zoomed out” map. Map B is an example of a large scale map, it appears to be “zoomed in” map. Both show the same area but at different scales. MAP A: Baltimore City MAP B: Baltimore City (Inner

Harbor)