Where and Why There?

USA &

Canada

Latin America

Northern Africa

Southern

Africa

Eastern Europe & Russia

Western Europe

SW

&

Cen

tral

A

sia South Asia

East Asia

Oceanic

Central Europe

• Geographers use many

methods to study and teach

about human activities on

earth..…one method is to use

“The 5 Themes of Geography”

– Location

– Place

– Region

– Movement

– Human Environment Interaction

A variety of “Geographic Perspectives”

• The Cultural Landscape approach (aka Regional Studies)– Paul Vidal de la Blache– Jean Brunhes– Carl Sauer

– Each landscape is a combination of social relationships and physical processes.

Cultural Ecology

• The geographic study of human-environment relationships is known as cultural ecology.

• This is often referred to as HEI (Remember human environment interaction from the Five themes of Geography???)

Cultural Ecology lead to many questions…

Does the environment impact

human actions?

Environmental DeterministsThink So!

• German Geographers Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) & Carl Ritter (1779-1859) promoters of environmental determinism

They theorized that geography was the study of how the physical environment caused human activities.

These peeps thought so too:• Friedrich Ratzel• Ellen Churchill Semple• Ellsworth Huntington

Do human actions impact the

environment?

Possiblists Think…“Yes”!

• Carl Sauer’s theory that states …… ……….the physical environment may set limits on human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to the physical environment.

Are they both right?• Humans and the environment

affect each other!

• Three key concepts: 1. Humans adapt to the environment.2. Humans modify the environment.3. Humans depend on the environment.

Environmental Impacts on Humans

• Settlement Patterns

• (why don’t more people live in the Sahara Desert, or in Antarctica?)

• Humans cannot live in the five toos:• Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too steep

Environmental Impacts on Humans

• Housing Materials

(bricks, bamboo, lumber, ice, dirt & mud)

Environmental Impacts on Humans

• Agricultural Activity (rice, wheat, potatoes, corn, coffee)

Environmental Impacts on Humans• Types of Recreation

(camping, sunbathing, fishing, skiing)

Environmental Impacts on Humans

• Transportation Patterns (car, boat, train, airplane)

Now let’s flip-flop…..

Human Impacts on the Environment

• Canals (Suez, Panama)

• Dams (Aswan, Hoover)

• Reservoirs (Nasser, Mead)

• Irrigation (Aral Sea)

Human Impacts on the Environment

• Agricultural terracing (China, SE Asia)

• Polders (Netherlands)• Deforestation (Brazil, D.R.C., Malaysia)

• Desertification

(Africa, Asia)

GREEN WALL OF CHINA

Human Impacts on the Environment• Acid Rain (Germany,

China, Eastern U.S.A.)

• Pollution (Mexico City, Chernobyl, oil spills)

Chernobyl

Environmental Determinism or Possiblism?

Either way…the environment and human actions shape the regions

that exist on earth!

Regardless of the perspective all geographers use a collection of basic concepts to understand

the activities of this planet!

Location• Geographers consider

four ways to identify location…or the position that something occupies on earth:

– Place

– Site

– Situation – (Relative location)

– Mathematical location– (Absolute location)

Place• What do you think when you imagine

China? Japan? Russia? Saudi Arabia?

• Place is unique collection of features that contribute to a locations distinctiveness.

Place Names (Toponyms)• Nearly every place, both inhabited and uninhabited have names.

• Named for a person– George Washington – 1 state, 31 counties, dozens of cities – including capital

– V.I. Lenin – Leningrad– Queen Victoria – Victoria Falls, Lake Victoria, Victoria BC – James Monroe – Monrovia, Liberia

• Associated with religion– St. Louis, St. Paul, San Diego

Vatican City, Mecca, Jerusalem

• Indicate the origin of the settlers – N. America & Australia British – Brazil Portuguese – Latin America Spanish– South Africa Dutch & British

• Represent the physical environment – Virginia Beach, Salt Lake City, Interlaken, Volgograd, Amsterdam

Place Names• Places can change names.

• New Amsterdam New York• St. Petersburg Leningrad St. Petersburg• Byzantium Constantinople Istanbul • Bombay Mumbai

• Longest community name in the world– Welsh town of – Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

– 58 letter name that means “the Church of St. Mary’s in the grove of the white hazelnut tree near the rapid whirlpool and the Church of St. Tisilio near the red cave”

SITE - Sight • Site – The physical (internal) character of a place.

• Important Site characteristics– Climate– Water Sources– Topography– Soil– Vegetation– Latitude– Elevation

• The combination of physical features gives each place a distinctive character.

SITE• Site factors have always been essential

in selecting locations for settlements.

– Hilltop site – Athens, Jerusalem, Rome

– River site – Paris, London, Pittsburgh

– Harbor site – Hong Kong, Norfolk, Sydney

– Island site –Singapore, Manhattan

• Humans have the ability to modify the characteristics of a site.

– New York City – twice as large today as in 1626

– Boston & Tokyo have also expanded

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.

Situation-(relative location)• Situation is the location of a place

relative to other places.

• The more interconnected a place is to other powerful places, the better its situation.

• Situation is a valuable way to indicate location, for two reasons:

• Finding an unfamiliar place» Directions:» Bayside HS is W of Independence

• Understanding that place’s importance

– Singapore – situated near the Strait of Malacca which is a the major passageway for ships traveling between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean

Mathematical LocationLatitude

--Lines of latitudelatitude measure distances north-south between the poles. --The equatorequator is defined as 0 degrees --The North Pole is 90 degrees north --The South Pole is 90 degrees south --Lines of latitude are all parallelparallel to each other, thus they are often referred to as parallels. They look like rungs on a ladder. Remember LA for ladder and latitude.

Longitude

--Lines of longitudelongitude, or meridiansmeridians, run between the North and South Poles. --They measure distances east-west from the PrimePrime MeridianMeridian.

--The prime meridian is assigned the value of 0 degrees, and runs through Greenwich, England.

Time Zones• 360° Longitude – 0-180 ° W & 0-180 ° E• Approx. every 15 degrees longitude is a different time zone

• The Prime Meridian (0 ° longitude) is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or Universal Time (UT).

Regionsand

Regionalization

Regions: The Basics • The “Sense of Place” that humans

possess usually apply to a large area rather than a specific point.

• An area of Earth defined by one or more distinctive characteristics is a region.

• A region can apply to any area larger than a point and smaller than the entire planet.

• Regions are natural phenomena or human constructs that can be mapped and analyzed.

• Geographers identify three types of Regions

Three Basic types of Regions

1. Formal— (uniform/homogeneous) governmental boundaries (USA, Virginia, Brazil), physical regions (The Rockies, Great Lakes, Wheat belt), cultural (religion, language)

2. Functional— (nodal)defined by a function.

-newspaper service-public schools-pizza delivery

-river drainage basin -railroad system

Three Basic types of Regions

Three Basic types of Regions3. Vernacular— (perceptual)

loosely defined by people’s perception (The South, The Middle East)

Which is “the South”??

Sunbelt Gulf Coast

Southwest SOUTH

Cultural Regions

• Origin of culture is Latin “cultus” which means “to care for.”

Latin America

Western Europe

Central Europe

To care about – Ideas (language, religion)

To take care of –Possessions (food, clothing, shelter)

• Culture, although a man-made phenomena, occurs in coordination with the natural world as humans interact with their environment.

“Culture is the agent, the natural area the medium, the cultural landscape is the result”. -Carl Sauer, geographer

Cultural Regions

Let’s take a quick look at

ClimateRegions

Low Latitudes

World Climate Regions

• Tropical wet: hot all year with high yearly precipitation—100 inches (The Jungle Book)

• Tropical wet & dry: hot all year with about 50 inches of precipitation (The Lion King)

• Arid: hot days, cold nights, with very low yearly precipitation—5 inches (Alladin)

• Semiarid: hot summers, mild-to-cold winters, with low yearly precipitation (Cars)

• Highland: wide variety of temperatures and precipitations depending on the elevation and wind direction (The Emperor’s New Groove)

World Climate Regions

Mid Latitudes

Mid Latitudes

• Mediterranean: hot summers, cool winters, with moderate precipitation—23 inches (Hercules)

• Humid subtropical: indistinct seasons, mild temperatures with moderate precipitation—27 inches (Pocahontas)

• Humid continental: warm summers, cold winters, with moderate precipitation—27 inches (Mulan)

• Marine west coast: warm summers, cool winters, with high precipitation—45 inches (Brother Bear)

• Highland: varies due to elevation and wind (The Emperor’s New Groove)

High Latitudes

High Latitudes

• Sub-arctic: cold winters, short warm summers, with low yearly precipitation (Balto)

• Tundra (sub-polar): cold summers, very cold winters with low yearly precipitation (Frozen)

• Icecap: cold all year, with very low yearly precipitation (Happy Feet)

Natural Vegetation Regions

Vegetation Regions are

classified into four general

types:

• Rain forest: tropical region with heavy concentration of broadleaf trees

• Savanna: also tropical, but with grassy, treeless plains

• Desert: only plants that can stand dry conditions such as cacti and sagebrush, survive

• Steppe: grasslands in the middle latitudes

• Middle latitude forests: trees that shed their leaves (deciduous trees) are mixed with tree with cones (coniferous trees)

• Taiga: a cold-climate belt of coniferous forest

• Tundra: colder than taiga, treeless, and barren

Can you think of any other

examples of regions?