Developed by Walter Christaller, a German geographer.
Central to spatial analysis and urban models.
Market areas focus on a central settlement for exchange and service provision.
Major cities are surrounded by smaller towns and settlements.
Market areas are called hinterlands.
Large settlements offer more services, attracting consumers willing to travel.
Smaller settlements have fewer services, located closer to consumers.
Originally descriptive, later applied to undeveloped areas.
Example: reclaimed polders of the Netherlands, where the theory guided settlement locations.
Settlement Hierarchy:
City - Higher Order Place
Town - Intermediate order place
Village/Hamlet - Lower Order Place
Demographic Transition Model (DTM)
Developed by demographers Warren Thompson and Frank Notestein.
Population growth rate changes with economic development.
Tracks changes in birth and death rates over time.
Stages:
Stage 1: High birth and death rates, stable or slow increase.
Stage 2: High birth rate, rapidly falling death rate, very rapid increase.
Stage 3: Falling birth rate, more slowly falling death rate, increase slows.
Stage 4: Low birth and death rates, stable or slow increase.
Stage 5: Rising death rate, Low birth rate.
The DTM is predictive, showing potential future trends in countries.
Economic Sectors
Primary Production:
Includes agriculture, mining, energy, forestry, and fisheries.
Involves resource extraction.
Secondary Production:
Processing of raw materials, fabrication of components, and assembly of finished goods.
Encompasses all forms of manufacturing.
Tertiary Production:
Transportation, selling, and retailing of finished goods.
Includes services.
Quaternary Sector:
Business services like finance, banking, insurance, real estate, advertising, and marketing.
Quinary Sector:
Retailing, tourism, entertainment, government, and semi-public services like health and education.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Became practical with desktop computers in the 1970s.
Incorporates data layers in a computer program for spatial analysis and mapping.
Data layers: numerical, coded, or textual data attributed to geographic coordinates or areas.
Data is geographically fixed, allowing spatial analysis between layers.
Each layer can show a different geographic feature.
Example: Mapping changes in Arctic ice extent over time.
Languages
Major language families are represented by prehistoric language roots.
The largest is the Indo-European Family, with over 3 billion speakers.
Families are divided into language groups and subfamilies.
The English language comes from the Indo-European Family, Germanic subfamily, and Western Germanic group.
Law of the Sea
UN Convention provides an arbitration board for settling sea boundary disputes.
Countries with overlapping claims often split lines halfway.
Disputes arise over uninhabited islets, reefs, and sandbars.
Example: South China Sea's Spratly and Paracel Islands claimed by multiple countries (China, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei).
Potential for armed conflict if arbitration fails due to believed oil reserves.
Maritime Zones:
Territorial Sea: 12 nautical miles.
Contiguous Zone: 24 nautical miles.
Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ): 200 nautical miles.
Legal Continental Shelf: 1% Sediment thickness or 60 M from the foot of the slope, but less than 100 M from the 2500 m isobath or less than 350 M from the baselines.
High Seas.
Map Projections
Mercator Projection:
Straight lines for constant compass bearing.
Distortion increases toward the poles.
Robinson Projection:
Low distortion within about 45° of the center and along the Equator.
Winkle-Tripel Projection:
Compromise projection with a more globe-like look.
Azimuthal Projection:
Points are at proportionally correct distances and azimuth from the center point.