Human Geography - Unit 1: Basic Concepts

Introduction to Human Geography

  • Unit 1 Overview: Focuses on basic concepts, accounting for 8-10% of the AP test.

Chapter 1: Introduction

  • Location: Mumbai, India

Unit Outline

  • Key Terms and Concepts: Geography, Geographers, Anthropology, Place, Region, Location, Globalization, Distance, Accessibility, Diffusion, Scale Interaction, Space, Spatial, Site, Situation.
  • Geographic Tools: Cartography, Remote Sensing, GIS, GPS.
  • The Five Themes of Geography.

What is Geography?

  • Definition: The systematic study of the spatial patterns of all phenomena on or near the Earth’s surface.
  • A scientific and descriptive study of the Earth's surface.
  • Interactions between people and their environment.
  • A study of spatial and local variation.
  • A Study Of Space and Place.

Space

  • The geometric surface of the earth.
  • Whatever you choose to visualize.

Place

  • An area of bounded space of some human importance.
  • Examples: toponyms and regions.

The Why of Where

  • Geography seeks to understand the reasons behind the spatial distribution of phenomena.
  • Example: The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System and its construction considerations.
  • Night picture of the earth, why are some areas brighter than others?

Importance of Teaching Geography

  • Understanding spatial patterns and human-environment interactions.

Fields of Study in Human Geography

  • Includes economics, political science, demography, medicine, history, sociology, cultural studies, environmental studies, linguistics, urban studies, geology, and biology.

Disciplines Within Human Geography

  • Economic Geography
  • Medical Geography
  • Political Geography
  • Population Geography
  • Business Geography
  • Psychology Geography
  • Historical Geography
  • Social Geography
  • Cultural Geography
  • Religion Geography
  • Geography of Language
  • Urban Geography
  • Human Environmental Relations

Human vs. Physical Geography

  • Human geographers study the location of people, their characteristics, and their interactions over space.
  • Focus on landscapes people build.

Questions Human Geographers Ask

  • Where are people located?
  • What are people like?
  • What are their interactions over space?
  • What kind of landscapes do they build?

Data Used by Geographers

  • Qualitative Data: Gathered through observations, interviews, and interpretations of texts, focusing on cultural or regional geography.
  • Quantitative Data: Uses rigorous mathematical techniques to examine hard numerical data.

Geographer's Tools

  • Includes maps, GIS, remote sensing, and statistical analysis.

Cartography

  • The science of making maps.
  • Deals with the challenge of representing the oblate spheroid Earth on a flat map.

Scale

  • Shows the relationship of a feature’s size on a map to its actual size on Earth.
Two Important Ways
  • Scale of Analysis: The frame of reference for studying something (global, regional, local).
    • Ex: agricultural practices of the world (global scale), a region (regional scale), or a community (local scale)
  • Map Scale: The size of a unit on a map as a ratio of its size on the Earth’s surface.
Helpful Tip
  • A small-scale map shows a smaller amount of detail for a larger area.
  • A large-scale map shows a larger amount of detail for a smaller area.

Example comparing small-scale and large-scale maps with place names

Map Scale Representation
  • Ratio or Fraction: 1:24,000
  • Written Scale: 1 inch equals one mile
  • Graphic Scale: 0|----------------|100km

Projection

  • The scientific method of transferring locations on Earth's surface to a flat map.
  • Different projections distort different properties of the Earth's surface, such as shape, size, distance, and direction.
Common Projections
  • Mercator Projection: Standard for nautical purposes, distorts size and shape in higher latitudes.
  • Gall-Peters Projection: Accurate representation of size takes precedence over shape; appears opposite of Mercator.
  • Robinson Projection: Used to create visually appealing maps of the entire world; distorts everything in small amounts.
  • Azimuthal Equidistant Projection: Used for polar maps; distorts shape and distance as one gets farther from the center.
  • Goode’s Projection: Often used in thematic maps; interrupted projection removes much of the oceans to preserve size and shape of landmasses.

Types of Maps

  • Reference maps

Reference Maps

  • Show locations of places and geographic features.

Mental Maps

  • The map inside your head of places you routinely visit on a map.
  • These places are called your activity spaces.

Relative Location

  • The position on Earth's surface relative to other features; can change over time.
    • Example: The relative location of the NEW Varsity softball field is west of the fieldhouse.

Example of relative location, where is Du Page County located relatively?

Absolute Location

  • A point on the earth's surface expressed by a coordinate system such as latitude and longitude; never changes.
  • Given with latitude first, then longitude, with cardinal direction, separated by a comma.
    • Ex: The absolute location of the U.S. Capitol Bldg. is: 38° 53 23 N, 77° 0 32 W

Longitude

  • The numbering system that enumerates meridians, arcs that are drawn between the north and south pole.
  • The Prime Meridian (0° Longitude) runs through Greenwich, England.

Latitude

  • The numbering system that enumerates parallels, circles drawn around the globe parallel to the equator and at right angles to the meridians.
  • 0° Latitude is the Equator.
  • 90° North latitude is the North Pole.
  • 90° South latitude is the South Pole.

Time Zones

  • A region on Earth that has a uniform standard time for legal, commercial, and social purposes.

Exceptions

  • China: One time zone for the entire country.
Time Zone Quiz
  1. Longitude Lines are used to determine world time zones.
  2. We have different time zones in the world to maximize sunlight.
  3. The earth rotates from west to east.
  4. There are 24 time zones in the world
  5. Approximately every 15 degrees there is a new time zone.
  6. Time zones were created in the U.S. in the era of transcontinental railways, to standardize time across long east-west train lines. (November 18,1883)

Practice Questions

  • If it is 6:00 am at 15 degrees east, what time is it at 45 degrees west? 2:00 am
  • If it is 10:00 pm at 30 degrees west, what time is it at 45 degrees east? 3:00 am
  • If it is 11:00 am at 15 degrees east, what time is it at 60 degrees east? 2:oo pm

U.S. Time Zone Quiz

  • In the U.S. there are 50 states and 6 time zones.
  • In the “Continental U.S.” there are 4 time zones.
  • They are called:
    1. Pacific
    2. Mountain
    3. Central
    4. Eastern
Important points
  • As you go EAST you increase (+) time.
  • As you go WEST you decrease (-) time

Example US time zone questions

International Date Line

  • An imaginary line on the surface of the Earth that runs from the north to the south pole and demarcates one calendar day from the next. It is located at 180 degrees longitude.
  • A traveler crossing the International Date Line eastbound subtracts one day, or 24 hours, so that the calendar date to the west of the line is repeated.

Thematic Maps

  • A type of map or chart especially designed to show a particular theme connected with a specific geographic area.

Types of Thematic Maps

  • Choropleth Maps: Uses differences in shading, coloring, or the placing of symbols.
  • Dot Density Maps: Uses dots in a specific area; each dot represents a specific number of people.
  • Isoline Maps: Uses continuous lines joining points of the same value (e.g., weather maps).
  • Mental Maps: Shows an person's internal perception of space.
    *Mental maps include terra incognita, unknown lands that are off limits.
  • Cartograms: Expands or shrinks the area of locations to demonstrate different types of data.

Geographic Questions and Medical Geography

  • Mapping the distribution of a disease is the first step to finding its cause.
    *Cholera is an ancient disease with its source in India.

Cholera

  • An ancient disease associated with diarrhea and dehydration.
    *Vaccines do exist but the problem is the are expensive and they have little effect.
  • Outbreaks in 1990 & 2010 killed over 10,000 people in Latin America.
  • Expect to find cholera in places that lack sanitary sewer systems and in places that are flood prone.

*Example: Dr. John Snow’s mapping of cholera cases in London in 1854.

GIS (Geographic Information System)

  • A computer system that stores, organizes, analyzes, and displays geographic data.
  • Involves composite overlays of various data layers.
    *Land Ownership, Hydrology, Forest Cover, Soils, Remotely sensed image, Topographic base

GPS (Global Positioning System)

  • Determines the precise position of something on Earth through satellites, tracking stations, and receivers.

Remote Sensing

  • The acquisition of data about the Earth’s surface from a satellite orbiting the planet or from other long distance methods.

Site and Situation

  • Site: Describing a location based on its physical characteristics.
  • Situation: The location of a place relative to other places.

Practice examples of site and situation

Region

  • An area of Earth defined by one or more distinctive characteristics.
  • How is a place similar to and different from other places?

Cultural Landscape

  • The visible imprint of human activity on the landscape.
  • Comprised of the “forms superimposed on the physical landscape” by human activity (Carl Sauer).

Sequent Occupance

  • Refers to sequential imprints of occupants, whose impacts are layered one on top of the other, each layer having some impacts on the next.

Types of Regions

  • Formal, Functional, Perceptual

Formal Regions

  • Everyone shares in common one or more homogeneous characteristic or uniformity.
  • Ex: the US & Australia are in the same linguistic (language) region.
  • Borders are easy to track and slow to change.
    *There is uniformity in one or more physical or human characteristics
    *Examples: Political regions and long lasting economic regions.

Functional Regions (or Nodal Regions)

  • Organized around a central node.
  • The influence of this point is strongest close to the center and diminishes as distance increases
    *Example: Subway Systems, Newspaper Distribution, Store Distribution
  • Tied to the point by transportation and communication systems or by economic or functional associations.

Perceptual Regions (or Vernacular Regions)

  • A place that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity.
  • A construct of one’s mental map (it depicts what we know about a place containing personal impressions of what is in a place and where places are located).
    • Informal and varies dependent on who is defining them.

Examples: "The South" "The Country" "Dixie” Pacific Northern California Pacific Southern California

  • Examples: South, The Deep South, Mid-Atlantic Region, and many others.
  • Example: The South is a perceptual region because it does not have clear boundaries and most Americans understand this region and associate specific cultural traits with it.

Practice Identification: Examples of Formal, Functional, and Vernacular Regions

Movement

  • The way that people, products, information and ideas move from one place to another.
  • How are people and places connected?
    How has the time it takes to travel change changed through the years? Why?

Time-Distance Decay

  • The lessening interaction between places as the friction of distance increases.
  • The greater the distance from the hearth, the less likely an innovation will be adopted.

Friction-of-Distance

  • The effect of distance on interaction between places.

Space-Time Compression

  • The reduction in time it takes for something to reach another place because of a change in technology.
  • Example: modes of transportation such as airplanes reduce travel time between to distant points.
    Includes graphs showing speed of travel overtime, 1500-1980s

Interaction Between Places

  • Determined by proximity, connectivity, and accessibility.

Diffusion

  • The spread of an idea, innovation or technology from its hearth (origin) to other people and places.
Hearth
  • The place which an innovation or cultural change originates.
Cultural Elements Diffuse
  • Relocation Diffusion
  • Hierarchical Diffusion
  • Expansion Diffusion
  • Contagious Diffusion
  • Stimulus Diffusion
Dispersal Characteristics of Diffusion : Graphs contrasting Expansion and Relocation Diffusion
Relocation Diffusion
  • Occurs when an idea or innovation spreads from its hearth by the action of people moving and taking the idea or innovation with them (Primarily happens through migration).
    *This type of diffusion cannot be transmitted by media (tv, internet, radio)
Contagious Diffusion
  • A form of expansion diffusion in which nearly all adjacent individuals and places are affected.
  • This diffusion occurs primarily as a result of person-to-person contact.
Hierarchical Diffusion
  • Spread of an idea or innovation from one person or place to another person or placed based on hierarchy of connectedness.
    *Examples of that hierarchy can be a government or corporations (Nike).
Stimulus Diffusion
  • A 3rd form of expansion diffusion.
  • It is the process of diffusion where 2 cultural traits blend to create a distinct trait.

EXAMPLES OF STIMULUS DIFFUSION: Mcdonalds

Practice Questions on Types of Diffusion

Theme 4: Place

  • An area that is defined by everything in it.
    • What is it like there? (physical/cultural)

How Do Geographers Analyze Space?

  • Scale: Asks how the big affects the small and vice versa.

Spatial Distribution

  • Refers to the array of items on the Earth’s surface.
  • All spatial distributions have density, dispersion, and some type of pattern.

Density

  • How many things are in one square unit of space?

Concentration

  • How closely are things related to one another in a space?

Pattern

  • How are things arranged in a space?

Culture

  • The mix of values, beliefs, behaviors, and material objects that form a people’s way of life.

Cultural Components

  • Habit: A repetitive act that an individual performs.
  • Custom: A repetitive act of a group performed so that it becomes a characteristic of the group.
  • Culture: A group’s entire collection of customs.

Cultural Hierarchy (Smallest to Largest)

  • Culture Trait: A single element of normal practice.
  • Culture Complex: The combination of different cultural traits in distinctive ways, often not confined to a single area.
  • Culture System: A group of interconnected culture complexes with strong cultural ties that bind its people together.
  • Culture Region: An area marked by culture that distinguishes it from other regions.
  • Cultural Realm: A large area marked by a number of cultural regions, set apart from other world areas because of these regions.

Theme 5: Human/Environment Interaction

  • How humans modify, adapt to, and depend on their environment.
  • Cultural Ecology: The study of human-environment relationships.

Environmental Determinism vs. Possibilism

  • Environmental Determinism: Physical environment causes social development; the physical environment controls human culture.
  • Possibilism: People have the ability to adjust to their environment and are not limited by it.

Determinism vs. Possibilism continued

  • Environmental Determinism: An example of Environmental Determinism would be any climactic or geographic hindrance to humans, such as deserts or mountains.
  • Possibilism: Possibilism can be observed in any situation where humans conquer their environment, such as through building roads through arid land or establishing radical settlements in hospitable conditions.