Unit 1 Notes: Five Themes of Geography

Five Themes of Geography

Movement

  • Movement of people, ideas, diseases, goods, and culture.

Region

  • Shared characteristics of an area.

Human-Environment Interaction

  • What changes or adaptations people have made to their environment.

Location

Unique Characteristics

Thinking Geographically

Map Scale

  • The ratio of the distance between two objects on a map.

Geographic Scale

  • A way to think about places.

Ranking or List (Scales of Analysis)

  • Neighborhood, urban area, metropolitan area, and region.
  • Any area larger than a city that has something to unify it.
  • Regions exist because humans define them.

Regional Geography

  • The study of regions.

Functional Regions

  • Regions defined by social or economic relationships that tie them together.
  • Defined by connections between them and surrounding areas, like trade networks.

Formal Regions

  • Specific characteristics that are relatively the same throughout the region.
  • Not always countries, but often are.

Vernacular Regions

  • Exist in the mind of people as part of their cultural identity.
  • Based on perception, so borders can be debatable.

Data and Approaches in Geography

Qualitative Approaches

  • Not suitable for statistical analysis.
  • Data collected from interviews, art, or observations (e.g., walking on the street).

Quantitative Approaches

  • Uses statistics and real numbers.

Describing Location

Absolute Location

  • Exact coordinates.

Situation/Relative Location

  • Described using surrounding features.

Site

  • The location of a city on a map.

Distance

  • Connectivity.
Absolute Distance
  • Describes distance using standard units (miles, feet, etc.).
  • Straight-line distance.
Relative Distance
  • Social, cultural, economic relatedness, and connectivity between two places. Example: Atlanta and Los Angeles linked in business.
  • Example: A flight from LA to Atlanta is about 4 hours; time makes it a relative measure of distance

Toponym

  • A place name that often describes the place. Examples: Salt Lake City, United States, Panama City Beach, Lake City Town, Greenland.

Time-Space Convergence

  • Places are closer than they have ever been because of cell phones, interstates, social media.
  • Relative distance is changing and shrinking.

Map Fundamentals

Map Projections

Mercator Projection
  • Projects the Earth onto a cylinder.
  • Lines of longitude become parallel, distorting distances near the poles.
  • Makes land masses near poles appear stretched.

Scale of Analysis

  • The smallest unit of measure on a map, data, or table.
  • Changing the scale of analysis impacts the understanding of the data.

Map Scales

Small Scale Map
  • Depicts a large area (e.g., a world map).
Large Scale Map
  • Depicts a small area (e.g., neighborhood or small town map).

Types of Maps

Reference Map
  • Used for locating places.
Thematic Map
  • Displays variables.
Chloropleth Map
  • Uses colors to show data on maps.
Topographic Map
  • Shows elevation using isolines.
  • Isolines represent equal value.
Cartograms
  • Distorts map size to show information.
  • Example: A map of Starbucks locations might enlarge California due to the high number of locations there.
Proportional Symbol Map
  • The size of a chosen symbol changes based on the variable in proportion to each other.
Location Charts
  • Relative info about specific areas on a map
  • Using dots to represent a variable in precise locations
  • Adds meaningful colors and it becomes chloropleth.
Flowline Maps
  • Shows movement of people or goods using arrows or lines (e.g., a trade map).
Visualizations
  • Use computer software to create maps that visualize certain phenomena (e.g., hurricane maps, weather maps).

Space and Spatial Processes

Diffusion

  • Movement.

Spatial Diffusion

  • Ways in which technology, innovations, cultural trends, or disease outbreaks travel over distances.
Types of Spatial Diffusion
Expansion Diffusion
  • Something spreads outward but does not leave its origin.
  • Contagious Diffusion: Transmitted when people are closer together.
  • Hierarchical Diffusion: Transmitted when someone or something with power diffuses across a large space because of their authority. Example: A celebrity endorsing a product.
Stimulus Diffusion
  • A trait is presented but rejected, but the underlying idea is accepted. Example: Not liking a musician's particular song but enjoying their overall style.
Relocation Diffusion
  • Moving, but your culture comes with you.

The Cultural Landscape

  • Visible changes humans make to their environment.

Possibilism

  • People are the most important agents of change to the Earth.
  • Humans change the Earth more than it changes us.
  • We have the power to change the environment to get what we want (e.g., using wind turbines).

Determinism

  • The Earth shapes our culture and behavior.
  • Effects of post-industrial revolution won't last.
  • Example: We don't have the technology to prevent natural disasters.

Tobler's First Law of Geography

  • Near things are more related than far things.

Friction of Distance

  • Distance hinders interaction.

Distance Decay

  • Interaction between two things decreases as distance increases.

Gravity Model

  • Used to predict the degree of migration and interaction between two places.
  • Interaction=Population<em>1×Population</em>2DistanceInteraction = \frac{Population<em>1 \times Population</em>2}{Distance}

Law of Retail Gravitation

  • People will be pulled to larger places for business.
  • Ideas suggested by the Gravity Model.
  • The outer edge of a city's influence is where another begins.

Geography Timeline

  • Modern geographers use quantitative methods since the 1960s (Quantitative Revolution); previously, geography was more qualitative.

Remote Sensing

  • Sensing using something from far away, often with airplanes or drones.
  • Taking pictures of the surface from the air.

GPS (Global Positioning System)

  • A network of satellites sending signals.
  • A type of GIS.

GIS (Geographic Information System)

  • A broad category of technology.
  • Takes in data and outputs usable information.

Thematic Layer

  • A map created by GIS.
  • Each layer of data maps the same NASA satellites and has a theme.