1.1 Getting Started

• Geography: the study of how observable spatial patterns evolved through time.

  • Knowing where certain places are is the first step towards understanding why things are where they are.

  • Ex: Explaining why Brazilians burn large amounts of the rainforest each year, geographers study the climate, soil, population pressures and indeed for more agricultural areas in rural Brazil.

• The study of geography began in ancient Egypt, China, Mesopotamia, the Arab world, Greece and Rome.

  • They were motivated to learn about the land, agriculture, astronomy, trade and military activity.

  • The name comes from the Greek scientist Eratosthenes more than 2,200 years ago from geo which means “the Earth” and graphein which means “to write”.

  • The Greek geographers measured the Earth and drew the latitudes and longitudes of the planet.

  • They also studied how humans lived in certain regions by comparing the similarities and differences in language, religion and custom.

• Modern geographic studies began in the 17th century.

  • By the end of the 18th century, the development of other natural sciences such as botany and zoology popularized the study of geography and the earth was accurately mapped with the correct determination of the longitude and latitude.

  • By the end of the 19th-century national censuses, trade statistics, and ethnographic studies brought a deeper understanding of human geography which solidified geography as a respected discipline in universities across Europe.

• Human geography: The study of why humans are where they are, how they interact over space and what kinds of landscapes of human use they erect on the natural landscapes they occupy.

  • It includes all topics of geography that are not connected with the physical environment such as cartography.

  • Human geography draws from other social sciences such as behavioral and political sciences for its studies.

  • Human geography makes us better-informed citizens as it makes us aware of the realities of our society such as the economic, social and political systems around the world as the globe becomes more connected.

1.2 Core Geography Concepts

• Geographic features

  • Natural features: mountains, rivers, forests, pecans and atmospheric fronts.

  • Cultural features: buildings, roads, cornfields, cities and countries.

• Location

  • Absolute location is the identification of a place by precise coordinates; it is sometimes called mathematical location. Earth can be described by reference to its degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude and longitude.

  • Street addresses precisely define accurately locate a building in an individual town but The Universal Transverse Mercator System (UTM) uses a set of 60 longitude zones and is used in Geographic information systems (GIS)

  • Real estate agents say that “location matters” but they are not referencing the absolute location but rather the relative location.

    • The relative location holds the social and economic implications of a region.

    • The relative locations tell us that people, things and places exist in a world of physical and cultural characteristics that differ from place to place.

• Direction

  • Absolute direction is based on global or macroscopic features like north, south, east and west.

  • But in the United States people also use relative directions such as the “Near East or the “Far Eastern countries”.

    • These references are culturally based and variable from each location and using these directions is a custom in the Americas

    • Even if one wanted to reach the “Far East” from British Columbia, Chile or California one would travel west over the Pacific.

• Distance

  • The absolute distance refers to the physical separation between two points and it’s measured using a unit such as kilometres or miles.

  • Relative distance transforms the linear measurements into more meaningful data for a relationship

    • Two malls could be equidistant from your house but one takes 10 minutes to get to and the other takes 20 due to the street condition and traffic conditions.

    • Most people think of time distance rather than physical in their daily activities.

  • The distance can also feel different due to the psychological transformation

  • A walk back through a dark alley to the parking lot feels a lot longer than a stroll of the same distance during the daytime

    • A first-time trip to a new destination frequently seems much longer than a return trip over the same path.

• Size and Scale

  • It is the relative size.

    • Ex. Population or agriculture at the local, regional or global scale.

• Physical and Cultural Attributes

  • All places have different physical and cultural attributes, and geographers aim to identify and analyze these details to recognize the interrelationship between the human-environmental interface.

  • Natural landscapes provide the setting within which human actions occur, they help shape how humans live.

    • The resources control how things are used in the region.

    • Environmental circumstances affect agriculture which connects with employment, trade, population and diets.

  • Humans also modify environmental conditions because of the harmful agents they leave and emit due to their actions.

    • No place on earth is purely a “natural landscape” due to the debris humans have left in the air

• The Changing Attributes of Place

  • In the last 12,000 years, the glacial retreat in North America has changed the entire landscape of vegetation and fauna, they also heated the planet the up

  • The forces and events that shape the physical and cultural environment are an important focus of geography

• Interrelations Between Places

  • Spatial diffusion: It is the process of dispersion of an idea or an item from a center of origin to more distant points with which it is directly or indirectly connected.

  • Geographers study the dynamics of spatial interaction

    • They cover the movement, connection and interactions between humans which is a large factor of the social and economic processes that give character to places and regions.

  • Globalization: It is the increasing interconnection of humans and societies in all parts of the world as the full range of social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental processes become international in scale and effect.

• The Structured Content of Place

  • Density: the measure of the number or quantity of a specific feature within a defined unit of area.

  • Dispersion: how a feature is spread out within a defined area.

    • Ex. Iowa, a province in the United States and San Bernardino County in California have similar populations even though Iowa is drastically bigger, meaning Iowa is more dispersed than San Bernardino County.

• Patterns

  • Patterns are seen all over the world, the distribution of towns along a railroad or houses along a street may be seen as linear.

  • Cities in Canada, America, Australia and New Zealand follow grids or rectilinear patterns.

• Spatial Association

  • Spatial Association: When certain features spatially correspond with each other.

    • Counties in Texas where alcohol is legal, have a majority of Catholic residents, while so-called dry counties are more likely to have a majority of Protestant residents.

• Place Similarity and Regions

  • Geographers may find that all farmers may use a certain technique to build fences around their farms, this allows geographers to define and recognize regions.

    • All humans are familiar with regions to describe places and areas and this is called the regional concept.

  • Administrative regions are created by law, treaty, or regulation.

  • Thematic regions are created based on themes and properties which analyze the types of soil, climate, and life in the region.

  • Functional regions are created over the interactions such as people listening to the same radio station or shopping at the same centre. These have vague boundaries.

  • Perceptual regions are defined by the beliefs of people. They also have vague boundaries and differ from person to person.

    • Ex. Chinatowns, Little Italy and downtown are all perceptual. Essentially the mental map of someone and is not normally the most correct map drawn.

1.3 Maps

• Map Scales

  • The larger the scale the smaller area it covers, the smaller the scale the larger area it covers.

• Distortion

  • When more area is depicted on a map the more distorted it is.

    • This is because when a map has to depict the curved surface of our 3-dimensional earth on a tiny 2-dimensional paper, the sizes get distorted.

• The Globe Grid

  • The Earth is 71% and 29% land

  • It bulges around the equator and the diameter is about 27 miles wider than at the poles.

  • The is not perfectly spherical which is why it is called a bumpy oblate spheroid

    • Bumpy because of its topography, oblate because of how it bulges at the equator and a spheroid because it’s not a perfect sphere.

  • The horizontal lines encode the latitude using N or S, the equator is at 0°.

  • The vertical lines encode the longitude using E or W, the prime meridian in England is 0°.

• How Maps Show Data

  • Cartography is the art and science of map-making.

    • Reference maps exist to depict an area and they don’t analyze or interpret anything.

      • Reference maps were the only maps to exist until the 18th century until people learnt that they could use locational information to study spatial patterns of social and physical data.

    • Thematic maps portray the geographic pattern of a particular subject matter in a geographic area.

      • They can be either quantitative or qualitative.

    • Graduated circle maps use circles of different sizes to show the magnitude of a variable.

      • A dot could represent population concentration in an area.

    • Choropleth maps present the average value of data using colours and the darker the colour is the higher the magnitude is of said data.

    • Statistical maps show the actual number of data and are quite similar to a statistical map.

    • Cartograms use size to show the larger magnitude.

      • The larger the size of a state means the value of the data is higher in the respective state.

1.4 Contemporary Geospatial Technologies

• Remote sensing is when a satellite or high-altitude aircraft scans the Earth to obtain data about it. It has been a practice for more than 150 years and people use balloons and kites to go and capture aerial imaging.

• Geographic Information System (GIS)

  • A system that creates, analyzes and manages maps

    • The computers and programs show all sorts of data and visualize them

      • Ex. streets, buildings and vegetation on one map.

• Mental Maps are our understanding of a region and how we visualize them

  • Humans miss out on many important details but always feel real to the creators

  • Mental maps help humans make decisions on which routes to use when travelling based on their age or gender.

    • Ex. Avoiding a route out of fear of harassment.