- an integrative discipline - integrating elements from human and environmental systems

-literally means "description of the earth"

-THE STUDY OF THE EARTH- ITS PEOPLE, PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTS, RESOURCES- AND THE INTERRELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE VARIOUS COMPONENTS.

Area Study or Area Analysis Tradition

-Associated with Strabo

-The nature of places, their character and their differentiation

-interested in the idiographic content of regions

-AKA Areal Differentiation or Regional Geography

-Prepares geographers to work as area specialists for the federal government or in international business

-Associated with Aristotle

-The study of the earth, the waters of the earth, the atmosphere surrounding the earth, the structure of the earth, and the association between the earth and the sun

-Prepares geographers to become physical scientists and understand the earth as a common home of humankind and the natural processes that give it form.

Culture Environment Tradition

or

Man-Land Tradition

or

Environmental Studies

-Associated with Hippocrates

-The studyof relationships between people and the environments they occupy.

-Environment is viewed as a landscape to be explored in terms of the cultural imprint of humans.

-Population numbers and their patterns of social and political organization have an impact on the landscape

-Prepares geographers to work as community developers, health care analysts, or demographers.

-Associated with Ptolemy

-Concerned with the distribution of human or physical items with respect to the earth

-Involves the act of separating from the happenings of experience such aspects as distance, form, direction, and position (location)

-Concerned with flows and connections between places and regions - how different places interact with one another

-Strongest interest in displaying the spatial aspects of reality through mapping.

-Prepares geographers to work as site selection analysts urban planners, or transportation planners.

-Cartography (mapping)

-Spatial Statistics

-Remote Sensing

-Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

1. Every place has a location.

2. A place may be large or small.

3. A place has both physical and cultural characteristics.

4. Characteristics of a place develop and change over time.

5. Places interact with other places.

6. Places may be generalized into regions of similarities and differences.

-What is its exact position in the world?

-Use a geo-reference or an address that must be a unique descriptor.

-Latitude and Longitude

-They are continuously distributed over the earth

-Less precise = street address or zip code

-The position of one place with respect to another place or set of places.

-Impacts its accessability to or isolation from other places at a local, regional, or global scale.

-The external realtions of the place.

-Places with good situation characteristics are apt to interact and participate in the world exchange of goods and services.

How far away we perceive a place to be.

--->Example: If you always go to a place, it might seem closer than one you don't know.

-Uses a central point and measures orientation with respect to that point.

-Based on the cardinal points of north, south, east and west or is measures in degrees of angle.

-Culturally based and locationally variable

-i.e. Far East or Deep South

-Tells us the relationship between the distance on a map to actual distance on the surface of the earth.

-The ratio of distance on a map to actual ground distance.

-Expressed as a representative fraction.

-Acts as a control on the level of generalization about a place.

-Large Area Covered

-Little Detail

-Large Denominator

-Small Area Covered

-Great Detail

-Small Denominator

-Summing up, or averaging out data values for more uniformity.

-Limits the range of data values

-The individual physical and cultural attributes that distinguish places.

-Site characteristics

-Typical of Human attributes

-Seperate and distinct

-Typical of physical attributes

-some level of uniformity

-numbers

-typicall for spatially continuous attributes

-example: elevation

-Words as categories

-Typically for spatially continuous data

-Example: Land use type

-Counts of items

-Typically for spatially discrete attributes

-Ratios or averages

-Typically for spatially discrete attributes

-Going from large scale to small

-Going from small area to large

-Very easy, redily available values

-Going from small scale to large scale

-Going from large area to small area

-very difficult (often impossible)

Geography is _________

(Dynamic or Static)

Measure of physical nearness (property between two places)

-Purely Distance Based

Measure of physical nearness within a system or distribution of places

-Purely distance based

-Device of area generalization

-Human constructs designed to bring order to the earth's surface

-Relatively uniform throughout in terms of its identifying criteria

-Political units, climatic regions, soil distributions, crops, topography

-->corn belt, Appalachia, etc.

Functional Region

(Nodal Region)

-Has a definite center or node

-Spatial interaction occurs between this center and all other parts of the region

-->labor commuting sheds, newspaper circulations, etc.

-The end, or outermost reach or a region.

-Does not usually exist in real life, but rather is usually just a deliniation made for legal or other reasons.

Area Class Regions

Regions with ill-defined or fuzzy boundaries that are not linear but rather transition zones.

--> Most regions

Regions with will defined boundaries that are truely linear

--> Not common

-->Usually for legal purposes

1.Landforms as regions

 -Basic, naturally defined regions of physical geographic concern.

2. Weather and Climate Regions

-Weather: very dynamic, constantly changing, only exist for seasons of the year, or times of the day

-Climatic: more durable but also chnge somewhat from year to year.

3. Ecosystems as Regions

-Relationships between the environment and the biological realm

-example: the everglades

1. Population as a Regional Focus

-population regions can be area class or choroplethic

2. Culture as a Regional Focus

-Territory exbiting similar cultural characteristics

3. Spatial Behavioral Regions

-Human perceptions and activities can be considered regions

4. Political Regions

-Borders may be disputed, but otherwise, generally stable. Almost always choroplethic.

1. Economic Regions

-Come on now, this one is self explanatory, are you paying ANY attention at this point?

-Basic model and means of communication in geography

-A represtentation, normally to scale, and on a flat medium, of a selection of material or abstract features on, or in relation to, the surface of the earth.

-Gives position from North to South

-Angular distance from the equator

-Given in degrees, minutes and seconds (or decimal degrees) from 0 to 90 N and S.

-Lines are known as parallel lines

-Gives position from East to West

-Given in angular distance from the prime meridian

-Given in Degrees, Minutes and Seconds (or decimal degrees) from 0 to 180 E and W

-Imaginary line parallel to the equator that bisects the earth into the eastern and western hemispheres

-Goes through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England

-Line of Longitude that bisects the globe

-Convergent at the poles.

Format of grid system

(what, what)

Varies!

-From 0 to 69 miles

-Based on your latitude

-The mathematical transformation of space from the surface of the earth to that of a flat plane.

-Some distortion in representation is inevitable

-They can be identified by the distortions which they avoid

-Area

-Shape

-Distance

-Direction

-Preserves the area of objects by assigning them an area on the map which is proportional to their area on the earth.

-Useful for applications which require measuring area.

-To maintain proper area, shape must be distorted.

-Preserve the shape of small objects by maintaining correct angular relationships

-Parallels and Meridians always intersect at right angles

-Useful in navigation

-Preserves direction to places from a central point.

-Often used to depict the polar regions. 

-Parallel lines appear as circles

1. Meridians are equal in length (1/2 the equator)

2. Meridians are true N/S lines that converge at poles

3. Latitude lines are parallel to each other

4. Parallels decrease in length as one nears the poles

5. Meridians and parallels intersect at right angles

6. The scale on the surface of the globe is the same everywhere in all directions

--Normally tangent to the equator

--They show meridians at true North / South lines, but do not converge at the poles

--Parallels are parallel and intersect meridians at right angles, but are all shown as equal in length.

--The Scale is only true around the equator

--Tangent to the globe at a parallel line (called the standard parallel

--Used to depict one hemisphere or smaller portions of the globe

--Scale is only true along the standard parallel

--Meridians converge but are not North / South

--Used to show areas of midlatitudes and both area and shape can be represented fairly well. 

--Constructed by placing a plane tangent to the globe at a single point.

--Used to depict the polar regions

--Used to show navigation routes from a single point, such as air routs from a city