Myths about Geography

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Myths about Geography

• Capes and Bays (memorizing place names)
• Studying just the natural environment

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Geography

• Physical Human
• landforms population
• weather culture
• climate politics
• vegetation behavior
• soils economics
• animals history
• urban

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Myths about Geography

• Capes and Bays (memorizing place names)
• Studying just the natural environment
• The same as geology
• Geography means the same thing as landforms or
  physical environment

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Four Traditions of Geography

• Man Land
• Earth Science
• Regional Studies
• Spatial Analysis

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What is Spatial Analysis?

• Faces have facial characteristics
• Spaces have spatial characteristics
• Size
• Shape
• Volume
• Location
• Boundaries
• Direction
• Distance

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What is Spatial Analysis?

• Spaces have content that
• is arranged (spatial arrangement).
• has a pattern (spatial pattern).
• is organized (spatial organization).
• is related to items within the space (spatial
  relationships).
• is related to other spaces (spatial association).

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Geographic Illiteracy

• 1985
• Gallup Survey
• NGS, AAG, NCGE
• K 12 Education
• Geographic Alliance Network
• Five Fundamental Themes of Geography

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Five Fundamental Themes of Geography

• Location
• Place
• Human-Environment Interaction
• Movement
• Regions

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National Geography Standards

• 1994
• Educate America Act
• National Geography Standards
• 6 Essential Elements
• 18 Standards
• 5 Geographic Skills

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Geography Today

• Central to geography is the idea of space
• Space is the first, foremost, and fundamental
  principle
• Geography is the only discipline to lay claim to
  space
• Geography is the only discipline concerned with
  the essential question of whereness Where is it?
  How did it get there? Why is it there?

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The Geographic Approach

• Geography investigates the distribution of an
  individual phenomenon through space
• Geography investigates the interrelationships
  among phenomena that cause their distributions to
  vary through space and time
• Geography investigates the interrelationships
  that occur among phenomena because of the
  coincident location at a specific place or places
• Geography investigates the physical and cultural
  character of a specific region or landscape that
  exists because of the areas unique combination
  of spatial phenomena
• Geographers are scientists and analysts who
  devote their career to the pursuit of spatial
  logic.

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The Geographic Perspectives

• Spatial Geography is concerned with the spatial
  dimensions of human experience
• Ecological Earth is composed of living and
  nonliving elements interacting in complex
  relationships

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Geography a definition

• Geography is the
• science that
• describes, analyzes and explains the
• spatial characteristics of
• human and physical phenomena and
• relationships that exist, or may exist between
• them,
• at any given time or through time,
• on the surface of Earth.

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Careers in Geography

• Cartographer
• GIS specialist
• Remote sensing analyst
• Community developer
• Market researcher
• Traffic manager
• Route delivery manager
• Environmental manager
• Park ranger
• Weather forcaster

• Outdoor guide
• Coastal zone manager
• Soil conservationist
• Hydrologist
• Area specialist
• Travel agent
• Urban and community planner
• Transportation planner
• Health services planner
• Teach or professor

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Geographic Information Systems

• A GIS is a computer-assisted process designed to
  1) acquire, 2) store, 3) analyze, and 4) display
  spatially referenced data and their attributes.
• A GIS is a GIS because it contains a map database
  and an attribute database (essentially a
  spreadsheet) where each attribute is linked to
  each spatial entity in the map database.
• A map data linked together enable analysis and
  creates a GIS.

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Earth Structure

• Earth Facts
• circumference 25,000 miles
• diameter 8,000 miles
• radius 4,000 miles
• 75 of surface is water

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Layers of Earth
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Layers of Earth
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Layers of Earth
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Earth Layers
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Theories Regarding Continental Positions

• Continental Drift
• - Alfred Wegener early 1900s
• - remarkable fit of the continents
• - glacial deposits
• - coal
• - Pangaea gt Laurasia Gondwana
• 2. Plate Tectonics 1960s
• - Mid-Atlantic Ridge

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Basic Elements of Plate Tectonics

• Tectonics building, shaping the surface by
  diastophism and volcanism
• Plate segments of the lithosphere (about 25),
  Why dont we know exact number?
• Types of plate boundaries
• - compressional, convergent, destructive
• - extensional, divergent, constructive
• - transform, strike-slip, conservative

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Plate Boundaries and Associated Activities
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Subduction
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Oceanic Trench
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Oceanic Ridge
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Seafloor Spreading
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Rift
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African Rift Valley System
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Transform Fault
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San Andreas Fault
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San Andreas Fault
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Plate Tectonics - Convection
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Plate Tectonics - Convection
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Lithospheric Plate Boundaries

• How do we know where they are?
• Earthquake activity
• Volcanic activity
• Mountain building activity

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Earthquake Activity
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Volcanism

• Types of Volcanoes
• Shield
• Composite, Strato
• Plugged dome

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Shield Volcano
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Composite/Strato Volcano
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Caldera Neck
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Location of Volcanoes
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Exceptions

• Some earthquakes occur away from plate
  boundaries.
• Some volcanoes occur away from plate boundaries.
• Why?

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New Madrid Earthquake Zone
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Hawaiian Islands Hot Spot
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Mountain Systems
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Wearing and Building Earths Surface

• Wearing Down
• Gradation
• Building Up
• Aggradation

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Rocks

• Types of Rocks
• Igneous
• Molten magma gt Solid Rock
• Extrusive surface cooling (Basalt)
• Intrusive subsurface cooling (Granite)
• Sedimentary
• Solid gt Fragmented gt Deposited gt Solidified
  (lithification)
• Sandstone, Shale, Limestone, Coal
• Metamorphic
• Solid gt into Lithosphere gt heated/compressed
• Quartz, Slate, Marble

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Rocks
Igneous Sedimentary Metamorphic
Quartz
Sandstone
Basalt
Shale
Slate
Granite
Limestone
Marble