UNIT 1: GEOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS. THE STUDENT WILL BE ABLE TO… Understand and apply geographic terms and concepts Geographic concepts include location,

UNIT 1: GEOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS

THE STUDENT WILL BE ABLE TO…

Understand and apply geographic terms and concepts

Geographic concepts include location, place, scale, space, pattern, nature and society, networks, flows, regionalization, and globalization.

SOME PRETTY IMPORTANT TERMS…

Place is a specific point on the Earth. Your desk or your house is a place. Every place can be identifies by it’s absolute location (latitude and longitude) or relative location (relation to other places).

Site is the physical characteristics of a place. The soil, climate, vegetation, topography, water sources, latitude and elevation of a place. These factors make a place unique. The site of London is unique, it has specific coordinates of longitude and latitude.

Situation is the location of a place relative to other places. Could you find Bob’s house if I told you it was across the street from Keisha's house and next to David’s? You could if you knew where Keisha and David live, but situations may vary from person to person.

Physically, Istanbul occupies a hilly site adjacent to a deep harbor and has grown on both sides of the Bosporus Strait, a narrow and strategic waterway that connects the Mediterranean and Black seas (Greiner, 2012) This image is of the Hagia Sophia (also cultural succession).

These maps depict the situation of Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, in relation to the surrounding bodies of water, the rest of the country and the neighboring regions in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Istanbul’s situation is that it straddles Europe and Asia (Greiner, 2012). Also note the different scales, they change perspective.

6

Place name (toponym) is a name given to a place by humans. Changing the toponym can change the “sense of place” about a place; change “Swamp city” to “Pleasantown” and the place seems to be better. Toponyms are very important in our world.

Spaces are considered areas (places are just points). It is an area in which activities take place. It can either be absolute (measurable) or relative (defined less with precision and more based on interactions)

Sense of Place is the deep attachment humans have to specific locations such as home and to particularly distinctive places (Norton, 2012)

LOCATION…HOW DO WE DESCRIBE PLACES ON THE EARTH?

PATTERNS

Patterns: They are a type of distribution or how things are represented and/or located on a surface or areaDistance: The spatial dimension of separationDistribution: The pattern of geographic facts (for example, people within an area).

SCALE…

The larger the scale, the smaller the area, but the greater the detail. Small scale =‘s less detailLarge scale =‘s more detail Can change our perspectives

THINKING LIKE A GEOGRAPHER

“What is where, why there, and why care?” (Norton, 2012).

Begin thinking about Geographic LevelsLevel 1 - What? Where? When? Scale?Level 2 - Pattern IdentificationLevel 3 -Why there?/How did it get there? Level 4 (prediction)

So what?/What if?/Impacts?/ Effects?

LVL. 1 WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, & SCALE

LVL. 2 PATTERN IDENTIFICATION…..

LVL. 3 WHY THERE & HOW DID IT GET THERE?

LVL. 4 SO WHAT? WHAT IF…? IMPACTS?

SCALE CHANGES PERSPECTIVE

If a map depicts a small territory it is large scale.

This maps depiction is smaller than the world map, so it is larger scaled than the 1st map.