Welcome to Cascadia (Ecotopia? The Northern I-5 Corridor?)

APCG - Unit I: Laying the foundation

What’s distinctive about the study of human geography?

• More about the perspective used to study phenomena on Earth than about discrete facts and figures.

• The goal of APHG is to understand how and why interconnections are maintained on Earth.

• Not simply interested in where things are located and why they’re there…but also interested in the causes, effects, and relationships of patterns and processes.

Greenlandic people and music(Connections/relationships - Inuit and Danish cultures?)

APHG Unit I - Geography: Its Nature and Perspectives

• Geography as a field of inquiry

• Key geographic concepts and models

• Notable geographers• The geographical

perspective

• Space, place, scale• Key geographical

skills• Sources of

geographical data and information: census data, field observation, archival information, etc.

Student outcomes after learning the content and skills in Unit I

1) Be able to write one paragraph that describes the geographic perspective and defines what geography is (the essence of geography).

2) Be comfortable explaining and defending the importance of geography (using key concepts and specific examples of geographic analysis and applications).

But first…how did geography make a comeback in the US?

• Buried in Social Studies after WW II

• Revolution began in mid-1980s

• National Geographic Society support

• Geographic Alliances in every state, and DC, Canada, Puerto Rico

• National Standards, nat’l assessments, state benchmarks, first-ever AP course approved (that’s us!)

Four good reasons to be geographically informed…

1) The Existential Reason:

We humans intrinsically want to understand the nature of our home on planet earth. How did the cultures, peoples, and built environment on Earth come to look the way they do?

Why be geographically informed?

2) The Ethical Reason:

Earth will no doubt continue to whirl through space for many more millennia. But can it remain in a condition where humans can thrive or even live? Geography provides knowledge about the critical interdependency of all living things.

Four reasons to be geographically informed…

3) The Intellectual Reason:

Geography captures our imagination! It stimulates curiosity about people and places in the world. Geography focuses attention on critically important topics and thus contributes to creating wiser decision-makers…

Another pragmatic reason to be geographically informed…

4) The Practical Reason:

Geography has ultimate value in the ‘real world.’ Imagine a doctor who treats diseases who doesn’t understand the environment where it first began and how it spread? Or marketers who don’t know where rice will sell better than french fries - or Portuguese sausages will sell better than bacon?

What is the ‘Geographic Perspective’

• Spatial Perspective• Environmental

Perspective• Cultural

Perspective

• Synthesizing these three ways of thinking into a holistic approach

• And integrating some exciting case studies along the way…

The White Mountains (Nevada-California border)

Location?Early settlers’

mental maps of California?

Human impacts?Economic/cultural

relevance?

Spatial analysis is key…

A few key concepts:• Location (absolute, relative)• Distance and direction• Accessibility (utility of location,

relationships)• Spatial interaction (time-space convergence,

interconnections, relationships)• Scale

The concept of scale

Definition: Scale is the ratio of distance on map to distance on the ground.

Types of map scales:1) verbal scale (e.g. “one inch on the map = one mile on Earth”)2) graphic or bar scale3) representative fraction scale (1:63,360 – numerous advantages!)

Student challenges??

Are you comfortable with this?

Map scale has a significant impact on how much detail can be shown on a map.

- So the smaller the scale, the larger the area shown on the map.

- Large scale maps can show rivers, houses, and all kinds of other details

The regional approach…

• Defining regions: The meta-geography of space and place (at local to global scales)

• Core concepts: Formal region - political identityFunctional region - connected by common themes or activitiesVernacular region - defined by local identities

Regionalizing places close to home

• Political regions (states, counties, metropolitan areas)

• Environmental or physical regions (landforms, climate zones, eco-regions)

• Economic regions (Silicon Valley, Silicon Hills, Silicon Forest)

• Cultural regions (based on religions, dialects, ethnicity or race of residents)

How to regionalize the U.S.??

A few examples…

Emerging metro regions?

More on spatial thinking(or ‘we all see the world differently’)

• Mental maps

• Perception

• Sense of place

Examples of mental maps?

Measuring your mental maps of the U.S.?

APHG ‘free response’ questions to reflect on after studying Unit I…

1) What is the spatial perspective and how is it used by human geographers?

2) Why and how do geographers use regions to teach and learn about places on Earth?

3) List, define, and give an example of three types of map scale.

How to ‘do’ geography (e.g. using Kuby et al this afternoon)?

• Data sources

• Methods of analysis

• Applying the geographic perspective to real world questions and problems

• Our Portland project?

On the Labrador coast