Download Place Physical and Human Characteristics

Place
Physical and Human Characteristics
Location tells us where, and place tells us what is there.
All places have a set of distinctive characteristics, the
features that make them different from or similar to other
places. Geographers often divide these characteristics into
physical and human phenomena that are can be mapped.
Characteristics of place often can be explained by the
human and physical processes that define the geographic
patterns of our planet.
Physical Characteristics
Landform-are the processes that shape the landscape:
erosion and deposition by rivers, waves, glaciers, and
wind; mountain building, volcanoes, earthquakes, and
plate tectonics.
Climate Patterns of temperature, humidity and rainfall,
cells of air pressure, wind and ocean circulation: the
climate of a place affects landform processes, soils, water
availability, vegetation, and animal life.
Soils Natural fertility, suitability to agriculture types and
crops, and relations to climate are all important factors of
soil.
Natural Vegetation Type of environment: desert, tropical
rainforest, tundra, or savanna, and the relationship to
factors of soil and climate.
Animal Life its relationship to environment, climate, soils,
and vegetation.
Water- availability of fresh water, areas of water and
surplus
Human Characteristics
Religion deals with human belief systems and their
imprints on places.
Languages Human communication and its imprint on
places: names of places and features are often
geographically descriptive in their original language.
Population Factors Description, distributions, density,
ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, and economic
structures, rates of birth, death, and population growth.
Settlement Patterns Urban, rural, suburban, wilderness
areas, and the form of settlements.
Economic Activities How people make a living, including
agriculture, industry, forestry, fishing, and providing
services, the imprint of an economic system on the
landscape.
Environmental Limits All environments have limiting
factors, such as availability of water, land, and other
natural resources, management of environments (coastal
zones and lands).
Adaptation Humans have many ways of adapting to
various environments. People in deserts live differently
than people in humid tropics or the Polar Regions. The
influence of the environment: ways of making a living,
house types, ways of life, and the appearance of the
human landscape
Different Cultural Attitudes about the Environment and
Its Resources Cultures often have different attitudes
toward use and conservation of the environment.
Regions
How They Form and Change
Regions are geographical tools. They are mental
constructs designed to help us understand and organize
the characteristics of our planet. Regions may be larger
than a continent or smaller than your neighborhood.
Regions can have sharp boundaries that are well defined
(such as a state, e.g., California or Illinois), or may have
gradational or indistinct boundaries (such as the Pacific
Basin, the Great Plains, or Silicon Valley).
Many regions are familiar to us because of television or
the newspapers, or because they are related to other
subjects that we study. For the geographer, regions
represent a core element of the discipline and are of
fundamental importance.
We define our regions by stating criteria and then drawing
boundaries. Regions may be based upon crops, types of
agriculture, climate, landforms, vegetation, political
boundaries, soils, religions, languages, cultures, and
economic characteristics. Subthemes include
Uniform Region
Uniform regions are defined by some uniform cultural or
physical characteristic. Examples include the Wheat Belt,
Latin America, the Gulf-Atlantic Coastal Plain, the Bible
Belt, the Sun Belt, New England, the Rocky Mountains,
or a country, township, or Cajun country in Louisiana
Functional Region
A functional region has a focal point (often a city) and is
the organized space surrounding that central location.
Examples would be a metropolitan area, such as greater
New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, or the San
Francisco Bay Area. Other functional regions include
market areas served by a particular store and districts
around schools.
Cultural Diversity
Understanding regions can lead to understanding human
diversity. Regions are an excellent means for illustrating
the cultural differences and similarities between areas of
the world and groups of people.