Download Part 1: Geography: It`s Nature and Perspectives Geography (Greek

Part 1: Geography: It’s Nature and Perspectives
1. Geography (Greek Definition):
-The geo part means Earth and the graphy part
comes from “graph” which means “to write
about”
-Literal definition of geography is essentially “to
write about the Earth.”
2. Purpose of Early Geography:
-The first geographers studied places and regions
for practical purposes. They were interested in
exploring uncharted territories, mostly for trade.
-First geographers included Chinese, Greeks, and
North Africans. They were also the first
cartographers, making detailed maps and
deriving measurements to describe the world as
they knew it.
3. Eratosthenes:
-Head librarian at Alexandria during the third
century B.C.
-One of the world’s first cartographers.
-Computed the Earth’s circumference based on
the dun’s angle at the summer solstice and
distance between the two Egyptian cities of
Alexandria and Syene.
-His calculations were only about 109 miles (175
kilometers) too long.
-Responsible for coining the term geography.
4. Ptolemy:
-Published his Guide to Geography in second
century A.D., which included rough maps of the
landmasses as he understood them at the time,
and a global grid system.
-Efforts represent a significant early contribution
to both geography and the technical aspects of
early cartography.
5. Exploration:
-Beginning in 1400 A.D., knowledge of the
globe began to expand rapidly as explorers
traveled the Earth mapping landforms, climates,
indigenous cultures, and the distribution of
plants and animals.
-Some of the most influential early explorers
include Bartholomeu Dias, Christopher
Columbus, and Ferdinand Magellan.
-Later important explores include Alexander von
Humboldt and the men of the Lewis and Clark
expedition.
6. George Perkins Marsh:
-An inventor, diplomat, politician, and scholar.
-In 1864 wrote Man and Nature, or Physical
Geography as Modified by Human Action.
-Book provides first description of extent to
which natural systems had been impacted by
human actions.
-Writing was informed and influenced by both
extensive travel in Europe and the Middle East
and by transcendentalist movement occurring in
his native New England.
-Warned that people’s willful destruction of the
environment could have disastrous consequences
like the desertification he witnessed in the Fertile
Crescent.
7. Carl Sauer:
-One of the first modern geographers, in 1925
argued that cultural landscapes, the products of
complex interactions between humans and their
environments, should be the fundamental focus
of geographic inquiry.
-Proposed a method of landscape analysis that
allowed geographers to understand and interpret
the complex relationship between humans and
environment.
-Argued that even landscapes appearing to be
natural had experienced some form of alteration
as a result of human activity.
8. The Quantitative Revolution:
-The movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s among
social scientists that stressed use of empirical
measurements, hypothesis testing, development
of mathematical models, and use of computer
programs to explain geographic patterns.
-Approach reflected influences of both modernist
philosophy and technological innovation in the
social sciences during this time.
-Many geographers credit it for bringing
geography into the mainstream of modern
science, while others criticize it for limiting the
questions geographers can ask and the methods
they can use in their investigations.
9. Remote Sensing:
-Process of capturing images from Earth’s
surface from airborne platforms such as satellites
or airplanes.
-Images generated can be digital or analog
photographs and data can be collected from
several bands of the electromagnetic spectrum
(e.g., infrared data is often used to collect
vegetation data).
-Has become an important technique allowing
modern geographers access to landscapes
otherwise somewhat inaccessible (e.g., the
Amazon rainforest).
-In combination with other technologies and
techniques, can be used to generate precise
measurements of land use change.
10. Global Positioning System (GPS):
-An integrated network of satellites that orbit the
earth, broadcasting location information to
handheld receivers on Earth’s surface.
-With a handheld receiver, a person standing at
any point on the Earth can obtain highly accurate
information about geographic location in terms
of latitude and longitude.
-Becoming increasingly popular in automobiles
and other handheld devices because of ability to
provide accurate locational information.
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14. Human Geography (diagram)
15. Physical Geography
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11. Geographical Information System (GIS)
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A family of software programs that allow
geographers to map, analyze, and model
spatial data.
Most use thematic layers, consisting of
individual maps that contain specific
features such as roads, stream networks, or
elevation contours.
Multiple thematic layers may be united into
one comprehensive map combining useful
features that help geographers understand
and analyze spatial relationships between
different phenomena.
12. Divisions of Geography
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Geography is typically divided into three
major areas, each consisting of several
subdisciplines.
Human geography, physical geography, and
Earth system science, which results from the
intersection of the two.
Earth system science is often called human
environment relationships (HER), or
environmental geography.
13. Human Geography
Broadly defined as the study of human
activities on the earth’s surface.
Human geographers generally focus their
work in more specific subdisciplines
including population geography, cultural
geography, economic geography, urban
geography, agricultural geography, and
political geography.
Often, human geographers combine two or
more subfields in their research, hoping to
better understand the spatial dimensions of
complex, interlinked social systems.

Physical geographers study spatial
characteristics of the Earth’s physical and
biological systems.
Many natural scientists, including
meteorologists, climatologists, ecologists,
oceanographers, geologists, soil scientists,
and hydrologists, study physical
geographers.
Through understanding of the spatial
variability of the phenomena under
investigation each of these types of scientists
gain insight into why certain phenomena
behave the way they do in certain places.
16. Earth System Science
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A fairly new area of focus for the sciences, it
became popular in the last several decades.
Arose as a way to study interactions
between physical systems on a global scale.
Geographers have been at the forefront of
this emerging discipline.
17. Systematic Geography

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Study of the Earth’s integrated systems as a
whole, instead of focusing on particular
processes in a single place.
This approach allows geographers to apply
their knowledge of a specific spatial process
broadly beyond unique places to other areas
across the globe.
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18. Environmental Geography
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Results from the intersection of human and
physical geography.
Environmental geographers, or geographers
who study human environmental
relationships (HER), come from almost
every academic discipline and frequently
occupy prominent positions a the forefront
of debates regarding anthropogenic, or
human-induced, environmental change;
conservation planning; and sustainability.
Concerned with anything from the history of
a given landscape to the effects of pollution
on impoverished neighborhoods, to the
creation of nature reserves for endangered
species.
19. W. D. Pattison’s Four Traditions of
Geography
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W. D. Pattison was a geographer at the
University of Chicago, who, in 1964,
published a defining piece on the discipline
of geography’s four defining traditions.
The Earth-science tradition as defined by
Pattison is essentially physical geography.
The culture-environment tradition is
essentially the same thing as HER or
environmental geography.
The locational tradition relates to the
analysis of spatial data through cartography.
The area-analysis tradition refers to regional
geography, which involves an investigation
and description of a unique piece of the
Earth’s surface.
20. Five Themes of Geography
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Location refers to the position on Earth’s
surface.
Human/environment interaction refers to
cultural ecology or the relationship between
culture and environment.
Regions are ways to organize or
compartmentalize space.

Place differs from location in that it refers to
associations among phenomena within a
particular area.
Movement describes the interconnections
between areas.
21. Thinking Geographically
 Geographers, like other social scientists,
contribute a unique perspective or way of
thinking about the phenomena occurring in
the world around them.
 Thinking geographically involves
developing a spatial perspective, an
appreciation of scale, and the ability to
analyze and int4erpret varied forms of
geographic data.
22. The Spatial Perspective
 An intellectual framework that allows
geographers to look at the earth in terms of
the relationships between various places.
 Geographers look at the spatial distribution
of different types of phenomena and ask
why and how certain phenomena come to
occur in certain places.
 Some major questions of geographers are:
How do two places interact economically,
socially, and culturally? Why do some
places have more in common than others?
How are social phenomena conveyed over
time and space?
23. The Importance of Scale
 Geographic scale is a general concept that
refers to a conceptual hierarchy of spaces,
from small to large, that reflect actual levels
of organization in the real world.
 A characteristic scale in human geography,
from small to large is the increase in size
from the neighborhood, to the urban area, to
the metropolitan area, and finally, to the
region.
 Geographers seek to understand how
processes occurring at one scale may affect
activities at other scales.
 Geographers understand that patterns or
analysis presented at large scales may not
reflect apparent spatial differences at smaller
spatial scales.
24. The Region as a Concept
 One of the fundamental units of analysis in
human geography.

Regionalizing allows geographers to group
pieces of the Earth’s surface area together
according to certain similarities.
 Regions do not exist as well-defined unites
in the landscape; instead they are conceptual
constructions that geographers use for
convenience and comparison.
25. Regional Geography
 Regional geography, or Pattison’s areaanalysis tradition, is the study of regions.
 Regions vary in size; a region may be an
entire continent, for example, North
America, or a smaller area, such as southern
Florida.
 Regional geographers, no matter the size of
the region under study, investigate the
unique characteristics, patterns, and
processes existent within that place.
26. Qualitative vs. Quantitative Data
 Human Geographers work with various
types of data that come in two main forms:
qualitative and quantitative.
 Qualitative data are often associated within
cultural or regional geography because they
are more unique to descriptive of particular
places and processes.
 Qualitative data are not suited to statistical
analyses and modeling and are often
collected through interviews, empirical
observations, or the interpretation of texts,
artwork, old maps, and other archives.
 Quantitative data approaches use rigorous
mathematical techniques, are particularly
important in economic, political, and
population geography, as well as physical
geography.
27. Idiographic vs. Nomothetic
 Idiographic refers to facts or features unique
to a particular place or region, such as its
history or ethnic composition.
 Nomothetic refers to concepts that are
universally applicable.
 The contrast is similar to the regional/
systematic difference; regional geographers
tend to be more idiographic, while
systematic geography takes a nomothetic
approach by seeking universal laws that can
be applied broadly to numerous places on
the Earth’s surface.
28. The Geoid
 The term for the bumpy oblate spheroid that
is the Earth’s surface.
 An oblate spheroid is a sphere that is
slightly bigger horizontally than vertically.
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Approximately 8,000 miles (12,880
kilometers) in diameter and its
circumference is about 25,000 miles (40,250
kilometers).
29. Projection
 Refers to the process by which the threedimensional Earth surface is transferred to a
two-dimensional map.
 Traditionally, maps were made by placing a
light source (e.g., a candle or bulb) inside of
a translucent globe and then projecting the
globe’s features onto another shape (usually
a piece of paper) surrounding it.
 Currently produced through numerous
different, complicated, mathematical
equations.
30. Map Distortions
 All flat maps are distorted as a result of
projecting a three-dimensional surface onto
a two-dimensional surface. The only
accurate representation of the Earth’s
surface is a globe.
 Some projections distort certain features in
favor of preserving others.
 Generally, the major features that get
distorted or preserved are shape, area, and
direction.
31. When Projection Matters

Cartographers choose projections
according to the purpose of the map.

For example, a map of population
density by country should use a
projection that preserves are (e.g., an
equal-area map).

Global maps are much more
distorted than maps of local places
(e.g., state shapes and sizes do not
change nearly as much as country
shapes and sizes when projected).
32. The Mercator Projection
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Preserves accurate compass direction
but distorts area of landmasses
relative to each other.
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Landmasses become increasingly
distorted, or large in size, at high
latitude near the North and South
Poles.
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Originally created by projecting the
Earth’s features onto a cylinder (a
cylindrical projection), which results
in lines of latitude becoming parallel
rather than intersecting leading to
tremendous distortion at the poles.
33. The Peters Projection
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A cylindrical projection that retains accurate
sizes of all the world’s landmasses
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Reveals how large the landmasses near the
equator actually are
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Often viewed as a political statement-an
attempt to focus attention on the world’s
poorest countries.
37. Cartographic Scale

Also called map scale, refers to the ration
between distance on a map and the actual
distance on Earth’s surface.
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Ratio remains constant despite units, for
example, a map scale 1:200 means that 1
unit on the map (inches, feet, miles, etc.)
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On small scale maps, ratio between map
units and ground units is small and map
represents a larger piece of the Earth’s
surface.
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On large scale maps, ratio between map
units and ground units is large, meaning map
represents a relatively small piece of the
Earth’s surface.
34. The Fuller Projection
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Maintains the accurate size and shape of
landmasses but completely rearranges
direction.
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An example of an attempt to balance
projection errors.
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Does not maintain accurate area, shape,
distance, or direction, but minimizes errors
in each
Provides an aesthetically pleasing balance
leading to its frequent use by cartographers
at organizations such as the National
Geographic Society (which is where the
projection was made).
36. Azimuthal Projections
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Refers to a map’s smallest discernable unit;
basically it is the smallest thing visible on a
map.
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If an object has to be 330 feet (100 meters )
long in order to show up on a map, then that
map’s resolution is 330 feet (100 meters).
Cardinal direction-north, south , east, and
west- no longer have any meaning
35. The Robinson Projection
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38. Resolution
Planar projections, meaning formed when a
flat piece of paper is placed on top of the
globe and a light source projects the
surrounding areas on the map.
Either the North Pole or the South Pole is
oriented at the center of the map, giving an
impression of looking up or down at the
Earth.
39. Generalization
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Averaging over details; in a cartographic
context generalization results from scaling
changes.
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Small-scale maps have high generalization,
or less detail, but show larger pieces of the
Earth’s surface.
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Large-scale maps have less generalization,
or more detail, but show smaller pieces of
the Earth’s surface
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A map of the entire United States (small
scale) will not show the small towns and
villages that would appear on a map of a
local area (large scale)
40. Reference vs. Thematic Maps
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Generally maps come in two forms:
thematic maps and reference maps;
form depends on the map’s purpose.

Reference maps are used to navigate
between places and include topographic
maps, atlases, road maps, and other
navigational maps.

Thematic maps display one or more
variables across a specific such as
population variables, voting patterns, or
economic welfare.
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Many ways to display thematic data;
some common; some common methods
include choropleth maps, proportional
symbol maps, isoline maps, and
cartograms
#41 Isoline MapsMaps that use lines to represent quantities of
equal value. Most common example is a
topographic map, where each line represents a
constant elevation.
#42 Topographic Map Showing Elevation
ContoursSee graph
#43 Proportional Symbols MapSize of the chosen symbol indicates relative
magnitude of some value for a given geographic
region.
#44 Dot Density MapUse points to represent particular values; for
example, cropland harvested where each dot
represents 1000 bushels of corn. Value comes
from the ability to facilitate perception of spatial
pattern; in example of corn cropland harvested,
an obvious spatial pattern would emerge in the
Midwest. The disadvantage is that data that does
not meet the threshold does not appear on the
map.
#45 Choropleth MapsUse colors or tonal shadings to represent
categories of data for given geographic areas;
countries, states, or counties most commonly use
polygons. A map of population density by
county in the United States might use five
different colors to classify density values.
#46 Cartograms-
Transform space so that the political unit,
such as state or country, with the greatest value
for some type of data is represented by the
largest relative area and all other polygons are
represented proportionally to that largest
polygon. Can be powerful for illustrating
comparative patterns. For example, a cartogram
of electoral votes in the United States would
make some of the larger states by area very small,
whereas some smaller states would expand
showing a more accurate picture of each state’s
influence on the political process.
#47 VisualizationsExist digitally and use sophisticated
software to create dynamic computer maps, some
of which are three-dimensional or interactive.
Some allow geographers to investigate features
that cannot be seen with the naked eye; others
use models to show how landscapes change over
time. In some. People can walk through, or fly
over, landscapes.
#48 SimplificationRefers to the level of detail portrayed on a
map. If a cartographer designs a map of the
entire United states, he or she would probably
not include minute details such as locations of
towns smaller than fifty thousand people.
Completely depends on the purpose of the map
and the size of the area the map is portraying.
#49 AggregationAggregation refers to the size of the unit
under investigation such as cities, counties, states,
or countries. Like simplification, Aggregation
completely depends on the purpose of the map.
Level also depends on the data geographers have
access to.
#50 AggregationSee map
51. Power of Maps
-ability to make something nonspatial (eg.
Population rates), spatial, thereby facilitating the
perception of spatial relationships
-ability to simply display a large amount of imfo,
for example, the only way to see the entire
Earth’s surface at once
-Can highlight only necessary info: for example,
maps of subway systems contain only necessary
info for effectively navigating the sys;
everything extraneous is removed.
52. Deception of Maps
-deceive through simplification and
generalization by excluding or generalizing
important details.
-On many maps, certain features are exaggerated
for graphical clarity; for example, reference
maps display highways as much thicker than
they would appear in reality.
-Symbolism can mislead: People associate
certain colors with certain landscape features
(e.g., greens and browns with vegetation); if
colors are not used appropriately, people may
misread maps.
-b/c of projection, no map can give an accurate
picture of size, shape, and direction of land
features in relation to one another.
53. Cognitive Maps
56. Absolute vs Relative location
-Absolute location is the precise location of any
object or place on the Earth’s surface as
determined by a standard grid or coordinate
system.
-The most common system used to determine
absolute location is latitude and longitude.
-Relative location describes a place’s location in
terms of its relationship to places around it.
-It is more common in everyday language.
57. Latitude and Longitude
-coordinates, which are used for locational
purposes, are made up of lines of latitude and
longitude.
-Lines of longitude, or meridians, originate at the
prime meridian, which passes through
Greenwich, England, and ends at the
International Date Line; all lines of longitude
meet at the poles.
-A dynamic internal representation of a place or
environment.
-Lines of latitude run parallel to one another and
are often called parallels. They originate at one
equator and terminate at the poles.
-when an individual is asked to draw a cognitive,
it becomes a “sketch map.”
58. The Earth’s Graticule
-The sketch map is the external representation of
the spatial info that exists in a person’s head.
-See Graph
-Each cognitive map is highly individual,
dependent on info an individual deems important,
and is limited by amount and type of experience
an individual has with a place.
54. Preference Maps
-Show people’s ideas about environmental,
social, or economic quality of life in various
places.
-In general, most Americans rate their home state
highly, and most show preferences for coastal
areas, especially California, and the East Coast.
55. Preference Map of the U.S.
-see map
59. Site vs. Situation
-Site refers to the physical and cultural features
of a place, independent to other places around it.
-Situation describes a place’s relationship to
other places around it.
-For example, New Orleans’s site is poor; it is
essentially a bowl below sea level, its location on
the Mississippi River delta makes its situation in
relation to the rest of the US very important.
60. Absolute vs. Relative Distance
-Absolute distance is an exact measure of the
separation between two points using a standard
measure.
-Relative distance is when less precise but often
meaningful measures are used to describe
separation between two points.
-Most common relative distance measure is time.
-For example, New York is typically described
as being five hours from LA (by plane).
61) Feature Distribution Concepts: Density,
Dispersion, Pattern
- See graph
65) First Law of Geography
- Everything is related to everything else, but
near things are more closely related than far
things.
- Describes “the friction of distance,” meaning
that the farther away something is , the less
likely someone is to interact with it
66) The Gravity Model
- Used to help geographers discover and
analyze spatial processes
- Density is the amount of a particular
feature within a given area. It is not the same
thing as dense, which implies a cluster.
-First descrived in the 1850s, it is based on Isaac
Newton’s law of universal gravitation.
- lij= PiPj/Dij^2
-Where
-Disperse describe features that are spread
out from another.
- Features that are clumped together are
described as being “clustered” or “concentrated”
62) Spatial Association
- Describes the distribution of two or more
features and how they do or do not correspond to
one another
- Powerful concept in spatial analysis as it
allows geographers to understand why certain
spatial patterns exist
-For example, themapping of type 2 diabetes
and socioeconomic status (SES) reveals a strong
spatial association: the states with the highest
rates of type 2 diabetes also have lowest SES
63) Distance Decay
-Describes the patter of diminishing
likelihood of interaction with a lace with
increasing distance from that place
- Majority of people who shop at a particular
grocery store live or work close by. Few people
in that store live far from its location.
- Different activities have different distance
decay curves; that is, people travel short
distances for everyday goods like milk and bread,
but travel farther to attend special events such as
major concerts or professional sporting events
64) Distance Decay Curve
- lij= the interaction between places I an j
- PI= the population of place i
- Pj= the population of place j
- Dij^2= the distance between places I and j,
squared
-An important implication is large cities may
still have extensive interactions despite being
separated by great distances; for example, New
York and Los Angeles
67) Connectivity
- A measure of all the means of connection
and communication between places
- Virtually synonymous with relative
distance as some places are highly connected to
one another yet separated by significant
distances
68) Accessibility
-Relative ease with which you can reach a
destination
- Determined by a place’s connectivity; the more
means there are for interacting with a place, the
higher its accessibility.
69) Network
- The areal pattern of connections between
places
- Some describe literal connections between
places such as the connections between subway
stops on a metro map. However, some are less
literal; for example, many emerging Internet sites
such as “MySpace” or “Facebook” are social
networks, describing all the links between a
group of “Friends.”
- Examples include climate regions, language ,
religion, or any other theme that does not correspond
to administrative boundaries
78) Administrative Regions
- Politically determined, thus their boundaries are
exact
70) Time- Space Convergence
- The idea that with increasing transportation and
communications technology, absolute distance
between certain places is, in effect, shrinking.
-For example, increased transportation
technology has shrunk the distance between
NYC and London; it used to take days, even
weeks, to cross the Atlantic by boat; it now takes
only half a day by plane
-Increased communications technology allows
places to communicate instantaneously with each
other, which, in effect, completely negates
distance’s effect on interaction (via voice or text
communication)
80) Functional Regions
- The boundaries are drawn around an interaction
region: every functional region has a node that people
interact with; the spatial pattern of that interaction
defines the region
- For example, commuters to a particular city,
newspaper circulation, or branch operations with a
major bank
- Each node services the surrounding area, and the
spatial pattern of that area is described as a functional
region
-All have vague boundaries
79) Formal Regions
- Sometimes called thematic regions because they are
defined by one or more variable or theme
- Membership strength varies throughout the region;
some places represent the theme defining the region
more strongly than others
- Because of varying membership strength,
boundaries are imprecise or vague. A clear line does
not separate one area from another; rather, change
between regions tends to be gradual.
- Are hierarchial or nested; for example, in the US,
states exist within the country, counties exist within
states, and census tracts exist within counties
- Have uniform membership: Everyone within an
administrative region is equally a member of that
region, or everyone in St. Louis County is equally a
resident of St. Louis County.
77) Regions
- Generally defined as pieces of Earth’s surface area
- Geographers compartmentalize space for different
purposes leading to four region types: administrative
regions; formal (or thematic) regions; functional
regions; and cognitive (or perceptual or vernacular)
regions.
76) Time- Distance Decay
-The idea that the longer it takes for something to
spread or move over space, the less likelihood of
interaction withor spread of that phenomena
- Essentally description of time as a barrier to spatial
diffusion
#81 – Cognitive/ Perceptual/ Vernacular Regions –
Describe how people informally organize places in
their mind. – Even though formed by individuals,
usually are shared between people because of
culturally shared beliefs. For example, in the United
States, most people would draw similar boundaries
around the “Deep South.” – Boundaries are imprecise,
vague, or variable.
#82 - Zelinsky’s Work om Perceptual Regions – In
the 1970s, Wilbur Zelinsky divided the United States
into what he called vernacular regions based on
perceived unique cultural characteristics associated
with particular areas. – Following his initial
delineation of the common perceptual regions of the
United States, Zelinsky defined several methods for
testing the robustness of his ideas, including using
overtones present in titles of enterprises, from phone
books, to assign them to unique areas of the United
States.
#83 – Perceptual Regions of the United States –
See Map.