Ap Human Geography Notes

I. Chapter 2- Introduction to Human Geography A. Field Note: Awakening to world hunger 1. Kenya grows tea and coffee, instead of food a. Majority is hungry and has substandard (poor) housing 2. 1/6 of the world s population is malnourished a. Majority are women and children 1. Less power and money b. Cause of malnourishment is poverty 3. Food consumption is currently distributed- unevenly a. The wealthier countries are best nourished/fed 4. Hundreds of millions of people subsist on the equivalent of a $1 A day. a. Usually live in shack, owned by landlords 5. Only 4% of Norway is arable land a. And more than 70% of Bangladesh is arable 6. 2/3 s of Bangladesh s country is flooded each year during monsoon Season. 7. Hunger in Kenya depends on what they produce, who owns the land and How Kenya is tied into the global economy. 8. Productive lands of Kenya in western highlands owned by coffee and tea Corporations. a. Mostly Kenyan women b. Lands registered by son of husbands B. What is Human Geography ? 1. Human Geography: how people make places, organize space and society, how We interact and make sense of religion. 2. Advances in communication and transportation are making places/ people interconnected. 3. Globalization: a set of processes that are increasing interactions, deepening relationships, and heightening interdependence without regard to country borders. 4. Geographers use scale to understand the interrelationships among local, regional, national and global. a. These processes disregard country borders and include global financial markets or even global environmental change. C. What are geographic questions ? 1. Geographers study human phenomena such as language, religion and identity also physical such as landforms, climate, and environmental change. a. Also interactions between humans and the environment. 2. Geographers also question the why of where 3. Spatial: the space on earth s surface a. Distribution: an exact place b. Pattern: design of the spatial distribution y Maps in the time of Cholera Pandemics 1. Mapping the distribution of a disease is the first step to finding its cause. 1

2. In 1854 the first cases of Cholera were mapped in London s Soho district. 3. Cholera is a term used to denote a set of diseases in which diarrhea and dehydration are the symptoms of. a. Cholera is an ancient disease and was confined to India until the beginning of the nineteenth century. b. In 1816 it spread to china, japan, east Africa and Mediterranean Europe. c. The disease had spread so widely that it had killed thousands d. Death would come in a matter of days after diagnosed with the disease e. A second cholera pandemic struck from 1826-1837, and a third from 1842-1862 which England was severely hit and then spread to North America f. After doing some research Snow discovered that a large amount of deaths occurred around the water pump. g. Snow tried to spread the word of boiling your water The spatial Perspective 1. German philosopher argued that we need disciplines focused on not only a particular phenomenon (such as economics and sociology) but also time (history) and space (geography). 2. Human Geographers use a spatial perspective as they study a multitude of phenomena ranging from political elections to urban shantytowns to gay neighborhoods and folk music. 3. The national Geographic Society published their findings in 1986, introducing the five themes of geography. The five themes 1. The first theme is Location, and it highlights how the geographical position of people and things on earth s surface affects what happens and why a. Location helps establish the context within which events and processes are situated. 2. Some geographers make models that are usually quantitative describing the locational properties of particular phenomena- predicting where things are likely to occur. a. Location theory: and element of contemporary human geography that seeks answers to a wide range of questions. 3. Human-Environment is the second of the five themes 4. Geographers use fieldwork, quantitative and qualitative methods to develop insightful descriptions of different regions of the world. 5. The fourth theme is place- all places on the surface of the earth have unique human and physical characteristics a. People develop a sense of place by infusing a place with meaning and emotion, by remembering important events that occurred in a place. b. We also develop perceptions of places we have never been through books, movies, stories and pictures. 6. The fifth theme is movement, and it refers to the mobility of people, goods, and ideas across the surface of the planet. a. Spatial interaction between places depends on the distances among places, and the accessibility of places, and the transportation and communication connectivity among places. y Cultural Landscape

1. Landscape is a core element of geography. Landscape- material character of a place, the complex natural features, human structures, and other tangible objects that give a place a particular form. a. Cultural Landscape- the visible imprint of human activity on the landscape. 2. Sequent occupance was used to refer to such cultural succession and its lasting imprint. D. Why do geographers use maps, and what do maps tell us? 1. Cartography is the art and science of making maps, and is old as geography itself. 2. Maps are used for many reasons, including waging war, making political propaganda, solving medical problems, locating shopping centers etc. a. Reference maps show locations of places and geographic features 1. Focus on accuracy in showing absolute location of places, and longitude and latitude. b. Thematic maps tell stories, typically showing the degree of some attribute or the movement of some geographic phenomenon. 3. The establishment of global positioning system (GPS) allows us to locate things on the surface of the Earth. 4. Relative location describes a place in relation to other human and physical features a. They are constantly modified and change over time y Mental maps 1. Mental maps are maps that we carry in our minds of places we have been (school to our house) 2. Activity spaces are those places we travel to routinely in our rounds of daily activity, and are more accurate than places we have never been a. Studies show that women tend to learn landmarks to learn new places and men tend to use paths y Generalization in maps 1. Since everything can t be specifically pinpointed where the exact location is geographers generalize the information they put on maps. a. A generalized map means almost what the real thing is, like the amount of precipitation in a year. y Remote sensing and GIS 1. Precipitation data is an average, based on field observations and weather stations around the world. 2. To understand the scope and rate of environmental change over short and long time periods, geographers look over the earth s surface from a distance using remote sensing a. Usually collected with airplanes and satellite 3. Geographers use GIS to compare a variety of spatial data by combining layers of spatial data in a computerized environment. a. They also use GIS to analyze data b. Also for applications in both human and physical geographic research 4. GISc is and emerging research field concerned with studying the development and use of geospatial concepts and tequniques to examine geographic patterns and processes.