Chapter 1.2 Intro to Course 2006-7 - Introduction to...

Unformatted text preview: Introduction to Cultural Geography Chapter 1.2 Last time we saw that…. • Geography is a 2000 year old discipline. • Geographic study is increasingly specialized. What interesting facts are you discovering about the origins of geography? Today, we’re going to ponder… • Places • • • • Relative vs. absolute location Relative vs. absolute distance Natural vs. cultural landscapes “Funky Maps” Do places change over time? • Does our human impact change…? • What about the slow but steady effects of geologic time? Yes, of course. Our human impacts change. And nature takes its course. • • • • Islands evolve. Mountains rise, or are weathered away. Glaciers grow or retreat. Volcanoes and earthquakes shuffle us around. So places actually DO change. relative vs. absolute location • “I know where Pennsylvania is! It’s right next to New York.” --a local of Mexico City • “Eastern Seaboard,” in “the Northeast” This is a look at Russia, and its relative location in the Northern Hemisphere. Absolute location uses a more conventional system, i.e. latitude and longitude. • NYC 40° 43’ N. 73° 58’ W. • Philadelphia 40° 00’ N. 75° 13’ W. Site vs. Situation Site of Philadelphia, on the Delaware River. The situation of Chicago suggests the reasons for its functional diversity. Distance • How far is it to Boston? • How much does it cost to get there? • Hint: There are 320 miles between Philadelphia and Boston. What about cost and time? (relative distance) • Bus $55 8 hrs. • Rail $150 5 hrs. • Airplane $155 1 ½ hrs. Landscapes Natural landscape vs. cultural landscape (Natural landscape) (Cultural landscape) (Village in Thailand) (Rice terrace in Bali) (Isla Margarita, Venezuela) So, a natural landscape is different from a cultural landscape, how? What about maps? How important are maps to geographers? Why? And now for a word on map distortion, projections, and other Funky Maps. Most, if not all, maps suffer from some distortion. Mapmakers choose from a variety of projections. One simple projection is the cylindrical, or the Mercator. cylindrical Yet, it introduces increasing distortion toward the poles. The conic projection is good for limited areas. The Azimuthal projection retains equal areas, for up to half a globe. Several newer projections try to minimize distortion of land areas. To do away with areal distortions, we can look at various examples of equal-area maps… The Robinson projection… Some maps show cuts in the oceans, minimizing land distortion. Future teachers… Please be aware of map distortion and try to choose wisely, for classroom purposes. Actually distortion can be introduced unintentionally, as we’ve seen, or sometimes even intentionally…. What about Scale? Scale is the relationship between size of the feature on a map, relative to the size of that item on the surface of the Earth. It may seem backward, but, large-scale maps show small areas, and small-scale maps show large areas. The last style of maps that we’ll look at is the cartogram (by far the funkiest). Cartogram of US population 2000. And this is another example, (cartogram) of world population. Cartogram What do we call it? Next time we’ll wrap up our introduction to cultural geography. Also we’ll discuss mental maps. What are mental maps? Briefly discuss career opportunities for geographers. (Hint: FGG Chapter 1 or Internet) ...
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