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World Regional Geography

World Regional Geography. Instructor: Afton Clarke-Sather TA: Stephanie Booker. AFP Getty Images. Today in Geography. Obama sits down with someone clearly uncomfortable in his chair. 705px-China_Xinjiang.svg.png. Today in Geography. Protests in Xinjiang.

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World Regional Geography

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  1. World Regional Geography • Instructor: Afton Clarke-Sather • TA: Stephanie Booker

  2. AFP Getty Images Today in Geography Obama sits down with someone clearly uncomfortable in his chair

  3. 705px-China_Xinjiang.svg.png Today in Geography Protests in Xinjiang

  4. Please fill out an index care with: • Name, age, hometown • Major ( and minor / concentration) + year in school • Academic Strengths (2 - 3) • Academic Weaknesses (2 - 3) • Why are you taking this course? • Your expectations of the course? • Travel Experience

  5. Our Plan for Today • Course Logistics • Course Webpage • What is world regional geography? • Regionalization activity

  6. Okay, lets take a break and look over the syllabus and webpage

  7. How Geographers think

  8. image: NASA

  9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Haer_PBG_erection_force_Diagram_part.pnghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Haer_PBG_erection_force_Diagram_part.png

  10. Abstraction • Abstraction is how we tell • Music from noise • Ebola from a head cold • A functional bridge from just some stuff going over a river.

  11. Abstraction • The world contains too much information for us to process • Abstraction is the process of how we make sense of this world by selecting what is important • What we remove in abstraction is a necessary choice • This choice shapes how we see the world

  12. Geographic Abstraction • Geographical Abstraction is the process of using geographical tools or lenses to make sense out of what we see in the world. • So what are geographical tools?

  13. What is Geography? • geo--earth • graphy--writing • Geography=Earth Writing • logy--study • Geology=earth study (rock, this is not what we’re doing)

  14. What is Geography • Everything that economist ignore--Gary Gaile • What geographers do • Geography is the study of the Earth as created by natural forces and modified by human action.

  15. What is Geography • Working Definition • A process of abstraction which is concerned with the location of human and physical phenomena and the spatial relationships between those phenomena.

  16. Tools of Abstraction • Maps • Regions • Scale • Space

  17. Maps

  18. Maps are representations of the world • They are not the world

  19. Maps must include • A projection (how is the round earth made flat) • Data (data what do you display) • Symbology (how are things represented)

  20. Map Projections • Map projection is used to portray all or part of the round Earth on a flat surface. This cannot be done without some distortion. • Distortions: conformality, shape, distance, direction, scale, and area • Projections minimize distortions in some of these properties at the expense of maximizing errors in others. • http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/mapproj/mapproj_f.html • http://erg.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/MapProjections/projections.html

  21. Cartograms

  22. Symbology • How we represent data has an effect on what people think about it. • http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=225152&title=Snoutbreak-'09---The-Last-100-Days

  23. Maps project a point of view

  24. Regions • Formal--A area sharing a common characteristic (e.g. the corn belt, the bible belt) • Functional--Regions that are defined and classified by by patterns of spatial interaction or spatial organization. (e.g. Newspaper distribution, state government) • Vernacular Region--a region that exists because we say it does (e.g. the South)

  25. Scale A level of abstraction or representation of reality In cartography: the relationship between the distances show on the maps and the actual distances on the earth’s surface. e.g. resolution, relationships, level of detail In human geography: a partitioning of space within which human or social processes take on particular characteristics, i.e., levels at which social processes are occurring -- 2 people is a fight, 3 or more is a brawl, … riot, … war

  26. The Interdependence of Geographic Scales • Geographic Scales - Global • Overlap • World Regions • States • Supranational Organizations • - European Union (EU) • - North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) • - Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)

  27. Space • Spt Space tells us where things are, but not all things space can mean many different things

  28. What you should now know after this lecture • What Geographic Abstraction is • What differentiates if from other forms of abstraction • The use of and problems with • Maps • Regions • Scale • Space

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