MOVEMENT: Systems and Flows

1. MOVEMENT: Systems and Flows Chapter 2

2. The Earth in Motion • Everything on Earth is motion • People travelling on foot • Travelling in cars, buses, and airplanes • Products being moved on trucks • Birds migrating • Leaves stir in the wind • Earth itself is moving as it orbits the sun on its axis • Movement is constant • Earth is tilted at an angle of 23.5o

3. Movement Patterns • Movement causes continual change • Geographers search for patterns of movement so that they can predict changes to the Earth’s surface • Geographers look for systems when studying movement patterns • System is a pattern of routes that connects places together • River system: water moves downstream through streams and rivers before reaching the ocean • Transportation system: traffic flows through streets and highways

4. Movement Patterns (cont.) • Geographers look for flow patterns along these systems • Flow measures the amount of people, product, information and other things that move along a system • Flyway is the route used by butterflies and birds when they migrate • Migration is the movement of people or animals from one environment to another. • These movements can be daily, seasonal, or permanent

5. Human Movement Patterns • Communication between places • Word of mouth – you tell something to a person and they tell someone else and so on • Newspaper – community events that maybe of interest to the community appear in the daily/weekly paper • Radio / Television – information spread over the radio station via news or talk shows • Internet – communicate via satellites and telephone lines

6. Inter National Trade • International Trade is the movement of products from one country to another • Balance of Trade (BoT) • Contributes to a healthy economy • Positive – when a country exports more than it imports • Negative – when a country exports less than it imports • Import products that are not available here • Export products that we have but other countries need

7. Urban Transportation • Infrastructure • Network of transportation and communication system that allows movement around urban areas • Includes streets, highways, traffic signal systems, public transportation • Infrastructure doesn’t work during power failures, strikes, natural disasters • Leads to people using their own cars • Can bring movement to a complete stop • Extra flow causes Grid lock (a traffic jam caused by extra flow)

8. Animal Movement Patterns • Human transport and communication systems often run through natural environment of animals • Many species becoming extinct • Movement corridor • a major route with a busy flow of people, products, and information • Transportation and communication systems running beside one another • E.g. major highways often run beside electricity wires and railroads

9. Animal Movement Patterns (cont.) • Natural corridor • Routes along which the necessities of food, water, and shelter are available • Protect these to support animal population • Animals follow natural corridors • E.g. Trans Canada Highway cuts through the middle of Banff National Park. Animals must cross this road for feeding or breeding.

10. The Grizzly Bear • The Trans Canada Highway cuts through the middle of Banff National Park • Many animals must cross this highway for feeding or for breeding • Fences line section of the highway to protect the animals • An underpass was made for wildlife crossings • Some species use them but not the grizzly bears

11. The Grizzly Bear (cont.) • Because of the highway, two separate populations of the grizzly bears have developed • Unhealthy for animals to breed with close relatives • A solution suggested is to build an overpass