Geography For Dummies

Jerry T. Mitchell, PhD, is Chair of the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina and an avid world traveler.

Introduction 1

About This Book 2

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 4

Where to Go from Here 4

Part 1: Getting Grounded: The Geographic Basics 5

Chapter 1: Geography: The Why of Where and Why You Should Care 7

Geography: Making Sense of it All 8

From ancient roots 8

 To modern discipline 9

Exposing Misconceptions: More Than Maps and Trivia 11

The Geographic Advantage 11

What is the capital city of Indonesia? 12

Why is Jakarta the capital of Indonesia? 12

Getting to the Essentials 13

Where things are in the world: The world in spatial terms 14

What locations are like: Places and regions 15

Why things are the way they are: Physical systems 16

Giving that human touch: Human systems 16

Interacting with the world around us: Environment and society 17

Putting geography to use: Uses of geography 18

Chapter 2: Thinking Like a Geographer 19

Changing the Way You Think — Geographically 20

Case Study #1: Where Something is Located 21

A fraction of its former self 22

Where lions hang out 23

What gives with grasslands? 23

Extinction made easy 24

Fewer lions? So what? 25

Summing up 26

Case Study #2: Where Something Should be Located 26

Summing up 27

Looking ahead 28

Chapter 3: Lining Up Locations 29

Welcome to Gridville 29

Feeling Kind of Square 30

Telling Someone Where to Go 31

Relative location 31

Absolute location 32

The best location to use 32

The Global Grid: Hip, Hip, Hipparchus! 32

Avoiding gridlock 33

The naming game 34

Getting Lined Up 36

Latitude 36

Longitude 38

Graticule 39

Minutes and seconds that don’t tick away 40

Chapter 4: Truthiness in Mapping 41

Seeing the Light: Map Projections 42

Realizing Exactly How Flat Maps Lie 44

Singapore, please And step on it! 45

Wading through lies in search of the truth 47

Isn’t there a truthful map anywhere? 48

The one and only honest map: The globe! 49

Honesty is the best policy, except 49

Telling the truth, but telling it skewed 50

Different Strokes for Different Folks: A World of Projections 51

All in the (map) family 52

Five noteworthy liars 53

Mapping a Cartographic Controversy! 57

Chapter 5: Telling a Spatial Story 59

Why We Need Tal(l) Dogs 60

Taking It to Scale 61

Going the distance 61

Comparing Earth at different scales 62

Showing the Ups and Downs: Topography 65

Spot heights 65

Contour lines 66

Shading or Color 66

Using Symbols to Tell the Story 67

Point symbols 68

Line symbols 68

Area symbols 70

New Ways of Seeing: How Technology has Changed How we Make and Use Maps 72

Geographic Information Systems 72

Global Positioning Systems 74

Remote sensing 75

Making Maps Yourself! 77

Part 2: Let’s Get Physical: Land, Water, and Air 79

Chapter 6: Shape-shifting Earth 81

Starting at the Bottom: Inside Earth 82

Moving Continents: Big Pieces of a Big Puzzle 84

Where have you gone, Gondwanaland? 85

Alfred Wegener, mover and shaker 85

Puzzle solved! 86

Getting Down to Theory 86

Making Mountains Out of Molehills 88

Folding the crust 88

Whose “fault” is it? 90

Plate tectonics: A four-letter word! 91

Experiencing Earthquakes: Shake, Rattle and Roll! 92

Splitsville in California 92

People at risk 93

How earthquakes kill and maim 94

A matter of magnitude 96

Subducting Plates: Volcano Makers 98

“The Ring of Fire” 98

Subduction: Another four-letter word? 99

Categorizing Tectonic Processes 102

Chapter 7: A Nip and a Tuck: Giving Earth a Facelift 103

Getting Carried Away 104

Weathering Earth 105

Wasting away 108

Changing the Landscape 109

Staying grounded: Gravity transfer 109

Going with the flow: Water 110

The chill factor: Glaciers 115

Making a deposit: Wind 117

Chapter 8: Making a Splash on Earth 119

Taking the Plunge: Global Water Supply 120

Those ice caps are really cool! 121

Getting out: Oceans, seas, gulfs, and bays 122

Coming inland: Lakes 123

Shaping Our World: Oceans 124

Going where the action is: The continental shelves 124

Claiming ocean ownership 126

Getting a rise out of oceans 128

Getting Fresh with Water 129

The stages of the water cycle 131

Run-off: Going with the flow 132

Infiltration: Out of sight, not out of mind 132

Good to the very last drop 134

Chapter 9: Warming Up and Chilling Out: Why Climates Happen 137

Getting a Grip on Climate 138

Playing the Angles 139

Making hot and cold 139

Making rain and snow 140

Tilt-a-World: The Reasons for the Seasons 141

Special lines of latitude 141

Defining the seasons 142

Special lines of latitude revisited 144

Hot or Cold? Adjust Your Altitude 145

Warming the atmosphere 145

Weighty matter 145

Seeing (and feeling) is believing 145

The lapse rate 146

Windward slope, leeward slope 147

Gaining Heat, Losing Heat 148

Afternoon versus evening 148

Summer versus winter 149

Oh, How the Wind Blows 150

Going with the Flow: Ocean Currents 150

Warm currents, cold currents 151

Going against the norm: El Niño and La Niña 152

Living Under Pressure 154

Pressure belts 155

Monsoons 155

Chapter 10: Connecting Climates and Vegetation 159

Giving Class to Climates 160

Mixing Sun and Rain: Humid Tropical Climates 162

Tropical rainforest 163

Tropical monsoon 165

Savanna (tropical wet and dry) 165

Going to Extremes: Dry Climates 167

Desert 168

Semi-desert (steppe) 169

Enjoying the In-between: Humid Mesothermal Climates 172

Humid subtropical 172

Mediterranean 172

Marine west coast 173

Cooling Off: Humid Microthermal Climates 174

Humid continental 175

Subarctic 175

Dropping Below Freezing: Polar Climates 176

Tundra 176

Ice cap 178

Part 3: Peopling the Planet 179

Chapter 11: Nobody Here But A Few Billion Friends 181

Going by the Numbers 182

Opportunity for livelihood 183

Urban growth 185

Going Ballistic: Population Growth 185

Checking Behind the Curve: Population Change 187

Dealing with births and deaths: Natural increase 187

Increasing for a reason: The demographic transition model 189

Making connections 193

Considering “Overpopulation” 196

Neo-Malthusians 197

Cornucopians 199

Chapter 12: Shift Happens: Migration 203

Populating the Planet 204

Bridging the oceans 204

Voyaging afar 205

Making colonial connections 206

Forcing involuntary migration 207

Choosing to Migrate 207

Coming to America 208

Migrating at home 210

Relocating within America 211

Giving a Good Impression 214

Playing the mental game 214

Getting an image adjustment 216

Putting your best image forward 216

Chapter 13: Culture: The Way We Live 219

Being Different Thousands of Times Over 220

Counting cultural diversity 221

Isolating people 222

Adapting to new surroundings 222

Spreading the Word on Culture 223

Relocating one’s culture 224

Coming down with culture 224

Doing what the big boys do 226

Calling a Halt: Barrier Effects 226

Getting physical 227

Socializing effects 229

Getting Religion: How It Moves and Grows 230

Putting diffusion to work 231

Getting effects into action 232

Creating local character 232

Getting in a Word about Language 234

Diffusing languages 235

Checking the physical effects 236

Playing the landscape naming game 236

Creating a Single Global Culture 237

Promoting cultural divergence 238

Promoting cultural convergence 238

Chapter 14: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors 239

Drawing and Re-Drawing the Boundaries of the World 240

Typecasting Boundary Lines 241

Ethnic boundaries 242

Natural (physical) boundaries 243

Geometric boundaries 244

Living with the Consequences 245

Ethnic intrigues 245

Positional disputes 248

Functional disputes 250

Resource disputes 251

Land-locked states 252

Questions of size and shape 254

Drawing Electoral District Boundaries 256

Gerrymandering: Rigging the outcome 257

Meeting the letter and spirit of the law 259

Part 4: Putting the Planet to Use 261

Chapter 15: Takin’ Care of Business 263

Categorizing Economic Activity 264

Primary activities 264

Secondary activities 265

Tertiary activities 265

Quaternary activities 266

Activity distribution around the world 266

Putting Economic Systems into Place 267

Subsistence economies 267

Commercial economies 268

Understanding Location Factors 269

Proximity to raw material(s) 272

Proximity to market(s) 272

Cost of labor 274

Accessibility 275

Cost of land/rent 279

Taxes 279

Climate 280

Chapter 16: Earth’s Resources: Always Hungry for More 283

Defining Resources and Assessing Their Importance 284

The central role of culture 284

Culture change, resource change 285

Resources and power 286

Resources and wealth 287

Differing Life Spans: Which Resources Are Here Today or Gone Tomorrow 288

Non-renewable resources 289

Renewable resources 294

Perennial resources 295

Trading-off Resources: The Consequences of Resource Use 298

Chapter 17: Downtown to the ‘Burbs: Urban Geography 301

Studying the Urban Scene 302

Getting a Global Perspective 303

Getting Started: Urban Hearths 305

Finding Sites for Cities 306

Confluence 307

Protected harbor 307

Head of navigation 308

Defensive sites 308

Getting Big: Urban Growth 309

Rural-to-urban migration 309

Changing means of transportation 310

Automobile ownership 311

Low-cost fuel 311

Home mortgage deductibility 312

Looking Inside the City 312

The central business district (CBD) 313

Residential areas 314

Leaving Downtown, Living Downtown 317

Moving out of downtown 317

Moving back downtown 319

Facing up to Environmental Issues 320

Chapter 18: Only One Home: Impacts on the Environment 323

Grasping the Basics — Environmentally Speaking 325

Contributing Factors: Pollution on the Move 326

Making an impact 326

Spreading the mess 326

Focusing on food chains 329

Going Global: Environmental Issues Affecting Us All 332

Deforestation 333

Biodiversity loss 333

Soil degradation 333

Ocean acidification 334

Overfishing 335

Acid precipitation 335

Climate change 339

Taking on the Challenges of Tomorrow 342

Part 5: The Part of Tens 343

Chapter 19: Ten Organizations for Geography in Action 345

American Association of Geographers (AAG) 345

American Geographical Society (AGS) 346

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 346

National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) 347

National Geographic Society (NGS) 347

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 348

Population Reference Bureau (PRB) 348

Royal Geographical Society (RGS) 349

United States Census Bureau 349

United States Geological Survey (USGS) 350

Chapter 20: Ten Interesting Career Paths for Geographers 351

Area Specialist 351

Educator 352

Environmental Manager 352

GIS Technician 353

Health Services Planner 353

Location Analyst 353

Market Analyst 354

Remote Sensing Analyst 354

Transportation Planner 355

Urban Planner 355

Chapter 21: Ten Things You Can Forget 357

The Bermuda Triangle 357

Cold Canadian Air 358

“Coming Out of Nowhere” 359

“The Continent” 359

The Democratic Republic of 360

The Flat Earth Society 360

Land of the Midnight Sun 361

“The Rain in Spain Stays Mainly on the Plain” 361

The Seven Seas 362

Tropical Paradise 362

Chapter 22: Ten Great Places for Online Geography 365

Any County/Local GIS Department 365

Geocaching 366

Geoguessr 366

Geoinquiries 367

Google Earth 367

Google Lit Trips 368

Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection 368

World Bank Open Data 369

World Factbook 369

Your State’s Geographic Alliance 369

Index 371