Learning everything about the people and places of a region is a great and enjoyable challenge. To complete the picture of Geography, we can add two overlays. One case is place identification. In all cases of Geography and certainly in Regional Geography, knowing where places are located is valuable. Perhaps expressed through map quizzes, locational awareness can affect choices of policy and action.
Another overlay on top of Geography is cartography. Geographers use maps in all sorts of ways, in all sorts of sub-field, and inherently in Regional Geography. While people have been making maps for thousands of years, the contemporary approach to mapmaking is Geographic Information Systems GIS. GIS creates maps, but also uses various techniques within the computer software in order to develop answers to questions and to demonstrate patterns and solutions.
Thus, Regional Geography uses maps, rules, and geographic patterns of people and places to create coherent regions melding similarities together. The Tropic of Cancer is the parallel at Remember that the earth is tilted The Tropic of Capricorn is the parallel at The tropics Cancer and Capricorn are the two imaginary lines directly above which the sun shines on the two solstices , which occur on or near June 20 or 21 summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and December 21 or 22 winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.
The sun is directly above the Tropic of Cancer at noon on June 20 or 21, marking the beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and the beginning of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. The sun is directly above the Tropic of Capricorn at noon on December 21 or 22, marking the beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and the beginning of summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Solstices are the extreme ends of the seasons, when the line of direct sunlight is either the farthest north or the farthest south that it ever goes.
The region between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn is known as the tropics. This area does not experience dramatic seasonal changes because the amount of direct sunlight received does not vary widely. The higher latitudes north of the Tropic of Cancer and south of the Tropic of Capricorn experience significant seasonal variation in climate.
This sign was placed in this desert location by the Budapest-Bamako rally participants. The non-English portion is in Hungarian because of the European participants in the race. Wikimedia Commons — public domain. The Arctic Circle is a line of latitude at During winter, the North Pole is away from the sun and does not receive much sunlight. At times, it is dark for most of the twenty-four-hour day. The Antarctic Circle is the corresponding line of latitude at When it is winter in the north, it is summer in the south.
The Arctic and Antarctic Circles mark the extremities southern and northern, respectively of the polar day twenty-four-hour sunlit day and the polar night twenty-four-hour sunless night. North of the Arctic Circle, the sun is above the horizon for twenty-four continuous hours at least once per year and below the horizon for twenty-four continuous hours at least once per year.
Equinoxes , when the line of direct sunlight hits the equator and days and nights are of equal length, occur in the spring and fall on or around March 20 or 21 and September 22 or Time Zones. This is the same time under which many military operations, international radio broadcasts, and air traffic control systems operate worldwide. UTC is set in zero- to twenty-four-hour time periods, as opposed to two twelve-hour time periods a.
The designations of a. For example, all air flights use the twenty-four-hour time system so the pilots can coordinate flights across time zones and around the world. Time zones are established roughly every 15 degrees longitude so that local times correspond to similar hours of day and night.
With this system, the sun is generally overhead at noon in every time zone that follows the degree-wide system. The continental United States has four main time zones see Table 1. Table 1. Local time zones are either plus or minus determined by the distance from the prime meridian. In this diagram, 75 W is the central meridian for the eastern standard time zone in the United States.
For example, if it is noon in London, then it is 7 a. Since there are twenty-four hours in a day, there are twenty-four time zones on Earth. Each time zone is 15 degrees wide. A problem with the degree time zones is that the zones do not necessarily follow state, regional, or local boundaries. The result is that time zones are seldom exactly 15 degrees wide and usually have varied boundary lines.
In the United States, the boundaries between the different time zones are inconsistent with the lines of longitude; in some cases, time zones zigzag to follow state lines or to keep cities within a single time zone. Other countries address the problem differently. China, for example, is as large in land area as the United States yet operates on only one time zone for the entire country.
A region is a basic unit of study in geography—a unit of space characterized by a feature such as a common government, language, political situation, or landform. A region can be a formal country governed by political boundaries, such as France or Canada; a region can be defined by a landform, such as the drainage basin of all the water that flows into the Mississippi River; and a region can even be defined by the area served by a shopping mall.
Cultural regions can be defined by similarities in human activities, traditions, or cultural attributes. Geographers use the regional unit to map features of particular interest, and data can be compared between regions to help understand trends, identify patterns, or assist in explaining a particular phenomenon.
Regions are traditionally defined by internal characteristics that provide a sense of place. Their boundaries vary with the type of region, whether it is formal, functional, or vernacular; each type has its own meaning and defined purpose. A formal region has a governmental, administrative, or political boundary and can have political as well as geographic boundaries that are not open to dispute or debate.
Formal boundaries can separate states, provinces, or countries from one another. Physical regions can be included within formal boundaries, such as the Rocky Mountains or New England. An official boundary, such as the boundary of a national park, can be considered a formal boundary. School districts, cities, and county governments have formal boundaries.
Natural physical geographic features have a huge influence on where political boundaries of formal regions are set. If you look at a world map, you will recognize that many political boundaries are natural features, such as rivers, mountain ranges, and large lakes. Alpine mountain ranges in Europe create borders, such as the boundary between Switzerland and Italy. Describe and explain the changes in the boundaries and characteristics of regions, as exemplified by being able to.
Regions are defined by different sets of criteria, and places can be included in multiple regions of different types. Identify and explain how a place can exist within multiple regional classifications, as exemplified by being able to. Describe and explain the processes that have resulted in regional change, as exemplified by being able to. Geography Education National Implementation Project.
Skip to content. The student knows and understands: The Concept of Region 1. Describe the distinguishing characteristics and meanings of several different regions, as exemplified by being able to Identify unifying areas on a map that define those areas as regions e. No country remains in stage one today.
In stage two, a decline in death rates leads to a rise in population. This decline in death rates occurred as a result of agricultural productivity and improvements in public health. Vaccines, for example, greatly reduced the mortality from childhood diseases. Stage two countries are primarily agricultural, and thus there is a cultural and historical preference for large families, so birth rates remain high.
Most of Sub-Saharan Africa is in stage two. In stage three, urbanization and increasing access to contraceptives leads to a decline in the birth rate. As country industrializes, women enter the workforce and seek higher education. The population growth begins to slow. Much of Middle and South America as well as India are in stage three.
In stage four, birth rates approach the death rates. Women have increased independence as well as educational and work opportunities, and families may choose to have a small number of children or none at all. Most of Europe as well as China are in stage four. Some have proposed a stage five of the demographic transition model. In some countries, the birth rate has fallen below the death rate as families choose to only have 1 child.
In these cases, a population will decline unless there is significant immigration. Japan, for example, is in stage five and has a total fertility rate of 1. Although this is only a model, and each country passes through the stages of demographic transition at different rates, the generalized model of demographic transition holds true for most countries of the world. As countries industrialize and become more developed, they shift from primarily rural settlements to urban ones.
Urbanization refers to the increased proportion of people living in urban areas. As people migrate out of rural, agricultural areas, the proportion of people living in cities increases. As people living in cities have children, this further increases urbanization. For most of human history, we have been predominantly rural. By the middle of , however, the number of people living in urban areas surpassed the number of people living in rural areas for the first time.
This figure is expected to increase to 66 percent by The number of megacities, cities with 10 million people or more, has also increased. In , there were 10 megacities in the world.
In , there were 28 megacities. Tokyo-Yokohama is the largest metropolitan area in the world with over 38 million inhabitants. Regions simply refer to spatial areas that share a common feature. There are three types of regions: formal, functional, and vernacular. Formal regions , sometimes called homogeneous regions, have at least one characteristic in common. A map of plant hardiness regions, as in Figure 1. Other formal regions might include religious or political affiliation, agricultural crop zones, or ethnicity.
Formal regions might also be established by governmental organizations, such as the case with state or provincial boundaries. Functional regions , unlike formal regions, are not homogenous in the sense that they do not share a single cultural or physical characteristic. Rather, functional regions are united by a particular function, often economic. Functional regions are sometimes called nodal regions and have a nodal arrangement, with a core and surrounding nodes.
A metropolitan area, for example, often includes a central city and its surrounding suburbs. Los Angeles, for example, is the second-most populous city in the United States.
However, the region of Los Angeles extends far beyond its official city limits as show in Figure 1. In fact, over , workers commute into Los Angeles County from the surrounding region every day.
Los Angeles, as with all metropolitan areas, functions economically as a single region and is thus considered a functional region. Other examples of functional regions include church parishes, radio station listening areas, and newspaper subscription areas.
Some people might include all of the states that formed the Confederacy during the Civil War. Others might exclude Missouri or Oklahoma. Vernacular regions exist at a variety of scales.
Vernacular regions are real in the sense that our perceptions are real, but their boundaries are not uniformly agreed upon. As geographers, we can divide the world into a number of different regions based upon formal criteria and functional interaction. However, there is a matter of perception, as well. We might divide the world based on landmasses, since landmasses often share physical and cultural characteristics. Sometimes water connects people more than land, though. In the case of Europe, for example, the Mediterranean Sea historically provided economic and cultural links to the surrounding countries though we consider them to be three separate continents.
Do you have fewer regions united by only a couple characteristics, or more regions that share a great deal in common? These regions are largely vernacular, however. Why is Russia its own region? These transition zones are marked by gradual spatial change.
Moscow, Russia, for example, is quite similar to other areas of Eastern Europe, though they are considered two different regions on the map.
Even within regions, country borders often mark spaces of gradual transition rather than a stark delineation between two completely different spaces. The border between Peru and Ecuador, for example, is quite relaxed as international borders go and residents of the countries can move freely across the boundary to the towns on either side see Figure 1.
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