Introduction to Geography

• Geography studies spatial variation, the evolution of spatial patterns, the interaction between people and their environment, and the understanding of how physical and cultural spatial patterns evolve.
• Geography considers both physical and cultural aspects of an area.

The Discipline's Roots

• Eratosthenes coined the term "geography" meaning "earth writing".
• Early geographers like Eratosthenes focused on the physical structure of the earth and human activities.
• Geography aims to describe the inhabited world and differences between countries
• Herodotus wrote about the lands, peoples, economies, and customs of the Persian Empire in order to understand the Persian wars.
• Early geographers measured the Earth, devised the grid of parallels and meridians, drew maps, explored climate variations, and described river systems.
• Early geographers focused on how people used, altered, and destroyed the lands.

Evolution of Geography

• Ancient Chinese and Muslim scholars were also involved in geography
• Modern geography emerged in the 17th century
• The determination of latitude and longitude and scientific mapping improved place information

Subfields of Geography

• Geography became a distinctive discipline in universities in the 19th century, leading to subdivisions like political, urban, and economic geography.
• Subfields are characterized by interests in spatial variation, systems, and regional analysis.
• Spatial Variation involves examining relationships between human societies and natural environments.
• Systems focuses on the systems that link physical phenomena and human activities.
• Regional Analysis involves studying human-environmental relationships and spatial systems in specific locations.

Regional vs. Systematic Geography

• Regional Geography focuses on specific locational settings.
• Systematic Geography focuses on particular classes of things.
• Regional Geography studies human-environmental relationships and spatial systems.
• Systematic Geography studies interrelationships with other spatial systems and areal patterns.
• Examples of Regional Geography include the study of a specific region's ecology.
• Examples of Systematic Geography include the study of landforms, climate, or human populations.

Branches of Systematic Geography

• Physical Geography focuses on the natural environment, including landforms, climate, soils, and vegetation.
• Human Geography focuses on people, their characteristics, interactions, and landscapes.

Why Geography Matters

• Geography provides a holistic perspective by examining both physical and cultural phenomena across places.
• Understanding Global Issues such as global warming, disease diffusion, and conflicts requires Geography.
• There are Career Opportunities in remote sensing, business location, disease monitoring, and voting district delineation.

Core Geographic Concepts

• Recognizing spatial patterns is essential for understanding how people live on Earth.

Spatial Thinking

• Geography is viewed as a spatial science, focusing on the spatial distribution of phenomena, spatial extent of regions, behavior of people, relationships between places, and spatial processes.
• Space refers to earth space and the area available to humans, where spatial phenomena have locations and interactions.

Basic Observations

• Places have location, direction, and distance relative to each other and places also have size.
• Places have both physical structure and cultural content that develop over time.
• The elements of places are structured, explainable, and interrelated.
• Places can be generalized into regions based on similarities and differences.

Location, Direction, and Distance

• Location is the starting point of geographic study
• Absolute Location uses a precise coordinate system like latitude and longitude.
• Absolute location is unique and valuable for legal descriptions and measuring distance.
• Relative Location expresses spatial interconnection and interdependence.

Site vs. Situation

• Site refers to the physical and cultural characteristics of a place itself.
• Situation refers to the external relations of a place or it's relative location.

Direction

• Direction can be expressed in absolute terms of north, south, east, west.
• Direction can be expressed in relative terms, culturally and locationally.

Distance

• Absolute Distance is the spatial separation between two points measured in standard units.
• Relative Distance transforms linear measurements into more meaningful units, like time or money.
• Time-Distance is how long it takes to travel between places.
• Money-Distance is the cost of traveling between places.
• Psychological Transformation is how distance feels based on circumstances.

Size and Scale

• Scale refers to the size of the unit studied or the relationship between the map size and actual size.
• Scale implies the degree of generalization represented.

Physical and Cultural Attributes

• All places have individual physical and cultural attributes, and geographers analyze their interrelationships.
• Physical Characteristics are natural aspects like climate, soil, water, minerals, and terrain.
• Cultural Characteristics are human-related aspects like land use, architecture, and cultural practices.
• The physical environment sets the stage for human action, but doesn't dictate how people live.

Cultural Landscape

• The cultural landscape is the visible imprint of human activity on the earth.
• Humans modify physical attributes, leaving their imprint on the environment.

Attributes of Place are Always Changing

• The physical environment is not static, with continuous changes over geologic time and human activities.

Human Impact on the Environment

• Early societies had a regional impact on the environment
• Fire was used to clear forests, maintain grasslands, drive animals, and clear openings for agriculture.
• With civilization and agricultural technologies, humans accelerated environmental management. The built landscape replaced the natural landscape.
• New settlements, cities, agricultural expansion, mines, dams, or factories changed regions and altered human-environment interconnections. Places today are the result of past conditions.

Interrelations Between Places

• Interrelations include accessibility and connectivity, along with location and distance.
• Tobler's First Law of Geography: Everything is related, but relationships are stronger when things are near one another.
• Interaction between places diminishes as distance increases, known as distance decay.

Accessibility

• Accessibility is how easy or difficult it is to overcome the friction of distance.
• The friction of distance refers to the barrier of time and space
• Distance isolated North America from Europe until the development of ships and aircraft.
• Ancient, medieval cities were accessible by walking
• Public transit systems maintain accessibility between city districts.

Connectivity

• Connectivity includes the tangible and intangible ways places are connected.
• Example of Connectivity: physical telephone lines, street and road systems, pipelines and sewers, radio + TV broadcasts, movements of wind systems and flows of ocean currents
• Networks: The patterns of routes connecting sets of places, determine the efficiency of movement and the connectedness of points

Spatial Diffusion

• Spatial diffusion is the dispersion of an idea or thing from a center of origin to more distant points.
• The rate and extent of diffusion are affected by distance, population densities, means of communication, innovation advantages, and the importance of the originating node.

Globalization

• Globalization implies increasing interconnection of peoples and parts of the world due to advances in accessibility and connectivity.

Place Similarity and Regions

• No two places on Earth are exactly the same, but places show patterns of similarity in some areas.
• Regions are Earth areas displaying significant elements of internal uniformity and external differences.
• Regions are devices to classify the complex reality of Earth's surface into manageable pieces.

Types of Regions

• Formal Regions share essential uniformity regarding single physical or cultural features.
• Functional Regions: A spatial system with interdependent parts.
• Perceptual Regions exist in the perceptions of their inhabitants and the general society.

Population Distribution and Density

• In demography, the study of human population, the situation is dynamic, not static.
• Population distribution is the way in which people are spread out across the Earth's surface.
• Population density is the number of people living in a given area, usually a square kilometer.

Factors Affecting Population Distribution

• At the global scale, population distribution is affected mainly by physical factors
• At regional and local scales, distribution is influenced by economic, political, and social factors.

Sparsely Populated Areas

• Sparsely populated areas have rugged mountains, high plateaus, very low rainfall, high humidity, coniferous forests, frozen soils, lack of clean water, areas where people cannot live and little mineral resources

Densely Populated Areas

• Densely populated areas have lowland plains, reliable rainfall, lengthy growing seasons, grasslands, deep soils, reliable water, capital to eradicate problems, mineral deposits and transport systems.

Lorenz Curves

• Lorenz curves are used to show inequalities in distributions.

Population Changes Over Time

• Population change is an open system: PopulationChange = (Births + Immigration) – (Deaths + Emigration)

Birth, Death, and Natural Increase Rates

• The crude birth rate is the number of live births per 1000 people per year.
• The crude death rate is the number of deaths per 1000 people per year.
• Natural increase is the difference between birth rates and death rates.

Demographic Transition Model

• The demographic transition model describes a sequence of changes in the relationship between birth and death rates over time.

Stages of the Demographic Transition Model

• Stage 1: High birth rate, high death rate, low total population; tribal communities exemplify this stage.
• Stage 2: High birth rate, falling death rate, rising total population; LEDCs like Kenya and Ethiopia exemplify this stage.
• Stage 3: Falling birth rate, low death rate, rising total population; emerging countries exemplify this stage.
• Stage 4: Low birth rate, low death rate, high total population; MEDCs like Japan exemplify this stage.
• Stage 5: Zero growth; Zero growth exemplifies this stage.

Key Factors in the Demographic Transition Model

• Stage 1 is caused by a lack of birth control, high infant mortality, and religious beliefs. Death rates are high due to disease, famine, poor diet, and limited medical science.
• Stage 2 Death Rates fall due to vaccination, hospitals, doctors, new drugs, improved sanitation and water supply, better food production, improved transport, and lessened child mortality.
• Stage 3 Birth rates fall because of desires to have material possession, lower infant mortality, family planning, emancipation, and increased industrialization.
• Stage 4 Both birth and death rates remain low and fluctuate slightly, leading to a steady population.
• Stage 5 Birth rates fall below death rates, leading to a declining population.

Limitations of the Demographic Transition Model

• The model assumed all countries would pass through the same stages, especially in Africa.
• The model didn't account for birth rates falling below death rates like in Germany and Sweden, leading to population decline
• The model assumed industrialization caused the fall in death rates in Stage 2, when in many British cities, sanitation caused rates to fall
• The model did not account for varying birth rate decline due to religious or political issues like in Brazil and China.
• The model's timescale is compressed in rapidly developing South-east Asian countries compared to early industrialized countries.

Population Structure

• Population structure includes the rate of natural increase/decrease, resulting from the difference between birth and death rates.

Birth Rates and Fertility Rates

• The world's crude birth rate in 2008 was 21 per 1000 while Germany had the lowest at 8 per 1000.
• Total Fertility Rate (TFR) the average number of children a woman is likely to have if she lives to the end of her child-bearing years.
• The world average Total Fertility Rate is 2.6, varying between 1.6 in developed countries and China

Key Factors Influencing Fertility

• High birth and fertility rates are characteristic of 'underdevelopment' per the UN.
• UN claims that a high birth rate is a consequence, not a cause, of poverty
• Typically, lower contraceptive use is related to higher TFR, while higher female education correlates with lower TFR
• Improvements family planning programs, healthcare increase fertility decline
• A replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman is needed to balance the number of people who die.

Death Rates and Life Expectancy

• Death rates are traditionally declined as countries develop due to improvements in medical facilities, hygiene, and increased use of vaccines
• An exception to increased life expectancy has been in countries severely affected by the AIDS epidemic.
• Many developed countries have over 20% of their population aged over 65, resulting in a greater demand for services, smaller working age population, and a rapid increase in population.

Migration

• Migration refers to a permanent change of home
• Internal migration is movement within a country, while external migration involves movement across national boundaries.

Types of Migration

• Voluntary migration occurs by choice, influenced by 'push and pull' factors
• Forced migration occurs due to natural disasters or economic/social pressures
• Time and Frequency can be a one-time move, annual, seasonal, or daily
• Distance can be local or between countries/continents.
• The movement of people from rural to urban areas
• Migration between different regions within a country

Ravenstein's Laws of Migration in 1885

• Most migrants travel short distances
• Migration occurs in waves, creating a vacuum-filled by a counter-current
• Dispersion emigration is the inverse of absorption immigration
• Most migrations show a two-way movement
• The longer the journey, the more likely the migrant will end up in a major center.
• Urban dwellers are less likely to move than rural counterparts
• Females migrate more within their country, but males move further afield

Rural to Urban Migration

• Push factors drive people to leave rural areas
• Pull factors attract them to cities

Rural Decline Push Factors

• Farmers may be encouraged to grow cash crops for the national economy instead of food for themselves.
• Mechanization reduces the need for farmers, leading to unemployment.
• High rates of natural increase can lead to overpopulation
• Limited access to schools, hospitals + water supplies
• Governments/ transnational companies may force people to move

Urban Growth Realities

• The rate of urban growth often exceeds the available resources for housing and services.
• Migrants may move in stages from rural villages to small towns, then to larger cities, and finally to a major city

Tunisia: Migration Patterns

• More rural residents migrate than urban residents
• Most migrants move to Tunis
• Most migrants travel short distances (distance decay factor)
• Movement is primarily from rural, inland, desert areas to urban, coastal areas
• Few migrants return to rural districts
• There is movement in/out of Tunis and Sfax

Political Resettlement

• Political Resettlement occurs when national governments may direct or enforce movement for perceived national interests, like new settlements

Examples of Political Resettlement

• The creation of kibbutzim in Israel and ujamaa in Tanzania are examples of new settlements.
• The development of new growth regions, like Brasilia, Dodoma Tanzania/Abuja Nigeria are examples of new capital cities.
• Building settlements to strengthen territorial claims such as IsraelisettlementsintheWestBank
• Relocating people for flood control/energy production project in ThreeGorgesProjectinChina

Forced Displacement

• Displacement of indigenous people AmerindiansinBrazilandNative AmericansintheUSA onto reservations
• Forced segregation of the black population in South Africa into urban townships
• Forced movement due to "ethnic cleansing" policies occurred in Yugoslavia

Key Terms in Migration

• Refugee: Cannot return to their country due to a well-founded fear of persecution
• Asylum Seeker: A person who has left their country, applied for refugee status, and is awaiting a decision on their application
• Economic Migrant: Chooses to leave their country, knowing they can return in the future
• Illegal Immigrant: Enters a country without meeting the legal requirements, often lacking documentation
• Internally Displaced Person IDP: Forced to flee their home within their country

Refugee Trends

• Before World War II, refugees often assimilated into host countries.
• The establishment of Palestinian Arab camps in 1948 led to a rise in permanent refugees.
• Global refugee numbers peaked at 17.6 million in 1992, then fell to 13.2 million in 1999, before rising again.
• Accurate figures are difficult to obtain due to many refugees being illegal immigrants.
• 16 million refugees in 2008, 51 million IDPs and 26 million conflict related
• There are conflicts affecting refugees like those in Iraq, Afghanistan, food shortages and political unrest in sub-Saharan Africa and Dar Fur.