Population Geography

Introduce to Population Geography

• Population geography is the study of human population with respect to size, composition, spatial distribution, and changes over time.
• Population geographers seek to understand the society around them, the structure of a population, and how it changes through births, deaths, and migrations.

Key Concepts

• Fertility (births)
• Mortality (deaths)
• Migration (movement of people across space)
• Interdisciplinary in scope, using geographic perspectives to study population issues
• Space, regional variations, diffusion, place, and their role in human and natural processes

Population Distribution

• Earth's population is not randomly dispersed across lands.
• Certain physical environments, such as dry lands, wetlands, cold lands, and high lands, are not conducive to supporting large settlements.
• These areas are either inaccessible or lack suitable climates and soils for growing agricultural products.

Graphicacy

• Graphicacy is the ability to read, interpret, and understand visual representations of objects or situations to communicate information.
• Visual literacy is the ability to interpret and understand visual images.
• Spatial perception relates to how an individual observes space, including recognizing objects, familiarizing oneself with the world, and recognizing depth and distance.
• Spatial conceptual skills involve categorizing and reducing complexity, organizing, categorizing, and interpreting sense of one's perceptions.

Stages in Cognitive Research

• The cognitive approach to maps and numerical graphs has been ignored, and maps were observed as a tool for acquiring spatial knowledge.
• Maps are external systems of representation with their own codes and epistemic functions.
• Effective processing of a map requires a selective or strategic approach to the information.

Levels of Graphic Representation

• Explicit information processing: stated clearly and in detail, does not leave room for confusion or doubt.
• Implicit information processing: understanding graphic material beyond the reading of isolated elements, involves interpreting or decoding information present via symbols.

Teaching Graphicacy

• To develop the skill of graphicacy, learners should be given tasks that require implicit information processing, such as interpreting maps and graphs.

Explore the distribution of people around the world and the dynamics of population growth, including fertility, mortality, and migration. Understand why studying population growth is important.