Thinking Geographically

1. Thinking Geographically How do geographers address where things are?

2. Maps • Cartography • Serve 2 purposes • Reference source (provide a route) • Communication tool (provide data) • Babylonians 2300 B.C. on clay tablets & earlier • Polynesian people “stick-charts” • Maps as art

4. Eratosthenes 194BC?

5. Al-Idrisi 1154

6. Ortelius 1571

7. Map Scale • Amount of detail, how much “zoomed in” • Relationship between a feature’s size on a map to its actual size on Earth • Fraction or Ratio, Written statement, bar or….. • Local, regional, national, global

9. Projection • Most accurate representation of the earth is a globe • Scientific method of transferring locations on Earth’s surface to a flat map • “All maps lie flat, and all flat maps lie” • Distortion in • Shape • Area • Distance • Direction

10. West Wing

11. True Size

12. Cont’d… • Equal area – Distortion at poles (shape) • Mercator – Distortion at poles (size) • Polar – Shows relative closeness between US & former USSR • Robinson – Better portrays relationship between land & water

13. Cont’d… • Van Der Grinten – Shows Canada & Russia 200% bigger than they are • Dymaxion – attempt to show global connections in a worldwide ocean • Mollweide – attempt to avoid high latitude distortions • “Interuption”

15. GIS • Geographic Information System • Computer system that stores information in ‘layers’ • Helps draw connections between various information • Crime & Air Pollution • Low income families & teenage pregnancies • Retirement homes & hospitals • Cancer rates & Native Canadians

19. GPS • Global Positioning System • 24 satellites that tell us the exact location of something on the earth • Aircrafts, ships, now quite common in cars • Originally for US defence, available to citizens within last 20 years