Geography

What is geography?

Geography is the study of the

earth’s surface, land, features
and people.
The five themes of geography
were created to help
geographers organize
information.
5 Themes of Geography
Location
Movement
Region
Place
HEI (Human Environment
Interaction)
 Location
2 types:
Absolute location – Describes an exact spot on
earth. This type of location requires latitude
and longitude coordinates or a postal address.

Relative location – Describes the position of a place in relation

to another place. Uses directions, landmarks, time or distance
from one place to another.
 Absolute Location
Washington, D.C. is located at 40N latitude and
80W longitude.
 Absolute Location

2202 Macedonia Church Road

Ronda, NC
 Relative Location
examples

•Elkin is 6 miles from Ronda

• Turn left out of the school driveway, go down
Macedonia Church Rd. until you get to
Highway 268 the turn left to get to Elkin
• Can you think of an example of relative
location?????
 Place
What’s it like? The physical and human features
(characteristics) of a location that make it
unique. There are 2 categories of place:
1) Physical Features

2) Human Features
 Place – Physical Features
Landforms, climate, wildlife, natural resources,
architecture, and other factors that make a place
unique.
 Place – Human Features
Language, food, religion, ethnicity, clothing, customs
and other factors related to people and how they
live.
 HEI (Human Environment Interaction)
Describes the ways in which humans interact
with the environment. It also describes the
effect of the environment on people.

1) Depend
2) Adapt
3) Modify
 HEI – Depend
People involved in farming,
fishing, mining raw materials
and tourism DEPEND on the
environment to live or make a
living.
 HEI - Adapt
* This is the most difficult way! It means leaving
the environment unchanged.
* Environmentalists, especially those concerned with
preserving the wilderness, like to leave the air, water,
and land alone. Tourism relies on preserving things as
they are.
* People must adjust their lifestyles (clothing,
housing, sports) to adapt to the environment in
which they live.
* How can climate/weather affect the settlement of
people and how they live?? Give an example.
HEI - Adapt
 HEI - Modify
Modify means to change in some way. People
change the environment when they build
roads, bridges, canals, dams, houses, and
buildings.
Positive change – Can you think of ways
that humans change or modify the
environment in a positive (good) way???
Negative (bad) way???
 Region
Regions are parts of the world that share one or
more common characteristics/features that
distinguish it from surrounding areas.

Regions can be defined in many different ways. For

example:
1) Language type
2) Landform groups (Piedmont, Coastal plain,
mountains)
3) Government or political regions
Regions
 Movement
Includes the movement of people,
products/goods, information and ideas within
and between countries.

*How do goods/products get from one place to

another?
* What methods do people use to
communicate ideas and information?
Movement of goods/products