1. NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS

2. PART ONE: GEOGRAPHICAL CHARACTERISTICS

3. To correctly identify natural environments you need their geographical characteristics such as: SOILS CLIMATE TOPOGRAPHY NATURAL VEGETATION

4. GO OUTSIDE!! Take the kids outside! I go out to the trees just outside my room. I get the kids to “touch and feel” and tell me how the soil feels in their hands, tell me what the weather is general like here this time of the year, tell me what the shape of the ground is like and what trees we are looking at.

5. SOILS TYPE ORIGIN (HOW WERE THEY MADE) TEXTURE PH- ACIDIC, ALKALINE OR NEUTRAL WATER CONTENT MINERAL CONTENT Literally the foundations of the environment because it dictates what will grow= FERTILITY

6. CLIMATE Average temperature Average rainfall Patterns over time and seasons. A summary or judgement about whether a place is dry, cold, wet or hot in general or at certain times of the year.

7. TOPOGRAPHY The shape of the land. The up and down bits! Is it flat or hilly or steep “YMCA”- arm movements to match the words steep, flat, undulating-DO IT DURING THE EXAM TO REMEMBER!!

8. NATURAL VEGETATION BASE for the biosphere and what animal life can be supported by it. What is used for food and what for habitat. THEN you CAN DISCUSS INTRODUCED SPECIES later.

9. Its not enough to just know the ingredients! You also need to know the Processes which are: Erosion Transportation Deposition

10. Processes put simply erosionLike a Bulldozer on construction site Eg: rain, wind, human machines, animals digging or destroying. TransportationLike a dump-truck taking dirt from the construction site Eg: wind or flowing water carry dirt. depositionThe dump-truck empties its loads in layers at a new site Eg: wind or water flow lessens enough to drop its load somewhere new.

11. CHANGE Change can be measured in the following ways: Over time- short term eg: seasonal or disaster -long term eg: geological Mount St Helens 1923 and 1980 Over space: local, regional, international, global Scale: size. Eg: how big? Best shown as: Before and after shots.