The 5 Themes of Geography Ch. 1-5

The 5 Themes of Geography help geographers answer two basic questions: Where are things located? Why are they there? Geographers use the 5 themes to answer these questions Why does it matter where things are or why they are there? What if you could move anywhere,-- but you hate winter and snakes, and you really want to be near a big city but close to a lake so you can go swimming and lets say, you don’t have a car, and you want to be somewhere where everyone speaks latin. How would you know were to look? When you think of all these factors your using the five themes without even realizing it.

5 Themes Place Location Human and Environment Interaction Movement Regions

1. Place What is it like? Physical Characteristics: landforms, bodies of water, plants, animals, soil, climate Physical characteristics are naturally occurring Human Characteristics: culture, bridges, roads, buildings Human characteristics are man-made Describe the city of rochester using physical characteristics describe your back yard using physical characteristics “ “ using human characteristics. Reuther??

2. Location Where is it? Why is it located there? Absolute Location: latitude and longitude, or an address Relative Location: where are place is with respect to other places What does ‘with respect to other places’ mean?

3. Human and Environment Interaction How do people and the environment interact with each other? Adapt (change) Modify Depend (resources) Depend – blackout Adapt – seasons Modify – changing times

Adaptation How do humans or the environment adapt in order to interact with each other? 1. 2. 3. Surviving with little water (cactus, or people in the desert) Weather temperature What about deer and raccons in the city? Were they meant to live in cities?

Modification How do we modify ourselves or the environment in order to interact with it? 1. 2. Cutting roads through mountains Building damns and canals

Depend How do we depend on our environment or resources? 1. 2. The black out? What about natural resources?

4. Movement How do people, goods and ideas get from one place to another? Movement of materials and products Movement of people and living things Movement of ideas and information

5. Regions Regions can be defined by a unifying characteristic When describing a region, a characteristic is shared Physical characteristic, culture, location… Purposes or functions Why is the Middle East a region? Remember with PLACE we had physical and human characteristics. How might we use these types of characteristics to define regions?

What are some ways geographers use regions to describe our earth? Plains regions What are some unifying features? The South (U.S.) What are some shared features? Michigan’s Upper Peninsula region Oil producing region What are other regions you can think of? Regions defined by language Regions defined by religion

What is the difference between PLACE and REGION?? Deserts are areas that receive very little rainfall. Michigan is made up of two peninsulas, the upper and lower. The economy of southeast Michigan depends heavily on the auto industry. Sky scrapers and busy streets are two ways we can describe New York City.