1. Understanding the physical and human characteristics of our state
UNIT 1: Texas Geography
Understanding the physical and human characteristics of our state

2. Era of Natural Texas and Its People
What is an era? A fixed period of time characterized by particular events, features, developments, or people.
Why do historians divide history into eras? Historians divide history into eras in order to create blocks of time that have similar characteristics in order to organize and present information about the past.

3. Era of Natural Texas and Its People
TEKS 1A
Identify the major eras in Texas history, describe their defining characteristics, and explain why historians divide the past into eras, including Natural Texas and its People; Age of Contact; Spanish Colonial; Mexican National; Revolution and Republic; Early Statehood; Texas in the Civil War and Reconstruction; Cotton, Cattle, and Railroads; Age of Oil; Texas in the Great Depression and World War II; Civil Rights and Conservatism; and Contemporary Texas

4. 6 Geographical Questions
Location
Place
Regions
Human-Environment Interaction
Human Systems
Physical Systems

5. Location – Where is it?
Absolute Location – The exact location of a place on the earth’s surface
Relative Location – The location of a place in relation to other places
The Absolute location and Relative location of Texas affect it in many ways – How has Texas’ relative location to Mexico affected it?

6. Latitude and Longitude

7. Using Latitude and Longitude
The Absolute Location of a place is given using latitude and longitude coordinates
Coordinates are written using a numerical measurement and a directional label.
Latitude is given first followed by longitude
(29° N, 95° W) is the approximate location of Kingwood on the earth’s surface

8. Place – What is it like?
Place refers to the physical and human characteristics of a location
Physical Characteristics include:
Landforms, Climate, plants, animals
Human Characteristics include:
Language, Religion, Architecture, Music, Politics, ways of life

9. Physical Characteristics

11. Human Characteristics

13. Regions – How does it compare to other places?
Geographers divide areas into regions in order to better study them.
Regions are places that are united based on common characteristics
Regions can be based on physical, human, business and other characteristics

14. 4 Natural Regions of Texas

15. Human-Environment Interaction
How do humans react to their environment and how does it affect them?
Ex: Pollution
Deforestation
Hurricanes/Tornadoes
Farming
Damming Rivers to make lakes

17. Human Systems Movement - How people move through the environment
Cultural Diffusion - new ideas brought by migrating people become widely accepted.
People bring ideas and goods with them when they move from one place to another.

18. Physical Systems
Geographers analyze physical systems such as mountains, volcanoes, hurricanes, glaciers to see how they interact with and shape places and regions.
They also study plant and animal ecosystems that depend on each other and their surroundings in places and regions for their survival.

19. Movement in Texas

20. Why Geography? Geography prepares us for modern life
People, businesses, governments depend on geography everyday to meet their needs
Computer software such as GIS and GPS use geography to help people

21. Sizing Up Texas Second largest U.S. State
The area of Texas is 267,277 square miles
Some parts of Texas are closer to the capitals of other states than to Austin.

22. Sizing Up Texas Texas is the size of all of these states combined:
New York Pennsylvania
Ohio Illinois
Connecticut Rhode Island
Massachusetts Vermont
New Hampshire New Jersey
Maine

23. Sizing Up Texas
El Paso, Texas is closer to the Pacific Ocean than to Houston.
Some students in Texas live 4 hrs from the nearest school
How could these geographic facts affect Texas?

24. Roy Bedichek He was an author and speaker; considered a “Naturalist”
who traveled and
documented the
Texas landscape for
over 30 years. Died in
1959.