Geography For Dummies

Charles A. Heatwole

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118068670
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Geography is more than just trivia, it can help you understand why we import or export certain products, predict climate change, and even show you where to place fire and police stations when planning a city.

If you're curious about the world and want to know more about this fascinating place, Geography For Dummies is a great place to start. Whether you're sixteen or sixty, this fun and easy guide will help you make more sense of the world you live in.

Geography For Dummies gives you the tools to interpret the Earth's grid, read and interpret maps, and to appreciate the importance and implications of geographical features such as volcanoes and fault lines. Plus, you'll see how erosion and weathering have and will change the earth's surface and how it impacts people. You'll get a firm hold of everything from the physical features of the world to political divisions, population, culture, and economics. You'll also discover:

• How you can have a rainforest on one side of a mountain range and a desert on the other
• How ocean currents help to determine the geography of climates
• How to choose a good location for a shopping mall
• How you can properly put the plant to good use in everything you do
• How climate affects humans and how humans have affected the climate
• How human population has spread and the impact it has had on our world

If you're mixed up by map symbols or mystified by Mercator projections Geography For Dummies can help you find your bearings. Filled with key insights, easy-to-read maps, and cool facts, this book will expand your understanding of geography and today's world.

Part I

Getting Grounded: The Geographic Basics

In this part . . .

**IN a DROPCAP**

Each and every academic discipline has its own particular and peculiar subject matter. Geography is no exception, but my, how things have changed!

For the longest period, geography was concerned primarily with mapping the world and acquiring facts about places. It has since become a much more analytical pursuit. Thus, the time-honored imperative to know where things are located is complemented by an equally strong (if not stronger) desire to know why they occur where they do. Also, geography has become an applied discipline that seeks to identify the best location for a hospital, store, factory, or other facility.

In this part, you will learn about the key concepts and methods of contemporary geography as well as the principal tools and techniques of the trade. Among other things you will see how exciting technologies are giving geographers unprecedented perspectives on where and why.

Chapter 1

Geography: Understanding a World of Difference

In This Chapter

Contemplating a complex planet

Unearthing myths

Tracing the ancient roots of geography to the modern discipline

Finding a new way to look at geography

Going over some basic concepts

Y ou live on a very interesting planet, a world of never-ending variety — mountains and plains, oceans and rivers, deserts and forests. If, as Shakespeare once wrote, “All the world’s a stage,” then one could hardly imagine a greater range of sets and scenery than exists on planet Earth.

You are an actor on that stage, and you are not alone. The entire cast number more than six billion, and they are as diverse as their Earthly stage. They practice dozens of religions, speak many hundreds of languages, and display thousands of cultures. They live in scattered farmhouses, large cities, and every-size settlement in between. They practice every kind of livelihood imaginable and, in innumerable ways great and small, have interacted with and changed the natural environment forever.

So “interesting planet” and “never-ending variety” turn out to be code for “complex.” Truly, this is a complex world in which no two areas are exactly alike. On the one hand, this complexity makes for a very fascinating planet. But on the other hand, the prospect of learning all about this complexity can be overwhelming, or at least sometimes seems to be. Fortunately, one subject seeks to make sense of it all and, usually, does a pretty good job: Geography.

Geography: Making Sense of It All

People are fascinated by the world in which they live. They want to know what it’s like and why it is the way it is. Most importantly, they want to understand their place in it. Geography satisfies this curiosity and provides practical knowledge and skills that people find useful in their personal and professional lives. This is nothing new.

From ancient roots . . .

Geography comes from two ancient Greek words: ge, meaning “the Earth,” and graphe, meaning “to describe.” So, when the ancient Greeks practiced geography, they described the Earth. Stated less literally, they noted the location of things, recorded the characteristics of areas near and far, and used that information in matters of trade, commerce, communication, and administration.

Disputed paternity

A Greek named Eratosthenes (died about 192 B.C.) is sometimes called the “Father of Geography” since he coined the word “geography.” The Greeks themselves called Homer the “Father of Geography” because his epic poem, Odyssey, written about a thousand years before Eratosthenes was born, is the oldest account of the fringe of the Greek world. In addition to these gentlemen, at least two other men have been named “Father of Geography,” all of which suggests a very interesting paternity suit. But I digress. That the story goes back to the days of the Greeks tells us that geography is a very old subject. People of every age and culture have sought to know and understand their immediate surroundings and the world beyond. They stood at the edges of seas and imagined distant shores. They wondered what lies on the other side of a mountain or beyond the horizon. Ultimately, of course, they acted upon those speculations. They explored. They left old lands and occupied new lands. And as a result, millennia later, explorers like Columbus and Magellan found humans almost everywhere they went.

Links to exploration

Geographers from ancient Greece through the 19th century were largely devoted to exploring the world, gathering information about newfound lands, and indicating their locations as accurately as possible on maps. Sometimes the great explorers and thinkers got it right, and sometimes they did not (see the sidebar called “Measuring the Earth”). But in any event, geography and exploration became intertwined; so, “doing geography” became closely associated with making maps, studying maps, and memorizing the locations of things (see Chapters 3 through 5 for information on locating things and creating and reading maps).

Measuring the Earth

In the third century B.C., the Greek scholar Eratosthenes made a remarkably accurate measurement of Earth’s circumference. At Syene (near Aswan, Egypt), the sun illuminated the bottom of a well only one day every year. Eratosthenes inferred correctly this could only happen if the sun were directly overhead the well — that is, 90º above the horizon. By comparing that sun angle with another one measured in Alexandria, Egypt, on the same day the sun was directly overhead at Syene, Eratosthenes deduced that the distance between the two locations was one-fiftieth (1/50th) of Earth’s circumference. Thus, if he could measure the distance from Syene to Alexandria and multiply that number times 50, the answer would be the distance around the entire Earth.

There are diverse accounts of the method of measurement. Some say Eratosthenes had his assistants count camel strides (yes, camel strides) that they measured in stade, the Greek unit of measurement. In any event, he came up with a distance of 500 miles between Syene and Alexandria. That meant Earth was about [500 x 50 =] 25,000 miles around. (“About” because the relationship between stade and miles is not exactly known.) The actual average circumference is 24,680 miles so Eratosthenes was very close.

About a century-and-a-half later, another Greek named Posidonius calculated Earth’s circumference and came up with 18,000 miles. Posidonius’ measurement became the generally accepted distance thanks to Strabo, the great Roman chronicler, who simply did not believe that the Earth could be as big as Eratosthenes said it was. About 18 A.D. Strabo wrote his Geography, which became the most influential treatise on the subject for more than a millennium. Geography credited the calculations of Posidonius and rejected those of Eratosthenes. And that leads to an interesting bit of speculation. Columbus was familiar with Geography, so he was aware of the official ca...