Five Themes of Geography

tools of the historian.pdf

Geography's Five Themes

Geography- the study of the Earth in all of its variety. Geography describes the earth’s land, water, plant, and animal life. It is the study of places and the complex relationships between people and their environment.

In 1984, the five themes of geography were created to better organize the teaching of geography in schools. Geography is the study of Earth. The earth is a big place which means that there are many things that can be studied from where things are to how people live. The five themes help us organize the many areas that geographers study.

  1. Location

The first theme of geography is location. Location tells us where we can find something on the earth. An example of location would be giving the latitude and longitude for a city like 40 degrees North, 70 degrees West for New York City.

Absolute- represented by latitude and longitude

Relative- The Mountains are east of the city.

  1. Place

The next theme of geography is place. Place sometimes gets confused with location. Place is the physical and human characteristics of an area. The physical characteristics are features and shape of the land in a given area. The human characteristics are things like the number of people living in an area or the kinds of jobs people have in that particular place.

Personality of an area

  1. Movement

The third theme of geography is movement. Movement refers to the movement of people, things, and ideas from one place to another. A family moving from one town to another is example of movement. Another example of movement eating Chinese food in America because the idea of Chinese food moved from China to America.

  1. Human Environment Interaction

The theme of Human Environmental Interaction looks at the relationship that humans have with their environment. Humans affect their environment in many ways such as building structures on the land or using resources to make different things. The environment sometimes also affects humans. It can provide resources for humans or it can cause problems for people such as floods.

  1. Region

The final theme of geography is region. Region is when we group areas according to characteristics that they share in common. These characteristics can include things like religion, language, culture, physical features, or borders.


FIVE THEMES OF GEOGRAPHY - VOCABULARY

Geography: The study of the earth, its land and water, its people and its environments.

Movement: How people, goods & information and culture move from place to place.

Region: An area that is defined by common human or physical features.

Human-Environment Interaction: How humans have changed a particular place and how humans adapt to the environment around them.

Place: The physical and human characteristics that give an area its own special quality.

Location: Where something is on earth.

Hemispheres: Divide the globe in half. There are four: Northern and Southern; Eastern and Western

Compass Rose (GH8): A symbol on a map that shows the cardinal directions of north, south, east and west.

Continent (GH14): One of the seven large landmasses on earth.

Equator (GH14): An imaginary line circling the globe at 0 degrees latitude. Halfway between the north and south poles, it separates the northern and southern hemispheres.

Latitude (GH14): Distance north or south of the Equator, measured in degrees.

Longitude (GH14): Distance east or west of the Prime Meridian, measured in degrees.

Ocean (GH15): One of the five major bodies of saltwater that surround the continents.

Prime Meridian (GH15): Line of the global grid running from the North Pole to the South Pole through Greenwich, England, and the starting point for measuring degrees of east and west longitude. (It is the meridian of 0 degrees longitude, and it separates the Western and Eastern hemispheres.)

Absolute Location (TOOLS 6): The exact spot of a place on the Earth’s surface.

Relative Location (TOOLS 6): Tells where a place is, compared to one or more other places.