Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Within this region, people defi ne much of their lives rela-
tive to Chicago because of the tight interconnectedness
between Chicago and the region. Northwestern Indiana
is so connected to Chicago that it has a time zone separate
from the rest of Indiana, allowing people in northwestern
Indiana to stay in the same time zone as Chicago.
Absolute locations do not change, but relative loca-
tions are constantly modifi ed and change over time.
Fredericksburg, Virginia, is located halfway between
Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Virginia. Today, it is a
suburb of Washington, D.C. with commuter trains, van
pools, buses, and cars moving commuters between their
homes in Fredericksburg and their workplaces in metro-
politan Washington, D.C. During the Civil War, several
bloody battles took place in Fredericksburg as the North
and South fought over the land halfway between their
wartime capitals. The absolute location of Fredericksburg
has not changed, but its place in the world around it, its
relative location, certainly has.
Geographers have studied the mental map forma-
tion of children, the blind, new residents to cities, men,
and women, all of whom exhibit differences in the forma-
tion of mental maps. To learn new places, women, for
example, tend to use landmarks, whereas men tend to use
paths. Activity spaces vary by age, and the extent of peo-
ples' mental maps depends in part on their ages. Mental
maps include
terra incognita
, unknown lands that are off-
limits. If your path to the movie theater includes driving
past a school that you do not go to, your map on paper will
likely label the school, but no details will be shown regard-
ing the place. However, if you have access to the school
and you are instead drawing a mental map of how to get to
the school's cafeteria, your mental map of the school will
be quite detailed. Thus, mental maps refl ect a person's
activity space, what is accessible to the person in his or her
rounds of daily activity and what is not.
Generalization in Maps
All maps simplify the world. A reference map of the world
cannot show every place in the world, and a thematic map
of hurricane tracks in the Atlantic Ocean cannot pinpoint
every hurricane and its precise path for the last 50 years.
When mapping data, whether human or physical, cartog-
raphers, the geographers who make maps,
generalize
the
information they present on maps. Many of the maps in
this topic are thematic maps of the world. Shadings show
how much or how little of some phenomena can be found
on a part of the Earth's surface, and symbols show where
specifi c phenomena are located.
Generalized maps help us see general trends, but
we cannot see all cases of a given phenomenon. The map
of world precipitation (Fig. 1.11) is a
generalized map
of mean annual precipitation received around the world.
The areas shaded in burgundy, dark blue, and vibrant
green are places that receive the most rain, and those
shaded in orange receive the least rain on average. Take a
pen and trace along the equator on the map. Notice how
many of the high-precipitation areas on the map are
along the equator. The consistent heating of the equator
over the course of the entire year brings consistent pre-
cipitation to the equatorial region. At the scale of the
world, we can see general trends in precipitation, such as
this, but it is diffi cult to see the microscale climates of
intense precipitation areas that are found throughout the
world.
Mental Maps
We all carry maps in our minds of places we have been and
places we have merely heard of; these are called
mental
maps
. Even if you have never been to the Great Plains of
the United States, you may have studied wall maps and
atlases or come across the region in books, magazines, and
newspapers frequently enough to envision the states of
the region (North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska,
Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas) in your mind. Regardless
of whether you have visited the Great Plains, you will use
your mental map of the region. If you hear on the news
that a tornado destroyed a town in Oklahoma, you use
your mental map of the Great Plains region and Oklahoma
to make sense of where the tornado occurred and who was
affected by it.
Our mental maps of the places within our
activity
spaces
, those places we travel to routinely in our rounds
of daily activity, are more accurate and detailed than
places where we have never been. If your friend calls and
asks you to meet her at the movie theater you go to all
the time, your mental map will engage automatically.
You will envision the hallway, the front door, the walk to
your car, the lane to choose in order to be prepared for
the left turn you must make, where you will park your
car, and your path into the theater and up to the pop-
corn stand.
Geographers who study human-environment behav-
ior have made extensive studies of how people develop
their mental maps. The earliest humans, who were
nomadic, had incredibly accurate mental maps of where to
fi nd food and seek shelter. Today, people need mental maps
to fi nd their way through the concrete jungles of cities and
suburbs.
Remote Sensing and GIS
Geographic studies include both long- and short-term
environmental change. Geographers monitor Earth
from a distance, using
remote sensing
technology that
gathers data at a distance from Earth's surface.
