Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Case study #1: Where something is located
Where are African lions located and why? Obviously they live in Africa, but in what parts of Africa,
and why? Those geographic questions are central to our first case study.
I'd love to be able to pack you off to Africa and have you acquire relevant geographic information,
but that's not very practical. Instead, I simply refer you to Figure 2-1, which presents geographic in-
formation that has been acquired and organized in a map. So where are African lions located? What's
the message of the map?
Figure 2-1:
A
map of the histor-
ical geography of
the African lion.
Theanswer isthat African lions aremuchless widespread thantheyusedtobe.Themaptells youthis
by using three kinds of shadings, the meanings of which are shown at the lower left of the map. One
shade shows areas where lions are found at present. Another depicts where lions formerly roamed.
The last indicates areas where, as far as anyone can tell, lions have never lived.
A fraction of its former self
Today,Africanlionsinthewildliveonlyinthehandfulofpatchesshownonthemap,mainlytheones
in southern and eastern Africa. But the map also tells us there was a time when the lion's homeland
consisted of a vast and contiguous hunk of Africa that stretched all the way from the Mediterranean
coast in the north to the southernmost tip of the continent. Look at the map and visually compare the
amount ofterritory that islion country today versusthe amount offormer territory.I'mgoingtoguess
that the total land area that lions occupy today is no more than 15 to 20 percent of its former extent.
In any event, present-day lion country is a fraction of its former size.
