W. D.

Pattison's Four
What is Human Geography?
Traditions
• The study of how people make places, 1. An earth-science tradition
■ Intellectual legacy: Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
how we organize space and society, how
Introduction to Human we interact with each other in places and
■ Modern geographer: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
2. A man-land tradition
Geography across space, and how we make sense of
■ Intellectual legacy: Hippocratic; a Greek Physician of 5th
century B.C.
others and ourselves in our locality, ■ Modern geographer(s): Alexander von Humboldt
(1769-1859) and Carl Ritter (1779-1859); German
Unit 1 region, and world. 3. A spatial tradition
■ Intellectual legacy: Claudius Ptolemy (A.D. 100?-170?); a
Greek
■ Modern geographer: Alfred Wegener; climatologist
4. An area-studies tradition
■ Intellectual legacy: Strabo (63? B.C.-A.D. 24?); Roman
■ Modern geographer: Carl Sauer (1889-1975); American

Spatial distribution 5 Themes of Geography

Key Geographic Skills
What processes create and sustain the pattern of a distribution?
1. How to use and think about maps and spatial data 1. Location (position on Earth’s surface)
sets.
2. Human/Environmental Interactions (Cultural
2. How to understand and interpret the implications of Map of Cholera Victims
associations among phenomena in places. ecology - relations between cultures and
in London’s Soho District
3. How to recognize and interpret at different scales the in 1854.
environment)
relationships among patterns and processes. 3. Regions (areas of unique characteristics, ways
4. How to define regions and evaluate the regionalization of organizing people geographically)
process The patterns of victim’s
5. How to characterize and analyze changing homes and water pump 4. Place (associations among phenomena in an
interconnections among places. locations helped uncover area)
the source of the disease. 5. Movement (interconnections between areas)

Location
Ways to indicate location (position):

1. Maps: best way to show location and demonstrate insights gained through spatial analysis

2. Place-name: a name given to a portion of the Earth’s surface (“Miami”)

3. Site: physical characteristics of a place; climate, water sources, topography, soil, vegetation,
latitude, and elevation

4. Absolute location: latitude and longitude (parallels and meridians), mathematical measurements
mainly useful in determining exact distances and direction (maps)

5. Relative location: location of a place relative to other places (situation), valuable way to indicate
location for two reasons:
a) Finding an unfamiliar place - by comparing its location with a familiar one (“Miami – 35
miles northwest of Cincinnati”)
b) Centrality, understanding its importance (Chicago – hub of sea & air transportation, close
to four other states; Singapore – accessible to other countries in Southeast Asia)

6. Distribution: arrangement of something across Earth’s surface

a) Density – frequency with which something occurs in an area. Arithmetic density – total
number of objects (people) in an area. Physiologic density – number of people per unit area of
agriculturally productive land.
b) Concentration – extent of a feature’s spread over an area. Clustered – relatively close.
Dispersed – relatively far apart.
c) Pattern – geometric arrangement of objects.
 Human/Environmental
Regions
Interactions
1. Cultural landscape – 1. Distinctive characteristics:
• area: defined spatial extent
• includes all human-induced changes that involve the • location: lie somewhere on Earth’s surface
surface and the biosphere. Carl Sauer: “… the forms • boundaries: sometimes evident on the ground, often based on
superimposed on the physical landscape by the activities specifically chosen criteria
of man.” • other: cultural (language, religion), economic (agriculture, industry),
physical (climate, vegetation)
2. Environmental Determinism – 2. Three types of regions:
• human behavior, individually and collectively, is strongly – Formal – (a.k.a. uniform, homogeneous), visible and measurable
affected by, and even controlled or determined by the homogeneity (link to scale and detail)
– Functional – product of interactions, and movement of various kinds,
environment usually characterized by a core and hinterland (e.g. a city and its
3. Possibilism – surrounding suburbs)
– Perceptual – (a.k.a. vernacular), primarily in the minds of people (e.g.
• the natural environment merely serves to limit the range of Sunbelt)
choices available to a culture 4. Regions can be seen in a hierarchy (vertical order, scale), (e.g. Ft.
4. Environmental Modification – positive and negative Lauderdale – Broward County – Florida – Southeastern US …)
environmental alterations

Regions
• Perceptual Region: ideas in our minds,
based on accumulated knowledge of
places and regions, that define an area of
“sameness” or “connectedness.”
e.g. the South
the Mid-Atlantic
the Middle East

Place
1. Culture – people’s lifestyles, values, beliefs, and traits
• What people care about: language, religion, ethnicity
• What people take care of: 1) daily necessities of survival (food, clothing, shelter) and 2)
leisure activities (artistic expressions, recreation)
• Cultural institutions: political institutions (a country, its laws and rights)
2. Components of culture:
• Culture region – the area within which a particular culture system prevails (dress, building
styles, farms and fields, material manifestations,…)
• Culture trait – a single attribute of culture
• Culture complex – a discrete combination of traits
• Culture system – grouping of certain complexes, may be based on ethnicity, language,
religion,…
• Culture realm – an assemblage of culture (or geographic) regions, the most highly
generalized regionalization of culture and geography (e.g. sub-Saharan Africa)
3. Physical Processes – environmental processes, which explain the distribution of
human activities
• Climate – long-term average weather condition at a particular location. Vladimir Koppen’s
five main climate regions (expresses humans’ limited tolerance for extreme temperature and
precipitation levels)
• Vegetation – plant life.
• Soil – the material that forms Earth’s surface, in the thin interface between the air and the
rocks. Erosion and the depletion of nutrients are two basic problems concerning the
destruction of the soil.
• Landforms – Earth’s surface features (geomorphology), limited population near poles and at
high altitudes
Movement
Perception
of Place 1. Culture Hearths –
• sources of civilization from which an idea, innovation, or ideology originates (e.g.
Mesopotamia, Nile Valley), viewed in the context of time as well as space
2. Cultural diffusion – spread of an innovation, or ideology from its source area to
another culture
• Expansion diffusion – an innovation, or ideology develops in a source area and remains
strong there while also spreading outward
• Contagious diffusion – nearly all adjacent individuals are affected (e.g. spread of Islam, disease)
• Hierarchical diffusion – the main channel of diffusion some segment of those who are susceptible to
(or adopting) what is being diffused (e.g. spread of AIDS, use of fax machines)
• Stimulus diffusion – spread of an underlying principle (e.g. idea of industrialization)
Where Pennsylvanian • Relocation diffusion – spread of an innovation, or ideology through physical movement of
individuals
students prefer to live • Migrant diffusion – when an innovation originates somewhere and enjoys strong-but brief-adoption,
loses strength at origin by the time it reaches another area (e.g. mild pandemics)
• Acculturation – when a culture is substantially changed through interaction with another culture
• Transculturation – a near equal exchange between culture complexes
• Forces that work against diffusion:
• Time-distance decay – the longer and farther it has to go, the less likely it will get there
• Cultural barriers – prevailing attitudes or taboos
Where Californian students
prefer to live
 Sequent Occupance
Cultural Landscape Layers of imprints in a cultural landscape
The visible human imprint on the landscape. that reflect years of differing human
activity.

Religion and
cremation
practices diffuse
with Hindu Athens, Greece
migrants from ancient Agora
India to Kenya. surrounded by
modern buildings

Sequent Occupance Two Types of Maps:

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
African, Arab, German, British, and Indian layers to the city.
Apartment in Mumbai, India
Reference
Map
Reference Maps Thematic Maps
- Show locations of - Tell a story about the
Apartment in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania places and degree of an attribute,
geographic features the pattern of its
- Absolute locations distribution, or its
movement.
- Relative locations
What are reference What are thematic maps
maps used for? used for?

Geographic
Mental Maps:
Thematic Information
Map maps we carry in our minds of places we System:
have been and places we have heard of. a collection of
can see: terra incognita, landmarks, paths, computer hardware
and accessibility and software that
What story about permits storage
median income and
in the Activity Spaces: analysis of layers
Washington, DC of
area is this map the places we travel to routinely in our spatial data.
telling?
rounds of daily activity.
How are activity spaces and mental maps related?
 Place, Space, and Scale
Remote
Sensing: • Place:
a method of – place identity – shaped by physical and cultural
forces, associations among phenomena in a given
collecting data by area
instruments that
• Space:
are physically
– spatial relationships between people, places, and the
distant from the environment
area of study. • Scale:
– truth is scale dependent, phenomena you study at
one scale (e.g. local) may well be influenced by
developments at other scales (e.g. regional, national,
or global)

Scale Globalization

Scale is the territorial extent of something. A set of processes that are: A set of outcomes that are:

The observations we make and the context Scale - increasing interactions

- deepening relationships
- unevenly distributed
- varying across scales
we see vary across scales, such as: - heightening - differently manifested
interdependence
- local
- regional without regard to throughout the world.
country borders.
- national
- global