Why Is Each Point on Earth Unique? · Chicago Transit Authority mash-up shows location of buses and...

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts 13

surrounding area. Bars, hotels, sports facilities, transit stops,and other information about the neighborhood can be mapped.

KEY ISSUE 2

Why Is Each Point on Earth Unique?

■ Place: Unique Location of a Feature■ Regions: Areas of Unique Characteristics■ Spatial Association

Each place on Earth is in some respects unique and inother respects similar to other places. The interplaybetween the uniqueness of each place and the similaritiesamong places lies at the heart of geographic inquiry intowhy things are found where they are. ■

Two basic concepts help geographers to explain why everypoint on Earth is in some ways unique—place and region. Thedifference between the two concepts is partly a matter of scale:A place is a point, whereas a region is an area.

Place: Unique Location of a FeatureHumans possess a strong sense of place—that is, a feeling for thefeatures that contribute to the distinctiveness of a particular spoton Earth, perhaps a hometown, vacation destination, or part of a

country. Describing the features of a place orregion is an essential building block for geogra-phers to explain similarities, differences, andchanges across Earth. Geographers think aboutwhere particular places and regions are locatedand the combination of features that make eachplace and region on Earth distinct.

Geographers describe a feature’s place onEarth by identifying its location, the positionthat something occupies on Earth’s surface, andin doing so consider four ways to identify loca-tion: place name, site, situation, and mathemati-cal location.

Place NamesBecause all inhabited places on Earth’s sur-face—and many uninhabited places—havebeen named, the most straightforward way todescribe a particular location is often by refer-ring to its place name. A toponym is the namegiven to a place on Earth (Figure 1-9).

A place may be named for a person, perhaps its founder ora famous person with no connection to the community.George Washington’s name has been selected for one state,counties in 31 other states, and dozens of cities, including thenational capital. Places may be named for an obscure person,such as Jenkinjones, West Virginia, named for a mine opera-tor, and Gassaway, West Virginia, named for a U.S. senator.

Some settlers select place names associated with religion,such as St. Louis and St. Paul, whereas other names derive fromancient history, such as Athens, Attica, and Rome. A placename may also indicate the origin of its settlers. Place namescommonly have British origins in North America and Australia,Portuguese origins in Brazil, Spanish origins elsewhere in LatinAmerica, and Dutch origins in South Africa.

Pioneers lured to the American West by the prospect of find-ing gold or silver placed many picturesque names on the land-scape. Place names in Nevada selected by successful minersinclude Eureka, Lucky Boy Pass, Gold Point, and Silver Peak.Unsuccessful Nevada pioneers sadly or bitterly named otherplaces, such as Battle Mountain, Disaster Peak, and MassacreLake. The name Jackpot was given in 1959 by the Elko,Nevada, county commissioners to a town near the Idaho stateborder in recognition of the importance of legalized gamblingto the local economy.

Some place names derive from features of the physical envi-ronment. Trees, valleys, bodies of water, and other natural fea-tures appear in the place names of most languages. The capitalof the Netherlands, called �s-Gravenhage in Dutch (in English,The Hague), means “the prince’s forest.” Aberystwyth, inWales, means “mouth of the River Ystwyth,” while 22 kilome-ters (13 miles) upstream lies the tiny village of Cwmystwyth,which means “valley of the Ystwyth.” The name of the river,Ystwyth, in turn, is the Welsh word for “meandering,” descrip-tive of a stream that bends like a snake.

FIGURE 1-8 Mash-up. Chicago Transit Authority mash-up shows location of buses and bus stopsalong three routes. Rolling the mouse over a bus stop shows when the next three buses are expected.

14 The Cultural Landscape

Czech Republic; Leningrad (the second-largest city in the Soviet Union) reverted toSt. Petersburg, Russia; and Karl-Marx-Stadt (in East Germany) reverted toChemnitz in a reunified Germany.

SiteThe second way that geographers describethe location of a place is by site, which isthe physical character of a place. Importantsite characteristics include climate, watersources, topography, soil, vegetation, lati-tude, and elevation. The combination ofphysical features gives each place a distinc-tive character.

Site factors have always been essentialin selecting locations for settlements,although people have disagreed on theattributes of a good site, depending oncultural values. Some have preferred ahilltop site for easy defense from attack.Others located settlements near conven-ient river-crossing points to facilitatecommunication with people in otherplaces.

Humans have the ability to modifythe characteristics of a site. The south-ern portion of New York City’s Manhat-tan Island is twice as large today as it

was in 1626, when Peter Minuit bought the island from itsnative inhabitants for the equivalent of $23.75 worth ofDutch gold and silver coins (Figure 1-10). Manhattan’s addi-tional land area was created by filling in portions of the EastRiver and the Hudson River. In the eighteenth century, land-fills were created by sinking old ships and dumping refuse ontop of them. More recently, New York City permitted con-struction of Battery Park City, a 57-hectare (142-acre) sitedesigned to house more than 20,000 residents and 30,000office workers. The central areas of Boston and Tokyo havealso been expanded through centuries of landfilling in nearbybays, substantially changing these sites.

SituationSituation is the location of a place relative to other places. Sit-uation is a valuable way to indicate location, for two reasons—finding an unfamiliar place and understanding its importance.

First, situation helps us find an unfamiliar place by compar-ing its location with a familiar one. We give directions to peo-ple by referring to the situation of a place: “It’s down past thecourthouse, on Locust Street, after the third traffic light, besidethe yellow-brick bank.” We identify important buildings,streets, and other landmarks to direct people to the desiredlocation.

Second, situation helps us understand the importance of alocation. Many locations are important because they areaccessible to other places. For example, because of its sit-uation, Singapore has become a center for the trading and

Places can change names. The city of Cincinnati was origi-nally named Losantiville. The name was derived as follows: L isfor Licking River; os is Latin for mouth; anti is Latin for oppo-site; ville is Latin for town—hence, “town opposite the mouthof the Licking River.” The name was changed to Cincinnati inhonor of a society of Revolutionary War heroes named afterCincinnatus, an ancient Roman general.

Hot Springs, New Mexico, was renamed Truth or Conse-quences in 1950 in honor of a long-running radio and televi-sion program of that name. The name was changed by anoverwhelmingly favorable vote of the residents in order to pro-mote publicity for the economically struggling town.

The Board of Geographical Names, operated by the U.S.Geological Survey, was established in the late nineteenth cen-tury to be the final arbiter of names on U.S. maps. In recentyears the board has been especially concerned with remov-ing offensive place names, such as those with racial or ethnicconnotations.

Names can also change as a result of political upheavals. Forexample, following World War II, Poland gained control overterritory that was formerly part of Germany and changed manyof the place names from German to Polish. Among the largercities, Danzig became Gdánsk, Breslau became Wroclaw, andStettin became Szczecin. After the fall of communism in the early1990s, names throughout Eastern Europe were changed, inmany cases reverting to those used before the Communists hadgained power some decades earlier. For example after the demiseof communism, Gottwaldov (named for a Communist presidentof Czechoslovakia) reverted to its former name, Zlín, in the

FIGURE 1-9 Welsh toponym. The town’s name originally was Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, but when the railwaywas built in the nineteenth century, the townspeople lengthened it. They decided that signs with the 58-lettername in the railway station would attract attention and bring more business and visitors to the town.


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FIGURE 1-10 Changing site of New York City. Much of the southern part ofNew York City’s Manhattan Island was built on landfill. Several times in the past200 years, the waterfront has been extended into the Hudson and East rivers toprovide more land for offices, homes, parks, warehouses, and docks. The WorldTrade Center was built during the late 1960s and early 1970s partially on landfillin the Hudson River from the colonial era. Battery Park City (at left in thephotograph) was built on landfill removed from the World Trade Centerconstruction site. Excavating the landfill from the World Trade Center siteunearthed a large number of maritime objects, such as anchors, because the sitewas underwater in the seventeenth century.

distribution of goods for much of Southeast Asia (Figure 1-11).Singapore is situated near the Strait of Malacca, which is themajor passageway for ships traveling between the SouthChina Sea and the Indian Ocean. Some 50,000 vessels, one-fourth of the world’s maritime trade, pass through the straiteach year.

Mathematical LocationThe location of any place on Earth’s surface can be describedprecisely by meridians and parallels, two sets of imaginary arcsdrawn in a grid pattern on Earth’s surface (Figure 1-12).

• A meridian is an arc drawn between the North and Southpoles. The location of each meridian is identified on Earth’ssurface according to a numbering system known aslongitude.

The meridian that passes through the Royal Observatoryat Greenwich, England, is 0° longitude, also called the primemeridian. The meridian on the opposite side of the globefrom the prime meridian is 180° longitude. All other meridi-ans have numbers between 0° and 180° east or west,depending on whether they are east or west of the primemeridian. For example, New York City is located at 74°west longitude, and Lahore, Pakistan, at 74° east longitude.San Diego is located at 117° west longitude, and Tianjin,China, at 117° east longitude.

• A parallel is a circle drawn around the globe parallel to theequator and at right angles to the meridians. The number-ing system to indicate the location of a parallel is calledlatitude.

The equator is 0° latitude, the North Pole 90° north lat-itude, and the South Pole 90° south latitude. New York Cityis located at 41° north latitude, and Wellington, NewZealand, at 41° south latitude. San Diego is located at 33°north latitude, and Santiago, Chile, at 33° south latitude.

Latitude and longitude are used together to identify locations.For example, Midland, Texas, is located at 32° north latitudeand 102° west longitude.

The mathematical location of a place can be designatedmore precisely by dividing each degree into 60 minutes (�)and each minute into 60 seconds (�). For example, the officialmathematical location of Denver, Colorado, is 39°44� northlatitude and 104°59� west longitude. The state capitol build-ing in Denver is located at 39°42�52� north latitude and104°59�04� west longitude. GPS systems typically dividedegrees into decimal fractions rather than minutes and sec-onds. Toyota’s factory in Georgetown, Kentucky, for exampleis located at 38.233407° north latitude and 84.550239° westlongitude.

Measuring latitude and longitude is a good example of howgeography is partly a natural science and partly a study ofhuman behavior. Latitudes are scientifically derived by Earth’s


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FIGURE 1-11 Situation and site of Singapore. Thesite of the country of Singapore is a small islandapproximately 1 kilometer off the southern tip of theMalay Peninsula at the eastern end of the Strait ofMalacca. The city of Singapore covers nearly 20percent of the island. Its situation is the confluence ofseveral straits that serve as major passageways forshipping between the South China Sea and the IndianOcean. Downtown Singapore is situated near wherethe Singapore River flows into the Singapore Strait.

shape and its rotation around the Sun. The equator (0° lati-tude) is the parallel with the largest circumference and is theplace where every day has 12 hours of daylight. Even in ancienttimes, latitude could be accurately measured by the length ofdaylight and the position of the Sun and stars.

On the other hand, 0° longitude is a human creation. Anymeridian could have been selected as 0° longitude, becauseall have the same length and all run between the poles. The0° longitude runs through Greenwich because England was

the world’s most powerful country when longitude was firstaccurately measured and the international agreement wasmade. For many centuries, inability to measure longitude wasthe greatest obstacle to exploration and discovery. Ships ranaground or were lost at sea because no one on board could pin-point longitude. In 1714, the British Parliament enacted theLongitude Act, which offered a prize equivalent to several mil-lion in today’s dollars to the person who could first measurelongitude accurately.


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FIGURE 1-12 Geographic grid. Meridians are arcs that connect the North andSouth poles. The meridian through Greenwich, England, is the prime meridian,or 0° longitude. Parallels are circles drawn around the globe parallel to theequator. The equator is 0° latitude and the North Pole is 90° north latitude.

The contemporary cultural landscape approach in geography—sometimes called the regional studies approach—was initiatedin France by Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845–1918) and Jean Brun-hes (1869–1930). It was later adopted by several American geog-raphers, including Carl Sauer (1889–1975) and Robert Platt(1880–1950). Sauer defined cultural landscape as an area fash-ioned from nature by a cultural group. “Culture is the agent, thenatural area the medium, the cultural landscape is the result.”

Cultural landscape geographers argued that each region hasits own distinctive landscape that results from a unique combi-nation of social relationships and physical processes. People,activities, and environment display similarities and regularitieswithin a region and differ in some way from those of otherregions. A region gains uniqueness from possessing not a singlehuman or environmental characteristic, but a combination ofthem. Not content to merely identify these characteristics,geographers seek relationships among them. Geographers rec-ognize that in the real world, characteristics are integrated.

The fundamental principle underlying the cultural landscapeapproach is that people are the most important agents of changeto Earth’s surface. The distinctive character of a particular land-scape may derive in part from natural features, such as vegeta-tion and soil. However, the physical environment is not alwaysthe most significant factor in human decisions. People can fash-ion a landscape by superimposing new forms on the physicalenvironment. For example, the critical factor in selecting a sitefor a cotton textile factory is not proximity to a place where cot-ton is grown. A more important factor in selecting a suitablelocation is access to a supply of low-cost labor. Economic sys-tems, political structures, living arrangements, religious prac-tices, and human activities can produce distinctive landscapesthat do not stem primarily from distinctive physical features.

The geographer’s job is to sort out the associations amongvarious social characteristics, each of which is uniquely distrib-uted across Earth’s surface. For example, geographers concludethat political unrest in sub-Saharan Africa, Southwest Asia, andother areas derives in large measure from the fact that the distri-butions of important features, such as ethnicity and resources,do not match the political boundaries of individual countries.

Types of RegionsThe designation of “region” can be applied to any area largerthan a point and smaller than the entire planet. Geographersmost often apply the concept at one of two scales:

• Several neighboring countries that share important fea-tures, such as those in Latin America

• Many localities within a country, such as those in southernCalifornia.

A particular place can be included in more than one regiondepending on how the region is defined.

Geographers identify three types of regions—formal, func-tional, and vernacular.

FORMAL REGION. A formal region, also called a uniformregion or a homogeneous region, is an area within which everyoneshares in common one or more distinctive characteristics. Theshared feature could be a cultural value such as a common

English clockmaker John Harrison won the prize by invent-ing the first portable clock that could keep accurate time on aship—because it did not have a pendulum. When the Sun wasdirectly overhead of the ship—noon local time—Harrison’sportable clock set to Greenwich time could say it was 2 PM inGreenwich, for example, so the ship would be at 30° west lon-gitude, because each hour of difference was equivalent to trav-eling 15° longitude. (Most eighteenth-century scientists wereconvinced that longitude could be determined only by theposition of the stars, so Harrison was not actually awarded theprize until 40 years after his invention.)

Regions: Areas of UniqueCharacteristicsThe “sense of place” that humans possess may apply to a largerarea of Earth rather than to a specific point. A person may feelattachment as a native or resident of the Los Angeles area, orthe area of attachment could encompass southern California orthe U.S. Southwest. An area of Earth defined by one or moredistinctive characteristics is a region.

Cultural LandscapeA region derives its unified character through the culturallandscape—a combination of cultural features such as lan-guage and religion, economic features such as agriculture andindustry, and physical features such as climate and vegetation.The Los Angeles region can be distinguished from the NewYork region, southern California from northern California, theSouthwest from the Midwest.


GMT, like the rest of eastern Canada, and dark winter mornings if it were 3 hoursearlier than GMT. Therefore, Newfoundland is 31⁄2 hours earlier than GMT.

Before standard time zones were created, each locality set its own time,usually that kept by a local jeweler. When railroads became the main cross-country transportation during the nineteenth century, each rail company kept itsown time, normally that of the largest city it served. Train timetables listed twosets of arrival and departure times, one for local time and one for railroadcompany time. Railroad stations had one clock for local time and a separate clockfor each of the railroad companies using the station.

To reduce the confusion from the multiplicity of local times, the railroadsurged adoption of standard time zones. Standard time zones were established inthe United States in 1883 and in the rest of the world following the internationalmeridian conference in Washington, D.C., in 1884. At noon on November 18,1883, time stood still in the United States so that each locality could adjust to thenew standard time zones. In New York City, for example, time stopped for 3minutes and 58 seconds to adjust to the new Eastern Standard Time.

When you cross the International Date Line, which, for the most part,follows 180° longitude, you move the clock back 24 hours, or one entire day, ifyou are heading eastward toward America. You turn the clock ahead 24 hours ifyou are heading westward toward Asia.

To see the need for the International Date Line, try counting the hours aroundthe world from the time zone in which you live. As you go from west to east, youadd 1 hour for each time zone. When you return to your starting point, you willreach the absurd conclusion that it is 24 hours later in your locality than it really is.

Therefore, when the time in New York City is 2 PM, it is 7 PM Sunday inLondon, 8 PM Sunday in Rome, 9 PM Sunday in Jerusalem, 10 PM Sunday inMoscow, 3 AM Monday in Singapore, and 5 AM Monday in Sydney, Australia.Continuing farther east, it is 7 AM Monday in Wellington, New Zealand—butwhen you get to Honolulu, it is 9 AM Sunday, because the International Date Linelies between New Zealand and Hawaii.

The International Date Line for the most part follows 180° longitude. However,in 1997, Kiribati, a collection of small islands in the Pacific Ocean, moved theInternational Date Line 3,000 kilometers (2,000 miles) to its eastern border near150° west longitude. As a result, Kiribati is the first country to see each day’s sunrise.Kiribati hoped that this feature would attract tourists to celebrate the start of thenew millennium on January 1, 2000 (or January 1, 2001, when sticklers pointedout the new millennium really began). But it did not.

FIGURE 1-13 Time zones. Longitude plays an important role in calculatingtime. Earth as a sphere is divided into 360° of longitude (the degrees from 0° to180° west longitude, plus the degrees from 0° to 180° east longitude).

As Earth rotates daily, these 360 imaginary lines of longitude pass beneath thecascading sunshine. If we let every fifteenth degree of longitude represent one timezone, and divide the 360° by 15°, we get 24 time zones, or one for each hour of theday. By international agreement, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or UniversalTime (UT), which is the time at the prime meridian (0° longitude), is the masterreference time for all points on Earth.

As Earth rotates eastward, any place to the east of you always passes “under”the Sun earlier. Thus as you travel eastward from the prime meridian, you are“catching up” with the Sun, so you must turn your clock ahead from GMT by 1hour for each 15°. If you travel westward from the prime meridian, you are“falling behind” the Sun, so you turn your clock back from GMT by 1 hour foreach 15°.

The eastern United States, which is near 75° west longitude, is therefore 5 hoursearlier than GMT (the 75° difference between the prime meridian and 75° westlongitude, divided by 15° per hour, equals 5 hours). Thus when the time is 11 AM

GMT, the time in the eastern United States is 5 hours earlier, or 6 AM.Each 15° band of longitude is assigned to a standard time zone. The 48

contiguous U.S. States and Canada share four standard time zones, known asEastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific:

• The Eastern Standard Time Zone is near 75° west longitude, which passes closeto Philadelphia, and is 5 hours earlier than GMT.

• The Central Standard Time Zone is near 90° west longitude, which passesthrough Memphis, Tennessee, and is 6 hours earlier than GMT.

• The Mountain Standard Time Zone is near 105° west longitude, which passesthrough Denver, Colorado, and is 7 hours earlier than GMT.

• The Pacific Standard Time Zone is near 120° west longitude, which passesthrough Lake Tahoe in California, and is 8 hours earlier than GMT.

Most of Alaska is in the Alaska Time Zone, which is 9 hours earlier than GMT.Hawaii and some of the Aleutian Islands are in the Hawaii-Aleutian Time Zone,which is 10 hours earlier than GMT.

Eastern Canada is in the Atlantic Time Zone, which is 4 hours earlier than GMT.The residents of Newfoundland assert that their island, which lies between 53° and59° west longitude, would face dark winter afternoons if it were 4 hours earlier than

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language, an economic activity such as production of a particularcrop, or an environmental property such as climate. In a formalregion the selected characteristic is present throughout.

Some formal regions are easy to identify, such as countries orlocal government units. Montana is an example of a formalregion, characterized with equal intensity throughout the stateby a government that passes laws, collects taxes, and issueslicense plates. The formal region of Montana has clearly drawnand legally recognized boundaries, and everyone living withinthem shares the status of being subject to a common set of laws.

In other kinds of formal regions a characteristic may be pre-dominant rather than universal. For example, the North Amer-ican wheat belt is a formal region in which wheat is the mostcommonly grown crop, but other crops are grown there as well.And the wheat belt can be distinguished from the corn belt—aregion where corn is the most commonly grown crop.

Similarly, we can distinguish formal regions within theUnited States characterized by a predominant voting forRepublican candidates, although Republicans do not get 100percent of the votes in these regions—nor in fact do theyalways win (Figure 1-14, left). However, in a presidential elec-tion, the candidate with the largest number of votes receives allof the electoral votes of a state, regardless of the margin of vic-tory. Consequently, a state that usually has Democratic electorscan be considered a Democratic state (Figure 1-14, right).

Geographers typically identify formal regions to help explainbroad global or national patterns, such as variations in religionsand levels of economic development. The characteristic selectedto distinguish a formal region often illustrates a general conceptrather than a precise mathematical distribution.

A cautionary step in identifying formal regions is the need torecognize the diversity of cultural, economic, and environmen-tal factors, even while making a generalization. Problems mayarise because a minority of people in a region speak a language,practice a religion, or possess resources different from those ofthe majority. People in a region may play distinctive roles in theeconomy and hold different positions in society based on theirgender or ethnicity.

FUNCTIONAL REGION. A functional region, also called anodal region, is an area organized around a node or focal point.The characteristic chosen to define a functional region dominatesat a central focus or node and diminishes in importance outward.The region is tied to the central point by transportation or com-munications systems or by economic or functional associations.

Geographers often use functional regions to display infor-mation about economic areas. The region’s node may be a shopor service, and the boundaries of the region mark the limits ofthe trading area of the activity. People and activities may beattracted to the node, and information may flow from the nodeto the surrounding area.

An example of a functional region is the reception area of atelevision station. A television station’s signal is strongest at thecenter of its service area, becomes weaker at the edge, and even-tually can no longer be distinguished from snow (Figure 1-15).At some distance from the center, more people are watching astation originating in another city. That place is the boundarybetween the nodal regions of the two TV market areas.

Other examples of functional regions include the circula-tion area of a newspaper and the trading area of a departmentstore. A newspaper dominates circulation figures in the city inwhich it is published. Farther away from the city, fewer peopleread that newspaper, whereas more people read a newspaperpublished in a neighboring city. A department store attractsfewer customers from the edge of a trading area, and beyondthat edge customers will most likely choose to shop elsewhere.

New technology is breaking down traditional functionalregions. Television stations are broadcast to distant places bycable or satellite. Newspapers such as USA Today, The Wall StreetJournal, and The New York Times are composed in one place,transmitted by satellite to printing machines in other places, anddelivered to yet other places by airplane, truck, or the Internet.Customers can shop at distant stores by mail or the Internet.

VERNACULAR REGION. A vernacular region, or per-ceptual region, is a place that people believe exists as part oftheir cultural identity. Such regions emerge from people’s

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FIGURE 1-14 Formal regions. The two maps show the winner by county (left) and state (right) in the2008 presidential election. Counties and states are examples of formal regions. The extensive areas of supportfor Obama (blue) and McCain (red) are also examples of formal regions. McCain carried 82 percent of thecounties (left), but most of these were in rural areas, where population was lower than in the urban countiesthat Obama won. Obama won 28 of 50 states (right), and 53 percent of the overall vote.


informal sense of place rather than from scientific modelsdeveloped through geographic thought.

A useful way to identify a perceptual region is to get someoneto draw a mental map, which is an internal representation of aportion of Earth’s surface. A mental map depicts what an indi-vidual knows about a place, containing personal impressions ofwhat is in a place and where places are located. A student and aprofessor are likely to have different mental maps of a collegecampus, based on differences in where they work, live, and eat,and a senior is likely to have a more detailed and “accurate”map than a first-year student.

As an example of a vernacular region, Americans fre-quently refer to the South as a place with environmental, cul-tural, and economic features perceived to be quite distinctfrom the rest of the United States (Figure 1-16). Many ofthese features can be measured. Economically, the South is aregion of high cotton production and low high school gradu-ation rates. Culturally, the South includes the states thatjoined the Confederacy during the Civil War and where Bap-tist is the most prevalent religion. Environmentally, the Southis a region where the last winter frost occurs in March, andrainfall is more plentiful in winter than in summer. Southern-ers and other Americans alike share a strong sense of theAmerican South as a distinctive place that transcends geo-graphic measurement. The perceptual region known as theSouth is a source of pride to many Americans—and for othersit is a place to avoid.

Spatial AssociationA region can be constructed to encompass an area of widelyvarying scale, from a very small portion of Earth to a very largeportion. Different conclusions may be reached concerning aregion’s characteristics depending on its scale. Consider the per-centage of Americans who die each year from cancer. Death ratesvary widely among scales within the United States (Figure 1-17):

• At the scale of the United States, the Great Lakes and Southregions have higher levels of cancer than the West.

• At the scale of the state of Maryland, the eastern region hasa higher level of cancer than the western region.

• At the scale of the city of Baltimore, Maryland, lower levelsof cancer are found in the northern region.

Maps showing regions of high and low cancer rates do notcommunicate useful information to someone who knows littleabout the regions. To explain why regions possess distinctivefeatures, such as a high cancer rate, geographers try to identifycultural, economic, and environmental factors that display simi-lar spatial distributions. Geographers conclude that factors withsimilar distributions have spatial association. By integratingother spatial information about people, activities, and environ-ments, we can begin to see factors that may be associated withregional differences in cancer.

At the national scale, the Great Lakes region may havehigher cancer rates in part because the distribution of cancer is

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FIGURE 1-15 Functional regions. The United States is divided into functional regions based on television markets, whichare groups of counties served by a collection of TV stations. Many of these TV market functional regions cross state lines.


spatially associated with the distribution of factories. Residentsof the South may have high cancer rates because, with lowerlevels of education and income, they may be less aware of therisks associated with activities such as smoking and less able toafford medical care to minimize the risk of dying from cancer.

Similarly, at the state scale, variations in regions may be associ-ated with a combination of economic, cultural, and environmen-tal factors. Baltimore City may have higher cancer rates becauseof a concentration of people with lower levels of income and edu-cation. People living in the rural Eastern Shore region may beexposed to runoff of chemicals from farms into the nearby Chesa-peake Bay, as well as discharges carried by prevailing winds fromfactories further west.

At the urban scale, again, a combination of economic, cultural,and environmental factors may form a spatial association with thedistribution of cancer. The ZIP codes on the north side of Balti-more City contain a higher percentage of people with highincomes, and are further from the city’s factories and port facilities.

Regional Integration of CultureIn thinking about why each region on Earth is distinctive, geog-raphers refer to culture, which is the body of customary beliefs,material traits, and social forms that together constitute the dis-tinct tradition of a group of people. Geographers distinguishgroups of people according to important cultural characteris-tics, describe where particular cultural groups are distributed,and offer reasons to explain the observed distribution.

In everyday language we think of culture as the collection ofnovels, paintings, symphonies, and other works produced by

talented individuals. A person with ataste for these intellectual outputs is saidto be “cultured.” Intellectually challeng-ing culture is often distinguished frompopular culture, such as television pro-grams. Culture also refers to small livingorganisms, such as those found under amicroscope or in yogurt. Agriculture is aterm for the growing of living material ata much larger scale than in a test tube.

The origin of the word culture is theLatin cultus, which means “to care for.”Culture is a complex concept because“to care for” something has two very dif-ferent meanings:

• To care about—to adore or wor-ship something, as in the modernword cult.

• To take care of—to nurse or lookafter something, as in the modernword cultivate.

Geography looks at both of thesefacets of the concept of culture to seewhy each region in the world is unique.

When geographers think about cul-ture, they may be referring to either oneof the two main meanings of the concept.

Some geographers study what people care about (their ideas,beliefs, values, and customs), whereas other geographers empha-size what people take care of (their ways of earning a living andobtaining food, clothing, and shelter).

WHAT PEOPLE CARE ABOUT. Geographers studywhy the customary ideas, beliefs, and values of a peopleproduce a distinctive culture in a particular place. Especiallyimportant cultural values derive from a group’s language,religion, and ethnicity. These three cultural traits are both anexcellent way of identifying the location of a culture and theprincipal means by which cultural values become distributedaround the world.

Language is a system of signs, sounds, gestures, and marksthat have meanings understood within a cultural group. Peoplecommunicate the cultural values they care about through lan-guage, and the words themselves tell something about wheredifferent cultural groups are located. The distribution of speak-ers of different languages and reasons for the distinctive distri-bution are discussed in Chapter 5.

Religion is an important cultural value because it is the prin-cipal system of attitudes, beliefs, and practices through whichpeople worship in a formal, organized way. As discussed inChapter 6, geographers look at the distribution of religiousgroups around the world and the different ways that the vari-ous groups interact with their environment.

Ethnicity encompasses a group’s language, religion, andother cultural values, as well as its physical traits. A group pos-sesses these cultural and physical characteristics as a product of

Confederate States

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FIGURE 1-16 Vernacular regions. The South is popularly distinguished as a distinct vernacular regionwithin the United States according to a number of factors, such as mild climate, propensity for growingcotton, and importance of the Baptist Church.

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FIGURE 1-17 Spatial association. On the national scale, the Great Lakesand South regions have higher cancer rates than the Western region. Onthe scale of the state of Maryland, the eastern region has a higher cancerrate than the western region. On the urban scale, southern andnorthwestern neighborhoods of Baltimore City have higher cancer ratesthan northeastern ones. Geographers try to understand the reason forthese variations.

its common traditions and heredity. As addressed in Chapter 7,geographers find that problems of conflict and inequality tendto occur in places where more than one ethnic group inhabitsand seeks to organize the same territory.

WHAT PEOPLE TAKE CARE OF. The second element ofculture of interest to geographers is production of materialwealth—the food, clothing, and shelter that humans need inorder to survive and thrive. All people consume food, wearclothing, build shelter, and create art, but different culturalgroups obtain their wealth in different ways.

Geographers divide the world into regions of more (or rel-atively) developed countries (abbreviated MDCs), andregions of less developed (or developing) countries (abbrevi-ated LDCs). Regions of MDCs include North America,Europe, and Japan, and regions of LDCs include sub-SaharanAfrica, the Middle East, East Asia, South Asia, SoutheastAsia, and Latin America. Various shared characteristics—such as per capita income, literacy rates, televisions per

capita, and hospital beds per capita—distinguish regions ofMDCs and regions of LDCs. These differences are reviewedin Chapter 9.

Possession of wealth and material goods is higher inMDCs because of different types of economic activities thanthose in LDCs. Most people in LDCs are engaged in agricul-ture, whereas most people in MDCs earn their living throughmanufacturing products or performing services in exchangefor wages. This fundamental economic difference betweenMDCs and LDCs is discussed in more detail in Chapters 10through 13.

Geographers are also interested in the political institutionsthat protect material artifacts, as well as cultural values. Theworld is organized into a collection of countries, or states, con-trolled by governments put in place through various represen-tative and unrepresentative means. A major element of agroup’s cultural identity is its citizenship, the country or coun-tries that it inhabits and in which it pays taxes, votes, and oth-erwise participates in the administration of space.

23

Because geographers are trained in bothsocial and physical sciences, they areparticularly well equipped to understandinteractions between people and theirenvironment. An example is the devasta-tion in the southern United States afterHurricane Katrina in 2005.

Physical geography concepts explainthe process by which hurricanes, such asKatrina, form in the Atlantic Ocean dur-ing the late summer and autumn andgather strength over the warms waters ofthe Gulf of Mexico. When it passes overland, a hurricane can generate a powerfulstorm surge that floods low-lying areas(Figure 1-18, left).

It is here that physical and humangeography intersect. Katrina causedmassive damage, in part because it madelandfall near heavily populated areas,including the cities of Biloxi and Gulfport,

Mississippi; Mobile, Alabama; and NewOrleans, Louisiana. In an effort to protectthese low-lying cities from flooding, gov-ernment agencies constructed a complexsystem of levees, dikes, seawalls, canals,and pumps. The experience of Katrinaproved that humans are not able to con-trol and tame all of the forces of nature.

Human geographers are especiallyconcerned with the uneven impact ofdestruction. Hurricane Katrina’s victimswere primarily poor, African American,and older individuals (Figure 1-18, cen-ter). They lived in the lowest-lying areas,most vulnerable to flooding, and manylacked transportation, money, and infor-mation that would have enabled them toevacuate in advance of the storm.

The wealthy portions of New Orleans,such as tourist attractions like the French

Quarter, were spared the worst becausethey were located on slightly higherground. The slow and incompetentresponse to the destruction by local, state,and federal emergency teams was attrib-uted by many analysts to the victims’ lackof a voice in the political, economic, andsocial life of New Orleans and otherimpacted communities.

Inequalities persist several yearsafter the hurricane (Figure 1-18, right).In 2009, four years after the hurricane,more than 90 percent of householdersin predominantly white areas wereback in their homes, as measured bywhether they were receiving mail. Incontrast, less than two-thirds of thehouseholds in several predominantlyAfrican American neighborhoods werereceiving mail. ■

FIGURE 1-18 Cultural ecology: New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. From a physical geography perspective, 80 percent of New Orleans was underwater after thecity’s flood-protection levees broke (left). The 20 percent that was not flooded was land at slightly higher elevations, including the leading tourist destinations in theVieux Carré (French Quarter). From a social science perspective, at the time of the hurricane two-thirds of the population of New Orleans was African American(middle). However, the population in the area that was not flooded was less than one-fourth African American. The percentage of homes that have been fixed up andreoccupied since the hurricane is lower in the areas that had relatively large African American populations (right).

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GLOBAL FORCES, LOCAL IMPACTSHurricane Katrina

As discussed in Chapter 8, cultural groups in the modernworld are increasingly asserting their right to organize theirown affairs at the local scale rather than submit to the controlof other cultural groups. Political problems are found in placeswhere the area occupied by a cultural group does not coincidewith the boundaries of a country.

Cultural Ecology: Integrating Cultureand EnvironmentIn constructing regions, geographers consider environmentalas well as cultural factors. Distinctive to geography is theimportance given to relationships between culture and the nat-ural environment. Different cultural groups modify the naturalenvironment in distinctive ways to produce unique regions.The geographic study of human–environment relationships isknown as cultural ecology.

Pioneering nineteenth-century German geographersAlexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) and Carl Ritter (1779–1859) urged human geographers to adopt the methods of sci-entific inquiry used by natural scientists. They argued that thescientific study of social and natural processes is fundamen-tally the same. Natural scientists have made more progress informulating general laws than have social scientists, so animportant goal of human geographers is to discover generallaws.

According to Humboldt and Ritter, human geographersshould apply laws from the natural sciences to understandingrelationships between the physical environment and humanactions. Humboldt and Ritter concentrated on how the physi-cal environment caused social development, an approach calledenvironmental determinism.

Other influential geographers adopted environmental deter-minism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904) and his American student,Ellen Churchill Semple (1863–1932), claimed that geographywas the study of the influences of the natural environment onpeople.

Another early American geographer, Ellsworth Huntington(1876–1947), argued that climate was a major determinant ofcivilization. For instance, according to Huntington, the tem-perate climate of maritime northwestern Europe producedgreater human efficiency as measured by better health condi-tions, lower death rates, and higher standards of living.

HUMAN AND PHYSICAL FACTORS. To explain rela-tionships between human activities and the physical environment in a region, modern geographers reject envi-ronmental determinism in favor of possibilism. According topossibilism, the physical environment may limit some humanactions, but people have the ability to adjust to theirenvironment. People can choose a course of action from manyalternatives in the physical environment. Humans endow thephysical environment with cultural values by regarding it as acollection of resources, which are substances that are useful topeople, economically and technologically feasible to access,and socially acceptable to use.

For example, the climate of any location influences humanactivities, especially food production. From one generation tothe next, people learn that different crops thrive in different cli-mates—rice requires plentiful water, whereas wheat surviveson limited moisture and actually grows poorly in very wet envi-ronments. On the other hand, wheat is more likely than rice tobe grown successfully in colder climates. Thus, under possibil-ism, it is possible for people to choose the crops they grow andto be compatible with their environment.

Human geographers use this cultural ecology, or human–environment, approach to explain many global issues. Forexample, world population growth is a problem if the numberof people exceeds the capacity of the physical environment toproduce food. However, people can adjust to the capacity of thephysical environment by controlling their numbers, adoptingnew technology, consuming different foods, migrating to newlocations, and taking other actions.

Some human impacts on the environment are casual, andsome are based on deep-seated cultural values. Why do weplant our front yard with grass, water it to make it grow, mow itto keep it from growing tall, and impose fines on those who failto mow often enough? Why not let dandelions grow or pourconcrete instead? Why does one group of people consume thefruit from deciduous trees and chop down the conifers forbuilding materials, whereas another group chops down thedeciduous trees for furniture while preserving the conifers asreligious symbols?

A people’s level of wealth can also influence its attitudetoward modifying the environment. A farmer who possessesa tractor may regard a hilly piece of land as an obstacle toavoid, but a poor farmer with a hoe may regard hilly land asthe only opportunity to produce food for survival throughhand cultivation.

PHYSICAL PROCESSES: CLIMATE. Human geographersneed some familiarity with global environmental processes tounderstand the distribution of human activities, such as wherepeople live and how they earn a living. Important physicalprocesses include climate, vegetation, soil, and landforms.

Climate is the long-term average weather condition at a par-ticular location. Geographers frequently classify climatesaccording to a system developed by German climatologistVladimir Köppen. The modified Köppen system divides theworld into five main climate regions that are identified by theletters A through E as well as by names:

• A Tropical Climates• B Dry Climates• C Warm Mid-Latitude Climates• D Cold Mid-Latitude Climates• E Polar Climates

The modified Köppen system divides the five main climateregions into several subtypes (Figure 1-19). For all but theB climate, the basis for the subdivision is the amount ofprecipitation and the season in which it falls. For the B cli-mate, subdivision is made on the basis of temperature andprecipitation.



Humans have a limited tolerance for extreme temperatureand precipitation levels and thus avoid living in places thatare too hot, too cold, too wet, or too dry. Compare the mapof global climate to the distribution of population (see Fig-ure 2-3). Relatively few people live in the Dry (B) and Polar(E) climate regions.

The climate of a particular location influences human activ-ities, especially production of the food needed to survive.People in parts of the A climate region, especially southwesternIndia, Bangladesh, and the Myanmar (Burma) coast, anxiouslyawait the annual monsoon rain, which is essential for success-ful agriculture and provides nearly 90 percent of India’s watersupply (Figure 1-20). For most of the year, the region receivesdry, somewhat cool air from the northeast. In June, the winddirection suddenly shifts, bringing moist, warm, southwesterlyair, known as the monsoon, from the Indian Ocean. The mon-soon rain lasts until September. In years when the monsoonrain is delayed or fails to arrive—in recent decades, at leastone-fourth of the time—agricultural output falls and faminethreatens in the countries of South Asia, where nearly 20 per-cent of the world’s people live. The monsoon rain is so impor-tant in India that the words for “year,” “rain,” and “rainyseason” are identical in many local languages.

PHYSICAL PROCESSES: VEGETATION. Plant lifecovers nearly the entire land surface of Earth. Earth’s landvegetation includes four major forms of plant communities,called biomes. Their location and extent are influenced by bothclimate and human activities. Vegetation and soil, in turn,influence the types of agriculture that people practice in aparticular region. The four main biomes are forest, savanna,grassland, and desert.

• Forest biome. Trees form a continuous canopy over theground; grasses and shrubs may grow beneath the cover.The forest biome covers a large percentage of Earth’s sur-face, including much of North America, Europe, and Asia,as well as tropical areas of South America, Africa, andSoutheast Asia.

• Savanna biome. The trees do not form a continuouscanopy, and the resultant lack of shade allows grass to grow.Savanna covers large areas of Africa, South Asia, SouthAmerica, and Australia.

• Grassland biome. Land is covered by grass rather thantrees; few trees grow in the region because of low precipita-tion. Early explorers from northern Europe and easternNorth America regarded the American prairies—the

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FIGURE 1-19 Climate regions. Geographers frequently classify global climates according to a systemdeveloped by Vladimir Köppen. The modified Köppen system divides the world into five main climateregions, represented by the letters A, B, C, D, and E.


world’s most extensive grassland area—to be uninhabitablebecause of the lack of trees with which to build houses,barns, and fences. However, modern cultivation of wheatand other crops has turned the grasslands into a very pro-ductive region.

• Desert biome. Although many desert areas have essen-tially no vegetation, the region contains dispersed patchesof plants adapted to dry conditions. Vegetation is often suf-ficient for the survival of small numbers of animals.

PHYSICAL PROCESSES: SOIL. Soil, the material thatforms on Earth’s surface, is the thin interface between the airand the rocks. Not merely dirt, soil contains the nutrientsnecessary for successful growth of plants, including those usefulto humans. The U.S. Comprehensive Soil Classification Systemdivides global soil types into twelve orders, according to thecharacteristics of the immediate surface soil layers and thesubsoil. The orders are subdivided into suborders, great groups,subgroups, families, and series. More than 12,000 soil typeshave been identified in the United States alone. Humangeographers are concerned with the destruction of the soil thatresults from a combination of natural processes and humanactions. Two basic problems contribute to the destruction ofsoil—erosion and depletion of nutrients.

Erosion occurs when the soil washes away in the rain orblows away in the wind. To reduce the erosion problem, farm-ers reduce the amount of plowing, plant crops whose roots helpbind the soil, and avoid planting on steep slopes.

Nutrients are depleted when plants withdraw more nutri-ents than natural processes can replace. Each type of plantwithdraws certain nutrients from the soil and restores others.Repeated harvesting of the same type of crop year after year canremove certain nutrients and reduce the soil’s productivity. Tominimize depletion, farmers in MDCs sometimes plant crops

that offer no economic return but restorenutrients to the soil and keep the landproductive over a longer term. Farmersalso restore nutrients to the soil byadding fertilizers, either natural or syn-thetic. Farmers in LDCs may face greaterproblems with depletion of nutrientsbecause they lack knowledge of propersoil management practices and funds tobuy fertilizer.

PHYSICAL PROCESSES: LAND-FORMS. Earth’s surface features, orlandforms, vary from relatively flat tomountainous. Geographers find that thestudy of Earth’s landforms—a scienceknown as geomorphology—helps toexplain the distribution of people and thechoice of economic activities at differentlocations. People prefer living on flatterland, which generally is better suited foragriculture. Great concentrations of peopleand activities in hilly areas may requireextensive effort to modify the landscape.

Topographic maps, published (for the United States) by theU.S. Geological Survey (USGS), show a remarkable detail ofphysical features, such as bodies of water, forests, mountains,valleys, and wetlands. They also show cultural features, suchas buildings, roads, parks, farms, and dams. “Topos,” as theyare called, are used by engineers, hikers, hunters, peopleseeking a homesite, and anyone who really needs to see thelay of the land. Geographers use topographic maps to studythe relief and slope of localities. Relief is the difference in ele-vation between any two points, and it measures the extent towhich an area is flat or hilly. The steepness of hills is meas-ured by slope, which is the relief divided by the distancebetween two points. Figure 1-5 shows a portion of a USGSmap for northern Mississippi, at the scale of 1:24,000. Thebrown lines on the map are contour lines that connect pointsof equal elevation above or below sea level. Contour lines arecloser together to show steeper slopes and farther apart inflatter areas.

Modifying the EnvironmentModern technology has altered the historic relationshipbetween people and the environment. Humans now can mod-ify a region’s physical environment to a greater extent than inthe past. Geographers are concerned that people sometimesuse modern technology to modify the environment insensi-tively. Human actions can deplete scarce environmentalresources, destroy irreplaceable resources, and use resourcesinefficiently.

For example, air-conditioning has increased the attractivenessof living in regions with warmer climates. But the refrigerants inthe air conditioners have also increased the amount of chloroflu-orocarbons in the atmosphere, damaging the ozone layer thatprotects living things from UV rays and contributing to global

FIGURE 1-20 Monsoon in India. Camels graze on a sand dune turned green by summer monsoon rains inMathania, Rajasthan state, India.


warming. We explore the consequences of such use,abuse, and misuse of the environment in more detailin Chapter 14.

Few regions have been as thoroughly modified byhumans as the Netherlands and Florida’s Everglades.Because more than half of the Netherlands lies belowsea level, most of the country today would be underwater if it were not for massive projects to modify theenvironment by holding back the sea. Meanwhile, thefragile landscape of south Florida has been altered ininsensitive ways.

THE NETHERLANDS: SENSITIVE ENVI-RONMENTAL MODIFICATION. The Dutchhave a saying that “God made Earth, but the Dutchmade the Netherlands.” The Dutch have modifiedtheir environment with two distinctive types ofconstruction projects—polders and dikes.

A polder is a piece of land that is created by drain-ing water from an area. Polders, first created in thethirteenth century, were constructed primarily by pri-vate developers in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-turies and by the government during the past 200years. All together, the Netherlands has 6,500 squarekilometers (2,600 square miles) of polders, compris-ing 16 percent of the country’s land area (Figure 1-21).The Dutch government has reserved most of the pold-ers for agriculture to reduce the country’s dependenceon imported food. Some of the polders are used forhousing, and one contains Schiphol, one of Europe’sbusiest airports.

The second distinctive modification of the land-scape in the Netherlands is the construction of mas-sive dikes to prevent the North Sea, an arm of theAtlantic Ocean, from flooding much of the country.The Dutch have built dikes in two major locations—the Zuider Zee project in the north and the DeltaPlan project in the southwest.

The Zuider Zee, an arm of the North Sea, oncethreatened the heart of the Netherlands with flood-ing. A dike completed in 1932 caused the ZuiderZee to be converted from a saltwater sea to a fresh-water lake. The newly created body of water wasnamed the IJsselmeer, or Lake IJssel, because theIJssel River now flows into it. Some of the lake hasbeen drained to create several polders, encompass-ing an area of 1,600 square kilometers (620 squaremiles).

A second ambitious project in the Netherlands isthe Delta Plan in the southwestern part of thecountry. Flowing through the Netherlands are sev-eral important rivers, including the Rhine (Europe’sbusiest river), the Maas (known as the Meuse inFrance), and the Scheldt (known as the Schelde inBelgium). As these rivers flow into the North Sea,they split into many branches and form a low-lyingdelta that is vulnerable to flooding. After a devas-tating flood in January 1953 killed nearly 2,000

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FIGURE 1-21 Environmentally sensitive cultural ecology in the Netherlands. The Dutchpeople have considerably altered the site of the Netherlands through creation of polders and dikes.

The first step in making a polder is to build a wall encircling the site, which is stillunderwater. Then the water inside the walled area is pumped from the site into either nearbycanals or the remaining portion of the original body of water. Once dry, the site is preparedfor human activities.

In the late nineteenth century, Dutch engineer Cornelis Lely proposed an ambitiousproject to seal off the Zuider Zee permanently from the North Sea, the ultimate source of the floodwaters. In accordance with Lely’s plan, a dike was built, 32 kilometers (20 miles)long, across the mouth of the Zuider Zee to block the flow of North Sea water and create Lake IJssel.

After a devastating flood in 1953, the Delta Plan built dikes to close off most of thewaterways in the southwestern part of the country. Because Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port,is located nearby, some of the waterways were kept open. The Delta Works are barely visiblein the background of the photograph of a polder.


people, the Delta Plan called for the construction of severaldams to close off most of the waterways from the North Sea.The project took 30 years to build and was completed in themid-1980s.

Once these two massive projects were finished, attitudestoward modifying the environment changed in the Nether-lands. The Dutch scrapped plans to build additional poldersin the IJsselmeer in order to preserve the lake’s value forrecreation.

The Dutch are deliberately breaking some of the dikes toflood fields. A plan adopted in 1990 called for returning 263,000hectares (650,000 acres) of farms to wetlands or forests. Wide-spread use of insecticides and fertilizers on Dutch farms has con-tributed to contaminated drinking water, acid rain, and otherenvironmental problems.

Global warming could threaten the Netherlands by raisingthe level of the sea around the country by between 20 and 58centimeters (8 and 23 inches) within the next 100 years.Rather than build new dikes and polders, the Dutch havebecome world leaders in reducing the causes of global warmingby acting to reduce industrial pollution and increase solar andwind power use, among other actions.

SOUTH FLORIDA: NOT-SO-SENSITIVE ENVIRONMENTALMODIFICATION. Sensitive environmental areas in SouthFlorida include barrier islands along the Atlantic and Gulfcoasts, the wetlands between Lake Okeechobee and theEverglades National Park, and the Kissimmee River betweenLake Kissimmee and Lake Okeechobee (Figure 1-22). Theselowlands have been modified less sensitively than those in theNetherlands.

The Everglades was once a very wide and shallow freshwaterriver 80 kilometers (50 miles) wide and 15 centimeters (6inches) deep, slowly flowing south from Lake Okeechobee tothe Gulf of Mexico. A sensitive ecosystem of plants and animalsonce thrived in this distinctive landscape, but much of it hasbeen destroyed by human actions.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a levee around LakeOkeechobee during the 1930s, drained the northern one-thirdof the Everglades during the 1940s, diverted the KissimmeeRiver into canals during the 1950s, and constructed dikes andlevees near Miami and Fort Lauderdale during the 1960s. Thesouthern portion of the Everglades became a National Park.These modifications opened up hundreds of thousands ofhectares of land for growing sugarcane and protected farmlandas well as the land occupied by the growing South Florida pop-ulation from flooding. But they had unintended consequencesfor South Florida’s environment.

Polluted water mainly from cattle grazing along the banksof the canals flowed into Lake Okeechobee, which is thesource of fresh water for half of Florida’s population. Fish inthe lake began to die from the high levels of mercury, phos-phorous, and other contaminants. The polluted water thencontinued to flow south into the National Park, threateningnative vegetation such as sawgrass and endangering rare birdsand other animals.

Meanwhile, Florida’s barrier islands are home to severalhundred thousand people. These barrier islands, as well asthose elsewhere along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts betweenMaine and Texas, are essentially large sandbars that shield themainland from flooding and storm damage. They are con-stantly being eroded and shifted from the force of storms andpounding surf, and after a major storm, large sections aresometimes washed away. Despite their fragile condition, thebarrier islands are attractive locations for constructing homesand recreational facilities to take advantage of proximity to theseashore. Most of the barrier islands are linked with the main-land by bridge, causeway, or ferry service. To fight erosionalong the barrier islands, people build seawalls and jetties,which are structures extending into the sea, but these projectsresult in more damage than protection. A seawall or jetty canprevent sand from drifting away, but by trapping sand along theup-current side, it causes erosion on the barrier islands on thedown-current side.

A 2000 plan called for restoring the historic flow of waterthrough South Florida while improving flood control andwater quality. A 2008 plan called for the state to acquire hun-dreds of thousands of acres of land from sugarcane growers.But to date, few elements of the plans to restore the Evergladeshave been implemented. One-half of the Everglades has beenlost to development. In an ironic reminder of the Dutch sayingquoted earlier, Floridians say, “God made the world in sixdays, and the Army Corps of Engineers has been tinkeringwith it ever since.”

KEY ISSUE 3

Why Are DifferentPlaces Similar?

■ Scale: From Local to Global■ Space: Distribution of Features■ Connections Between Places

Although accepting that each place or region on Earth isunique, geographers recognize that human activities arerarely confined to one location. Discussed in this sectionare three basic concepts—scale, space, and connections—that help geographers understand why two places orregions can display similar features. ■

Scale: From Local to GlobalGeographers think about scale at many levels, from local toglobal. At a local scale, such as an urban neighborhood, geog-raphers tend to see unique features. At the global scale,encompassing the entire world, geographers tend to see broadpatterns.

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