The Five
Themes of
Geography
5 THEMES
There are 5 themes that make up physical and
human geography:
1. LOCATION
2. PLACE
3. HUMAN ENVIRONMENT INTERACTION
4. MOVEMENT
5. REGIONS
Theme One: Location
Every point on earth has a
location or a description
of where it is.
You could say the White
House is located in
Washington D.C. (Relative
location) or you could say
the White House is located
at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue (Absolute
location).
2. Try and think of a way to
describe the difference
between “relative “ and
“absolute” location
1. Try and explain where you
live giving a relative location
and an absolute location.
Theme Two: Place
• Place is created by
different physical
features (geography)
and the people (man
made items, culture
etc.) that make it
unique or different
from other places.
Take a look at the picture. What do you think would be a physical
feature and what do you think a human (people) feature would be?
Theme Three: HumanEnvironment Interaction
• An area’s environment includes its land,
water, climate, plants and animals.
• How do people & their environments affect
each other?
• How do they:
• Depend on the environment
• Adapt to the environment
• Change the environment
Look at this picture of Northern
Ireland.
List one way that people might:
Depend on the environment
Adapt to the environment
Change the environment
Theme Four: Movement
• Geographers want to know how and why
people move around
• Can you think of a way people
move around? List 2
• Can you think of a reason
why someone would move?
Study this map of
Massachusetts, list 2 reasons
why people might move to a
certain part of Massachusetts
from June – August
Theme Five: Regions
• Dividing the world into many regions makes the
world easier:
• to study
• To compare
• To organize by physical and
human characteristics
• Regions can be very different
from one another
Give an example from the map of
how two regions can be drastically
different .