UNIT 1:
Texas Geography
Understanding the physical
and human characteristics of
our state
Era of Natural Texas and Its People
• What is an era? A fixed period of time
characterized by particular events,
features, developments, or people.
• Why do historians divide history into eras?
Historians divide history into eras in order
to create blocks of time that have similar
characteristics in order to organize and
present information about the past.
Era of Natural Texas and Its People
• TEKS 1A
– Identify the major eras in Texas history, describe their
defining characteristics, and explain why historians
divide the past into eras, including Natural Texas and
its People; Age of Contact; Spanish Colonial; Mexican
National; Revolution and Republic; Early Statehood;
Texas in the Civil War and Reconstruction; Cotton,
Cattle, and Railroads; Age of Oil; Texas in the Great
Depression and World War II; Civil Rights and
Conservatism; and Contemporary Texas
6 Geographical Questions
• Location
• Place
• Regions
• Human-Environment Interaction
• Human Systems
• Physical Systems
Location – Where is it?
• Absolute Location – The exact
location of a place on the earth’s
surface
• Relative Location – The location of a
place in relation to other places
• The Absolute location and Relative
location of Texas affect it in many
ways – How has Texas’ relative
location to Mexico affected it?
Latitude and Longitude
Latitude
Longitude
Using Latitude and Longitude
• The Absolute Location of a place is given
using latitude and longitude coordinates
• Coordinates are written using a numerical
measurement and a directional label.
• Latitude is given first followed by longitude
• (29° N, 95° W) is the approximate location
of Kingwood on the earth’s surface
Place – What is it like?
• Place refers to the physical and
human characteristics of a location
• Physical Characteristics include:
– Landforms, Climate, plants, animals
• Human Characteristics include:
– Language, Religion, Architecture,
Music, Politics, ways of life
Physical Characteristics
Human Characteristics
Regions –
How does it compare to other places?
• Geographers divide areas into regions
in order to better study them.
• Regions are places that are united
based on common characteristics
• Regions can be based on physical,
human, business and other
characteristics
4
Natural
Regions
of
Texas
Human-Environment Interaction
How do humans react to their
environment and how does it affect them?
• Ex: Pollution
Deforestation
Hurricanes/Tornadoes
Farming
Damming Rivers to make lakes
Human Systems
• Movement - How people move through
the environment
• Cultural Diffusion - new ideas brought
by migrating people become widely
accepted.
• People bring ideas and goods with them
when they move from one place to
another.
Physical Systems
• Geographers analyze physical systems
such as mountains, volcanoes, hurricanes,
glaciers to see how they interact with and
shape places and regions.
• They also study plant and animal
ecosystems that depend on each other
and their surroundings in places and
regions for their survival.
Movement in Texas
Why Geography?
• Geography prepares us for modern
life
• People, businesses, governments
depend on geography everyday to
meet their needs
• Computer software such as GIS
and GPS use geography to help
people
Sizing Up Texas
• Second largest U.S. State
• The area of Texas is 267,277
square miles
• Some parts of Texas are closer to
the capitals of other states than to
Austin.
Sizing Up Texas
• Texas is the size of all of these
states combined:
New York
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Illinois
Connecticut
Rhode Island
Massachusetts Vermont
New Hampshire New Jersey
Maine
Sizing Up Texas
• El Paso, Texas is closer to the
Pacific Ocean than to Houston.
• Some students in Texas live 4 hrs
from the nearest school
• How could these geographic facts
affect Texas?
Roy Bedichek
He was an author and speaker;
considered a “Naturalist”
who traveled and
documented the
Texas landscape for
over 30 years.