GEO STANDARD SEVEN
Slide 1
Text: Geography: Standard 7
The physical processes that shape the patterns of Earth’s surface
[Photo of permafrost landscape]
Audio: National geography standard number seven are the physical processes that shape the
patterns of Earth’s surface. Take a look at this photo, courtesy of NASA, of little bumps in the
ground. What are those bumps? Clearly there’s a fun pattern there. In this case, it’s related to
permafrost or frozen ground.
Slide 2
Text: Essence of the Standard
Earth’s land surfaces display an amazing variety of landscapes. Just consider Arizona that hosts
the orange sand dunes of the Cactus Plains, the deep gorge of the Salt River, and the forested
slopes of Mt. Baldy. This lecture introduces how geographers organize and analyze and interpret
these visual feasts.
[Photos of Arizona landscapes]
Audio: The essence of this standard is that Earth’s land surfaces - the atmosphere, the surfaces,
the ground - display a fantastic variety of landscapes from the Grand Canyon to the Cactus
Plains, to the Salt River gorge, including images on the right. This lecture introduces how
geographers organize and analyze and interpret these visual feasts.
Slide 3
Text: AEPA Connection
[Screenshot of Arizona Educator Proficiency Assessments Middle Grades Social Studies Test
Objectives]
Audio: This course is not a test preparation course to pass the AEPA exam for middle school
social studies teachers to become highly qualified. This is a college level course where you learn
a lot more information than what you need for passing a middle school social studies proficiency
exam. But rest assured that we are trying to clearly articulate what we provide you in information
to make sure that you get all of these test objectives covered and more so that you can become a
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
1
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
highly qualified, competent teacher where you have a rich background knowledge in the material
you will be teaching.
Slide 4
Text:
Audio: This particular presentation relates to these test objectives. I suggest that you pause the
presentation, look them over, and then perhaps even when you are done with the entire
presentation, come back to these objectives and look at what you learned and how you change
your examination of looking at the physical systems from the perspective of these objectives and
then the broader college level material presented here. One thing, though, that’s confusing to a
lot of individuals, they look at this list and they think, “This is science, but the course is social
studies.” What geography is about is linking the different areas of the planet Earth. It’s
impossible to understand history without understanding the physical system that people lived
with. It’s impossible to understand cultural geography without understanding the constraints of
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
2
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
the physical world. We live on a planet Earth, natural processes impact our lives all of the time,
and so understanding physical geography is a key components to understanding the rest of social
studies.
Slide 5
Text: Outline
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Patterns, patternicity and science
Organize by four spheres/six fields
Organize by spatial and temporal scales
Organize through ecoregions
Organize through a systems approach
Linkages to human geography: political, cultural, economic, and social
Audio: The geography standard number 7 is typically organized into six general categories of
helping you look at the patterns of Earth’s surface. We start out by looking at the patterns and
science. Then look at the four spheres or six fields of physical geography. Learn to think in terms
of different scales, both spatially from the tiny to the big, and in time, from the short to the long.
Ecoregions is a relatively new tradition in geography and it’s a great way to think about patterns
on Earth’s surface. There’s also a traditional systems approach used in interpreting patterns. So
these are the six general categories that I’ll organize topics in which to help you understand
standard number seven
Slide 6
Text: 1. Patterns (Focus of Standard 7), Patternicity and science
[Image of a newspaper article regarding the image of the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast]
Audio: According to Michael Shermer [phonetic], our brain has evolved to find patterns. It's
what we do. You see patterns in everything. People even see the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast.
And Michael Shermer calls this tendency to find even meaningful patterns in what are clearly
meaningless noise, patternicity. Patternicity and science, well it's what the standard is all about.
Slide 7
Audio: Totallylookslike.com is a fun website.
[Screenshot from Totallylookslike.com of James Whitmore and the troll from Troll1]
Slide 8
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
3
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
[Screenshot from Totallylookslike.com of a child and a dandelion puff]
Audio: It really plays on our brain's tendency to identify patterns and look for similarities.
Slide 9
[Photo of a glacier] [Photo of clouds over the Grand Canyon]
Audio: Do you see the face in the glacier? Or do you see Godzilla in the clouds above the Grand
Canyon?
Slide 10
[Screenshot of an article from the Telegraph about an alien skull found on Mars] [Photo of a
cheetah]
Audio: Perhaps there really is an alien skull on Mars instead of just a wind-abraded rock or
maybe this really is Cheetos Christ supersnack.
Slide 11
[Photo of Michael Jackson] [Image of a Cheetos] [Photo of a rock formation] [Image of
Megtaton]
Audio: Can you see Michael Jackson in the Cheetos? My favorite fun pattern in a rock is in the
McDowell Mountains in a place I like to hike and I think that rock looks just like the old
Megatron. Don’t you?
Slide 12
Text: Two types of errors in pattern recognition
False negative – NOT believing a pattern is real when it is
False positive – believing a pattern is real when it is not
Our brains evolved to prefer False Positives
Audio: Patterns mean that we recognized patterns either falsely or positively. A false negative is
when you don't believe a pattern is real when it actually is real. A false positive is believing that
a pattern is real when it's just meaningless noise. According to Michael Shermer our brains
evolved to prefer to false positives. Michael Shermer wrote, if you believe that the rustle in the
grass is a dangerous predator, when it's just to wind that's a false positive error. You're more
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
4
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
likely to survive then if you believe that the rustle in the grass is just the wind when it's actually a
dangerous predator, that's a false negative error. Because the cost of making a false positive error
is much less than the cost of being eating by the predator in making a false negative error. And
because there's no time for careful deliberation in our earlier stages of evolution between
patternicities in the split-second world of predator-prey interactions, natural selection would have
favored those animals and those humans most likely to assume that the patterns are real.
Slide 13
Text: Our choice in analyzing patterns: faith or science
Choice A: Have faith (shamanism, paganism, animism, polytheism, monotheism, other
spiritualisms) that the pattern is real or false (skepticism). Faith cannot be disproved. We believe
or we do not.
[Image of a haunted house] [Symbol from Ghostbusters movie]
Audio: Today, we have two choices in analyzing patterns. You can either have faith or you can
use science. The choice to have faith that you think the pattern is real, it might be shamanism,
paganism, animism, polytheism, monotheism, or other spiritualism such as you believe in ghosts,
say, that a pattern that you recognize as a ghost is real or false. Skepticism, faith cannot be
disproved. I believe or I do not.
Slide 14
Text: Choice in analyzing patterns: faith or science
Choice B: Use the scientific method to disprove your hypothesis.
Typically, do this all over again to see if you can disprove the hypothesis with a different type of
experiment. If you run lots of experiments in different ways that do not disprove the hypothesis,
if often bumps up to a recognized theory (way of thinking about the pattern), that can still be
disproven with a different type of experiment.
Audio: The second choice we have is to use the scientific method to disapprove my hypothesis
that a pattern is real or it's not. And people who use the scientific method, not just scientists tend
to do this over and over again. You make a hypothesis and you try and disapprove it with one
type of experiment or one type of observation. And if you run lot of different experiments and
lots of different ways, using different techniques and you still don't disapprove that idea that you
recognized the pattern, the hypothesis, then scientist tend to call that a theory. It's a way of
thinking about a pattern. And a theory can still be disapprove in--with a very different type of
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
5
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
experiment but if it's gone through so many iteration and changes we bump it up to being a
theory.
Slide 15
Text: The “scientific method’
[Image of a typed outline of the scientific method with “too simple” written over it]
Audio: This is the way the scientific method is typically taught from elementary school on, and
this is just not the way it really works.
Slide 16
Text: You can do this in looking at geography patterns
[Clip art of light bulbs as ideas] [Two views of Basin and Range Province] [Diagram of the
exploration and discovery process]
Audio: A much more realistic view of how science works is that you got an idea. Let's take a
look at the Basin and Range Province that stretches from eastern California to Utah. It's a very
clear geographical pattern. If you look at the image of the mountain ranges. The topographic
image or the view from the space shadow looking down at Nevada, you can see that there are
series of North-South trend and ranges. So you get an idea on how that might have formed. The
most common idea is that the region has been pulled apart and that basins are dropping down. I
guess you could think of this as books lined up in a book shelve where you pull apart the book
ends and the books all kind of flop over on their side one on one direction, one in the other
direction and that results in the appearance that you see of the basins next to the ranges and a
whole region called the Basin and Range Province. So you get this idea, you see the pattern, and
then you apply a new technology to look at the pattern. You might use seismic waves to look at
full boundaries or you might measure whether or not the basin is dropping down. You
continuously make observation as questions, you share ideas, you explore with other people of
learned about the basin and range in testing your hypothesis that it's from extension that this
great pattern or the surface is from reaping apart the cross-pointed apart.
Slide 17
Text: You can do this in looking at geography patterns
[Diagram of the gathering data process] [Inset map of Arizona]
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
6
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
Audio: Another example of the reality of science is taking look at the Mogollon Rim in Arizona.
There's an inset map of Arizona where the curved area of green is a higher elevation zone called
the Mogollon Rim where there are forests. And hypothesis is that the greater amount of rainfall
on the Mogollon Rim and the cooler temperatures allow you to change the vegetation from
desert all the way out towards Alpine. So people gather the data, they make this hypothesis;
they'll measure the amount of evaporation, the amount of rainfall, the seasonality, the
precipitation. Does it occur in summer? Does it occur in winter? And this hypothesis of this very
clear geographic pattern is refined to explain why you have forests up in the Mogollon Rim.
Slide 18
Text: Think about urban habitats
Identify patterns, plants and animals in the local environment and make hypotheses (e.g.
Connections to different habitats0 – Cactus Wren example
[Photo of a cactus wren] [Map of Phoenix in 1912] [Map of Phoenix in 1995]
Audio: Another nice example of the patterns and scientific hypotheses is to think of the Phoenix
metropolitan area as an urban habitat. You can see the growth from 1912 to 1995 and it’s
continued to grow in the early 21st Century. And so as the desert has been swallowed up, there
have been studies making hypotheses about how desert animals may move into the urban
environment. And the cactus wren where [people have gone out an noticed that the cactus wren
now lives in an urban environment and it’s just making use of the different urban habitat to
continue to live. So you start with an observation, and then you begin to explain why the cactus
wren has adapted and other birds have not.
Slide 19
Text: Make observations a part of your routine
Measure and record weather conditions, hypothesize about patterns (e. g. diurnal temp change)
and patterns over time, such as the role of clouds, or when pollen generates allergies.
[Daytime weather map of Phoenix] [Nighttime weather map of Phoenix] [Photo of a bee on a
flower] [Map of pollen count]
Audio: The idea of this standard is to make observations a part of your daily routine. For
example, you can measure record weather conditions at your home or school site and
hypothesize about the patterns that you see. For example, the simplest pattern are the diurnal or
daily temperature changes. If you look at the map on the left it’s a map of temperature during the
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
7
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
day in different parts of metropolitan Phoenix and then at night. So if you take your daily
temperature thermometer, you will notice that there is a daily pattern where the temperature will
peak probably between 3 and 5 in the afternoon and it will be the coldest just before dawn when
you get up and you get ready to go to school. But there’s also your temperature in space or in
geography that if you happen to live or work near the urban core, your night time temperatures
are going to be warmer than if you live or work on the outside of the urban core and this is
because the thermal radiation bounces around the concrete and the building and keeps the
tempera from cooling off too much. Another example of making observations of patterns a part
of your routine is to look at pollen. The map in the lower right-hand corner is a map of pollen
concentrations. And the pollen concentrations are highest in urban areas where people have
planted species from home that generate pollen. And so if you look at pollen counts daily and
you compare it to t wind and the seasons, you can begin to make observations a part of a routine
of life and that’s what this standard is about.
Slide 20
Text: Look where you step
Identify basic earth material properties (basic rock type, soil, water) and hypothesize whether
natural or human-made
[Photos of different landscapes]
Audio: It’s also about looking down. Look where you step. Can you identify the basic earth
materials, the basic rock types, whether it’s soil or water? And just simply play a game, is it
natural or is it manmade? Take a look at the stones in the lower left-hand corner that someone
did for their driveway. Does that look natural or manmade made? It kind of looks natural to me
at the surface, but in reality it’s old pieces of concrete that have been broken up and they’re
random and it looks like flagstone, but it’s reused concrete. Take a look at the lower right. Those
river rocks look natural and they are. They are at the base of Tempe Butte, next to the ASU
campus. A lot of students call it A Mountain and this is on the north side of Tempe Butte. But the
setting is totally manmade. There was a drainage ditch where there was a pipe put, so they put
the pipe and there’s cement over the surface and then they put the natural river-rounded rock of
the Salt River over the top of it all to give it a natural feel. So it’s a combination. Or in the upper
right-hand corner, where people use it for kind of an oasis feel where it’s mostly desertified but
there’s a feeling of an oasis. Where do those particles come from? In this case, it’s granite sand
or groose that has been trucked in from a desert sight, but those particles are natural.
Slide 21
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
8
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
Text: Step outside
[Photo of a schoolyard]
Observe processes when they occur (e.g. flooding) and then observe the effects of those
processes (click on this link to watch video about nitrogen changes at an elementary school)
Audio: I‘d like you to pause this presentation. Just hit the pause button and click on the link and
watch a video and read about what’s going on at an elementary school during a flooding event to
nitrogen. Nitrogen is an important element. It’s a pollutant sometimes in hydrologic or water
systems and so this is a research project involving students at Arizona State at an elementary
school to understand the patterns that happen when you flood in an urban environment. Just
watch. Pause and watch.
Slide 22
Text: Avoid Tonight Show Embarrassment
Describe Earth’s revolution and rotation, and why there are seasons
[Diagram of Earth’s revolution around the sun] [Diagram of the view from mid latitudes]
Diagram of winter and summer sunlight upon the Earth]
Audio: A definite part of the standard is to help you avoid being embarrassed on the Tonight
Show. Jay Leno, long-time host of the Tonight Show would do embarrassment. Let’s focus this.
He would go to college graduates and ask them why there are seasons. You figure it’s something
that every college graduate should know. Heck. In almost state there’s a basic science standard
and geography standard explaining about Earth’s revolution and rotation and why there are
seasons. And the Earth revolves around the sun in 365 and a quarter days, and it rotates in 24
hours giving you night and day. And the reasons for the seasons are not because the earth is
closer to or farther from the sun. That’s what most people say. That’s actually the opposite. We
are closer to the sun in January when it’s the northern hemisphere winter. So what causes the
seasons? You probably already know, but I will give you the Cliff’s notes version. The earth’s
axis is tilted with respect to the plane of the ecliptic where we revolve around the sun on this
plane called the plane of the ecliptic. That tilt causes two things to happen. When it’s summer
time, in the mid latitudes especially, you can see this in the graph in the lower left; the sun is
higher in the sky, and so the angle of the sun is more intense. Secondly, the length of daylight is
longer, so during summertime if the sun is higher in the sky and the radiation is more intense and
if you get longer sunlight, it’s summertime. In the wintertime, the angle is lower and the daylight
is shorter. SO the net effect is you get much more radiation in the summer because of longer
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
9
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
days and because of more intense overhead radiation. In the winter, the sun angle is lower and
the days are shorter, giving you less radiation. It’s as simple as that and now you won’t be
embarrassed on the Tonight Show.
Slide 23
Text: The “scientific method”
At its core, the scientific method tries to disprove an idea (hypothesis).
If you cannot disprove an idea – it is not science. It is faith.
[Graph of expected results/observations and actual results/observations]
Audio: So coming back to patterns and patternicity, at its core the scientific method doesn't
prove. Anybody in science tries to approve they really don't understand what the scientific
method is all about. At its core the scientific method always tries to disapprove a hypothesis.
And if you cannot find a way to disapprove an idea it is not science, it's faith. There's nothing
wrong with faith. We have two choices to reconcile the patterns that we see. We can choose faith
or science, if you choose science and science is a core part of every bit of the curriculum from
kindergarten through college. The key part of the scientific method is coming up with ways to
see if you can disapprove your pattern recognition.
Slide 24
Text: Geographers use the scientific method. Why?
The Scientific Method is the only known method for producing reliable new knowledge.
[Map of London] [Photo of Dr. John Snow] [Diagram of geographic applications]
Audio: Geography and geographers have a long history of using the scientific method along with
other fields of science and the reason why, is the scientific method is the only known method for
producing reliable new knowledge. Do you use a cellphone? Do you watch TV? How are the TV
images made? How come you can use the cellphone at works? All of the technology that you
rely on is a product of science. In geography, the pattern recognition has been extraordinarily
useful. The diagram on the right is a map done by the first epidemiologist or medical geographer.
It's Dr. Snow who mapped out cholera locations in London and connected them to contaminated
pump sites. So it's--by through mapping and through the analysis of patterns, Dr. Snow
recognized that cholera was connected to contaminated water. That's using the scientific method.
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
10
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
You make a hypothesis that's related to water and you use mapping as a way to test that
hypothesis.
Slide 25
Text: 2. Organize by four spheres/six fields




Atmosphere – realm of air
Hydrosphere – realm of water
Geosphere or Lithosphere – realm of solid earths
Biosphere – realm of life
[Photos of Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Lithosphere and Biosphere]
Audio: the second part of this presentation explaining standard number seven is about the four
spheres or six fields of geography. Traditionally, natural science tends to be broken up into these
four spheres: realm of air, atmosphere; realm of water, hydrosphere; solid earth, the geosphere;
and biosphere or the realm of life. And all of these different spheres exist in the other spheres.
Even the lithosphere has water and life and air built into it. You can’t avoid one in the other.
They’re not really isolated.
Slide 26
Text: To understand the nature of a place, you combine
6 fields: Climatology





Biogeography
Soils
Geology
Geomorphology
Hydrology
[Diagram of the six fields of geography]
Audio: Geographers tend to think about these four spheres spatially in terms of space, where any
particular location, there's the climate and weather impacting that place. The plants and animals,
the soils, the geology, the landform shape, and the water. This is the way we tend to in
geography in standard seven, think about those forces.
Slide 27
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
11
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
Text: Example of Tempe Butte
[Diagram of the six fields of geography] [Photo of Tempe Butte with Sun Devil Stadium]
Audio: The reason why we organize it this way is it's a good way to understand and analyze the
nature of a place. So let me pick on Tempe Butte at the Tempe Campus of Arizona State
University. Tempe Butte is a mountain. A lot of people call it A mountain because there's a big
A on it, and it's a block of rock that's been tilted. The top of the tilt is a volcanic rock called
andesite. And the andesite has eroded away on the south side to make a slope filled with these
gray rock particles or pieces of broken up volcanic rock. That's on the left-hand side of this
image. On the north side of the A mountain, there's a tilt and you can see the geologic material
underneath is some layers of sedimentary rock of sandstone or compressed sand and shell or
compressed mud, and underneath that are some more volcanic rocks. So what makes Tempe
Butte thick?
Slide 28
Text: Example of Tempe Butte
[Diagram of the six fields of geography] [Climograph of precipitation and temperature from
January to December]
Audio: So let's look at the climate of the Southern Arizona area of Tempe Butte. One way to
look at the climate is to use what's called a climograph where you display monthly averages in
temperature and precipitation. And because we still don't use the metric system, you can see the
temperature average, monthly temperature, in Fahrenheit where it peaks in June and July and it's
colder in January and December. Then the precipitation shows up as bars, where in this case, the
top of the graph is an average of one inch in a month and all months have an average of more
than an inch typically. You'll notice the precipitation will peak in two seasons. There will be the
summer time peak in August when we have the monsoon storms and then the weather time peak
generally from December through March.
Slide 29
Text: Example of Tempe Butte
[Diagram of the six fields of geography] [Photo of a Gila monster] [Photo of creosote]
Audio: That dry hot climate results in a biogeography of desert plants and animals like the Gila
monster in the upper right or the creosote bush that are adapted to severe drought and not having
a lot of water.
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
12
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
Slide 30
Text: Example of Tempe Butte
[Diagram of the six fields of geography] [Photo of shale] [Photo of mountain with arrows
pointing to its edge]
Audio: The rock types, I explain you can see here. There's the shale and the sandstone on the
upper right, and you can see a fault cutting through it. Or there is the general pattern of the tilt in
the sedimentary rock shown in photographs from the lower left where those four black lines
show the tilt of the rock. So there's the geology that creates and influences everything else.
Slide 31
Text: Example of Tempe Butte
[Diagram of the six fields of geography] [Diagram of layers of earth] [Photo of rock layers]
Audio: Soils are very important on Tempe Butte. If you go to the south side of Tempe Butte,
near Mill Avenue, you'll see a railroad cut. And in the railroad cut, you'll see something that
looks like concrete. Actually, it's the build up of calcium carbonate over time through soil
formation. In the diagram in the upper right, you can see the way soils work. Dust, in this case,
filters down and settles on Tempe Butte in the A horizon and what little rainfall there is leaches
or dissolves the calcium carbonate in the dust. That's called eluviation. And then the calcium
carbonate move deeper into the soil into what's called the B horizon and reprecipitate and
eventually make that concrete appearance which is called concrete. And the concrete on the
south side of Tempe Butte means that the soil is very, very stable. It's very hard to erode and it
impacts everything about Tempe Butte. That dominance of calcium carbonate is the reason why
the south side is so stable and it just does not go into erode. This road cut took probably half
million years to form that amount of calcium carbonate
Slide 32
Text: Example of Tempe Butte
[Diagram of the six fields of geography] [Photos of rock landforms]
Audio: The landforms are the actual shapes that you see are product of all the other factors
combined. So for example, in the north side of Tempe Butte, if you look at the photograph on the
upper right and you look at the profile the slope, you'll notice that down towards the bottom of
Tempe Butte, there's a rich of material and the arrow is pointing to that ridge that sticks out a
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
13
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
little bit more than everything else. The reason why it sticks out is it's made of a harder rock
type. It's made of rhyolite, a volcanic rock that blew out of the Superstition Mountains and
cemented together so well that it's harder than everything else. Other things erode faster and it
sticks out like a ridge. Or on the south side of Tempe Butte, in the middle bottom, you can see a
photograph of petroglyphs. And the petroglyphs are etched into a rock outcrop that's a little bit
harder. It's stabilized with the black coating called rock furnish and it created a nice blackboard
for this rock and granites. The idea here is that the land forms that you see, the shape of the rock
outcrop, the shape of the hill is a by-product that everything else going on. Everything affects the
landforms and the landforms affect everything else.
Slide 33
Text: Example of Tempe Butte
[Diagram of the six fields of geography] [Photo of flood from the 1930s] [Photo of 1965-1966
flooding]
Audio: The water or the hydrology effect can be seen most dramatically on the north side of
Tempe Butte, where although right now, flooding probably won't occur because the Salt River is
constrained by artificial levees built up by the Army Corp of Engineers. In the past, Salt River
flooding has undermined Tempe Butte on the north side creating that curve in the parking lot you
see by Sun Devil Stadium. There is a flood seen in the 1930s, in the lower left hand corner where
current development has been Photo shopped on top of, where the flooding took place. And in
the image on the right hand side is a flooding that just about reached Sun Devil Stadium itself,
where lot 59 is now at the Tempe campus.
Slide 34
Text: Example of Tempe Butte
[Diagram of the six fields of geography] [Photo of present-day Tempe Butte and Sun Devil
Stadium] [Photos of Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Lithosphere and Biosphere] [Diagram of the
layers of the ecosystem]
Audio: So in summary, the nature of a place is a combination of all the different spheres. And
it's a combination of all the different factors together that make up a place the way it is. The
natural pattern of Tempe Butte exists because of the synthesis of all these factors. So no matter
whether you look at it like geographer in the upper left, whether you look at it from the
perspective of an ecologist in the middle bottom, it all amounts to this integration trying to
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
14
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
understand the nature of place. The spin of the geographer is that geography and this particular
standard is focused on the spatial patterns. How Tempe Butte works, why it varies from place to
place around Tempe Butte and why Tempe Butte might be different than the topical part area
Camelback.
Slide 35
Text: Apply it


Analyze the integration of physical geography in your local setting
Then, add in direct observations of human impacts on the natural systems
[Photo of flood warning sign] [Photo of a vehicle in a flood] [Graph of Storm water Runoff
Rates Compared] [Photo of Indian Bend Wash]
Audio: The hope is that you take this perception and you apply it. You analyze this integration
of everything in your local setting. And then you add in your own observations. So, next time
you visit Indian Bend Wash or the Green Belt in South Scottsdale between Hayden and
Scottsdale. And you might play in a park; you might go play in the lake. What Indian Bend Wash
is, is a natural wash that has been channelized. The Army Corps of Engineers built levies on the
side of this Green Belt to funnel all of the urban runoff through this corridor, because flooding
happens quite a lot. If you look at the images up above, you can see that this area floods every
time it rains heavily, and the reason why is the hygrograph you see in the lower right. A
hygrograph is just a fancy word that means, how fast does the flooding occur overtime? Where
the vertical access is the amount of water moving passed a point or a cross section. So, let's say
the road that you see in the area of the photograph in the lower left that would be a cross section.
How much water is moving pass that road in a given period of time? Before, there was a city a
lot of the rainfall would sink into the ground. And whenever make the Indian Bend Wash area.
But because of the city has put concrete and asphalt down, a lot of the water that hits the concrete
runs off through sewer systems, and on the surface straight in the Indian Bend Wash. And so,
this hygrograph picks faster and higher because of urbanization. And so, you can go out and you
can observe the effects of urbanization on the way water flows. And connect that to the other
parts of physical geography to the climate, to the nature, the surface and help people affect it.
Slide 36
Text: 3. Organize by spatial and temporal scales
[Graph of time and space scale of atmospheric motion] [Photo of a cold front] [Photo of a
waterspout]
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
15
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
Audio: Another way to think about the standard is in terms of spatial and temporal scales. I like
this diagram on the left. And I'd like you to take a look at it. There's the spatial scales on the
vertical where you go from the globe as a whole all the way down to 2 meters at the Microscan.
And then, there's the horizontal scale, which is the time of an atmospheric effect from seconds to
minutes to days to a week or more. So, I isolated two examples here where you can see where
they fit. The one on the right is a big giant cold front or a low-pressure system that is off the
coast of British Columbia and it's going to be moving into Oregon in Northern California, so it's
going to be moving to the lower right and it's being dragged there by the jet stream. Those storms
are called mid-latitude, highs and lows or weather fronts because there is a cold front and a warm
front, and those storm systems are on the scale of 2,000 kilometers across. And they move
slowly over period of days or week as you track them across the United States. Or you can look
at the other example of a waterspout, associated with a hurricane in Florida. It's a waterspout in a
thunderstorm, where a thunderstorm has a life of maybe 30 minutes and the scale of the
thunderstorm and the waterspout might be everything from a few meters across in the case of the
waterspout to maybe less than on the order of less than a kilometer for the whole thunderstorm or
you might have several kilometers across for clusters of thunderstorms. So if you think spatially
and temporally and you will get patterns this way, it's what standard 7 is about.
Slide 37
Text: 3. Organize by spatial and temporal scales
[Map of tectonic plates] [Photo of an avalanche] [Photo of a glacier] [Timeline]
Audio: Consider more landform or geological phenomena. The glowing avalanche of Mount St.
Helens is much smaller in size but it exists within a global framework because Mount St. Helens
is on the boundary between two plates that are converging up in the Pacific Northwest. Or if you
think of geologic time as a whole, the four plus billion years of earth's history the way geologist
look at time, an event of an iceberg caving exists within a small framework of time in the
Cenozoic era which is the last 65 million years. These are big jumps and spatial scale and
temporal scales and it's the way this pattern works. I want you to think about patterns on earth's
surface and how they work in different time scales and space scales.
Slide 38
Text: 3. Organize by spatial and temporal scales
[Diagram of macroscale, mesoscale, and microscale]
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
16
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
Audio: Let's look at ecoregions, which are areas at ecology that link to the hydrology, the soils,
and the landforms. There is the macroscale, which is on the order of 100,000 square kilometers.
The mesoscale that you might see from the top of the peak when you go hiking, the landscape
scale where it maybe between 10,000 square kilometers, or the microscale, particular sides that
are just a few hectares across, things that you can walk across in a short bit of time.
Slide 39
Text: Microscale
Useful for helping students understand a field site, but not global patterns
[Diagram of Toposequence (catena) of soil-moisture] [Diagram of Topoclimates]
Audio: So we need to think about what happens on the microscale that is it you walk up over a
hill that the south side of the hill on the right-hand side is hotter because it gets more suns rays
and the north side can be cooler because it shaped. So if you look at the patterns and you think
about the effective topography on climate that's what the standard is about. Or if you look on the
scale of a hills slope and you think about the thickness of soil. Next time you drive by a road cut
where there's a hill, very carefully pull over and look at the thickness of the soil and you'll notice
that up at the top of the hill, the soil is thinner. And at the bottom of the hill slope, the soil is
eroded down and accumulate at the bottom and it's thicker. And it's probably also has more
moisture 'cause the water that has run over the hill slope is accumulated down low in the thicker
soil. So these sorts of microscale observations are useful for helping students understand a site.
Not global patterns but something that they can get a handle on.
Slide 40
Text: Mesoscale
[Photo of mountain range] [Photo of volcanic plateau] [Diagram of different landscapes]
Audio: The mesoscale might be something that you can see from an airplane as it’s landing or
the top of a hill. It's the broader view. But it's still something that you can grasp. You can see the
force and the trace.
Slide 41
Text: 4. Organize through ecoregions
[Diagram of the layers of the ecosystem] [Illustration of ecosystem maps of different scales]
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
17
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
Audio: A fourth general way of thinking about the standard number 7 is to organize it in terms
of ecoregions. An ecosystem, the way ecologists think, has everything from the general climate
impact in a hill moving down the topoclimate or the effect of topography on the climate, the
animal and plant life or the biota, the land form itself, water on the surface, the soils, water in the
ground, the rock systems. So the ecoregion is to take those ecosystems and to map them out. You
map them out on the macroscale, the mesoscale and the microscale.
Slide 42
Text: Ecoregions is used widely
[Screenshot of National Geographic Society website]
Audio: The idea of ecoregion is something that's fairly new. It was a concept developed by
Robert Bailey of the US Force Service and it's taken off on a life of its own. It's been adapted by
the World Wildlife Federation, by the National Geographic Society, by the US Force Service, by
international agencies. It's a way to think integrated about different biomes but with the
geographical perspective taken into account all of the force fierce in the six different parts of
physical geography. And if you want to know more about ecoregions, I just suggest you search
for ecoregions and Bailey, and you'll come with all sorts of great material including online
resources for you to learn about different ecoregions.
Slide 43
Text: Regions at a macroscale derive from temperature & moisture
[Map of world ecoregions]
Audio: In a general sense, the ecoregions at the macroscale just derived from the temperature
and moisture. You'll have a lot of polar ecoregions where it's extremely cold. You will have the
dry ecoregions at the subtropics where it's really dry. And then you would have the humid
ecoregions where it's moist and either warm, the humid tropical, and/or cool, the humid
temperate.
Slide 44
Text: Other approaches do not integrate across sciences
[Map of Koeppen’s Climate Classification]
Audio: There are certainly other approaches to map. Koppen's climate classification is a
common one where climates are broken up into tropical, dry, temperate, cold and polar. But it
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
18
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
just doesn't have the power of ecoregions to integrate all aspects of the patterns that you'll see on
planet Earth.
Slide 45
Text: Could organize by biomes, but not well connected to the process that controls the
geography
[Graph of precipitation versus temperature]
Audio: Another common of approach to organize thinking about different biological patterns is
by biomes. Biomes are typically mapped out by the vegetation even though there are animals that
come along with the biomes. So take a look at this graph of precipitation versus temperature
where the tropical rain forest biome exists. It exists where there is warm temperature year round
with precipitation that there's a lot of variation, but there's a lot of variation. You can have
extreme precipitation 400 centimeters a year all the way down to 150 and still be called the
tropical forest. As opposed to tundra where's it's really cold and dry you have little precipitation
but it's very cold. It's frozen in terms of the mean annual temperature. So this is one way to
organize it. But biomes are not as good as ecoregions because they're not as well connected to
the processes that control the geography, these special patterns that you see.
Slide 46
Text: Ecoregions integrates
[Diagram of the layers of the ecosystem] [Illustration of ecosystem maps of different scales]
Audio: Ecoregions tend to integrate all of the existing biomes with the landforms, the soils, the
service water, the ground water, the geology. It explains a lot more.
Slide 47
Text: Try organizing your observations
Make observations about the physical geography system locally order them with respect to
spatial and temporal scales
[Diagram of the layers of the ecosystem] [Diagram of the six fields of geography] [Photo of
homes with gravel yards] [Diagram of North Desert Village]
Audio: So try to organize your own observations about what you see with an ecoregions
approach. Think about the physical geography system locally. For example, you can go to the
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
19
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
Polytechnic Campus and observe the ecoregion created at the North Desert Village as a product
of everything you see in the diagram. The macroclimate, the topoclimate, the biota that has been
planted there, the surface water, the soils, the ground water, and the bedrock underneath. It's the
nature of place either natural or in this case, artificially constructed that is amenable almost
everywhere to this type of thinking.
Slide 48
Text: 5. Organize through a systems approach
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What is a system
Boundary
Force
State of equilibrium
Threshold
[Diagram of food service as a system]
Audio: A fifth part of the standard number 7 is to think about the patterns you see in terms of a
system's approach. And I'll organize and discuss what a system's approach is in terms of five
aspects of systems. What are they? Boundaries, forces, equilibriums and thresholds. And system
approaches tend to scare people but they are really simple. So look at this diagram from the
Center for Disease Control of Food Services or System. Many of you have worked in the food
services industry. And there's all different parts that happened to the food service. The system
approach, part of this thinking, are not the elements in the system. It's not where the reheating
occurs, it's not where the service occurs, but it's with the arrow. What are the inputs? What are
the processes that go on? What are the outputs? And what are the feedback that affects the
system? That's thinking about things like a system, the inputs, outputs, processes and feedbacks.
Slide 49
Text: Organize through a systems approach
[Image of Earth from the moon]
Audio: Earth itself is a system. Mostly, a close system where we have those inputs, outputs,
feedbacks and it all better work right.
Slide 50
Text: K-12 school or a football as a system
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
20
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
Input of Energy sources:
Teacher effort, student effort, electricity, PTSA, custodians, sunlight, parent support
Input of Material:
Copy paper, cafeteria “food”, teachers, students, backpack
Subsystems:
Teams, administration, departments, students, aids, classified staff
[Photomontage of the elements of a football system]
Audio: I suppose you can think of K-12 school or a football as a system. You have inputs of
energy. There's the teacher effort, the student effort, the electricity, the PTSA, the custodians, the
sunlight, the parent support. You have the input of material such as, copy paper, cafeteria food,
the teachers, the students, the backpacks. Then you have your outputs. The learning, hopefully
the students graduate from high school, the salary, reputations, good and bad feelings. And you
have subsystems. There might be teams in a school, there's administrations, there might be math
department, there's classified staff, aid students. All these have inputs, outputs, feedbacks.
Slide 51
Text: Sources of Energy Input
Solar Radiation (insolation)
[Images of the sun]
Audio: Earth as a system has energy input mostly, solar radiation.
Slide 52
Text: Sources of energy and material: meteor/asteroid impact
[Graph of meteor activity] [Photo of Meteor Crater] [Image of an asteroid striking the Earth]
Audio: Earth as a system has occasional things like meteor impacts that generate both energy
and material input.
Slide 53
Text: Organize through a systems approach
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
21
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
2. Boundary: top of the atmosphere
[Illustration of planets and atmospheres]
Audio: Earth is a system. We have a boundary, the top of the atmosphere.
Slide 54
Text: Earth is unique in our solar system: Magnetosphere protects Earth
[Artistic rendition of solar wind]
Audio: Earth is unique in our solar system not because it has a magnetosphere that protects Earth
because other planets also have a magnetosphere, but it's the combination of that we have a
magnetosphere. We have an atmosphere that's breathable. We have a planet with a gravity that's
appropriate for life. We have a composition of the atmosphere that is appropriate for life. We
have a gravity at the planet that can support the right composition of the atmosphere. There's
water in a liquid state that can allow chemical reactions. So the magnetosphere is the outer
boundary of Earth that protects us and helps us be a unique biosphere in the solar system.
Slide 55
Text: Earth’s position away from gas giants may have save us from breaking apart
[Illustration of two planets in close proximity]
Audio: Another aspect of the boundary part of Earth is our position. We're away from gas giants.
There are some thought that the Earth was squeezed between Jupiter and Saturn, it won't exist. In
other words, if we had gas giants in the position of Mars and Venus, we would have been ripped
apart by gravitational forces. But because we have smaller planets like Mars and Venus, we
haven't broken apart.
Slide 56
Text: Organize through a systems approach
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What is a system
Boundary
Force
State of equilibrium
Threshold
[Photo of river rapids] [Diagram showing direction of ice flow] [Graph of sediment and erosion]
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
22
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
Audio: Another way to think about a system is that there are four seasons in the system. So if
you look at patterns on the Earth's surface, in the lower left-hand corner, it's a landform that was
shaped by the movement of glacier ice. So the bottom of the ice applied a force. And the force
was so much that it polished the rocks surface and that what you see here are glacier polish and
the direction of the ice flow. In the upper right-hand corner, you can see a mountain river where
the big couples are on the bed of the river and look at on the graph; cobbles and boulders on a
graph exist in the far upper right-hand corner. And then let's look at the axis. The velocity is in
centimeters moved per second. So to erode those cobbles, if you read the graph in terms of the
grain size and the velocity, it's about 500 centimeters per second are needed to erode those
particles. And then, since they're on the deposited state if you look at the graph there, they were
to be deposited or sedimentation of particles on the bed of this river at about 200 to 300
centimeters per second. So getting back to the concept of system, if you have enough force
applied from the velocity of the movement of the water, you can erode the particles. If you don't
have enough force supply, they deposit and that creates the pattern that you see here. Either the
particles are transported; in which case, you can see the river channel. And because they're
transported, trees can't grow. And you get the river channel you see here, which is a cleaned out
area where water can move through an ecosystem of [inaudible] forest.
Slide 57
Text: Organize through a systems approach
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What is a system
Boundary
Force
State of equilibrium
Threshold
[Diagram of aerial view of headwaters] [Diagram of side view of headwaters]
Audio: The concept the equilibrium is one of balance. And from a physical geography
perspective, I think the equilibrium of river systems will help you understand very commonly
thought landforms of a delta, a plane and the mountains. If you think about the change of a river
as it moves from the mountains down toward the delta where the river enters the ocean, there is a
change in the steepness or the gradient of the river. Up in the mountains, there's deep rivers that
have a high gradient and they transport the course gravel and cobbles and boulders that you saw
in the previous slide. Then as the river system gets to be a flatter gradient or a moderate gradient,
sand is transport. And when it gets to be very flat and low down by the delta especially where
reaches the base level of the oceans, there's no gradient and smaller particles are carried that
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
23
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
deposit out and form a delta. The general concept of a river system being very steep and they
head waters in the mountains. And slowly grade into a low energy stream down by the delta is
called the condition of grade. And that's an equilibrium condition for rivers. That's the condition
that rivers like to reach. Equilibrium can be interrupted; you can build a dam and interrupt the
equilibrium. You can have a flood and interrupt the equilibrium. But the state of equilibrium is
what a lot of systems tend towards. And so if you think about the balances or the equilibrium, it
explains the general pattern you see from headwaters to plains to deltas at base level.
Slide 58
Text: Organize through a systems approach
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What is a system
Boundary
Force
State of equilibrium
Threshold
[Graph of global see-level rising predictions] [Aerial photo ice sheets]
Audio: Another way to think about equilibrium would be the disturbance of an equilibrium. And
let's take a hot topic of sea level rise from melting of Antarctic ice sheets. The graph in the lower
left is a very dramatic one; it's an extreme prediction. The idea of the people who produce this
graph and published it in science magazine was that the last time the Earth was completely ice
free, didn't have glaciers over Antarctica or Greenland, was a period called the Pliocene about 4
or 5 million years ago. And during the Pliocene, there's evidence that sea level was between 15
to 35 meter higher. So dot, dot, dot if Antarctica melts completely or giant ice sheets melt, there
is predictions that sea level rise on the scale of the Pliocene. And this is when the state of
equilibrium of planet Earth would be disturbed in a dramatic sense. I personally don't think that
this will ever happen. However, it's something to consider and it is an example of what happens
if the equilibrium is disturbed.
Slide 59
Text: Alter that equilibrium
[Graph of effects of human activity on population density and species diversity] [Graph of
effects of urban ecosystem on wildlife]
Audio: The CAP LTER group at Arizona State University is examining how the change from a
desert in Metropolitan Phoenix to an urban system has affected the wildlife. Some wildlife have
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
24
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
adapted. And what they found at least the current hypothesis is that the food chain of the outline
desert and ecosystem has been about the same, the herbivores, the plants and the bird predators
are about the same but lot linkages are different. And the net effect is seen in the lower left
diagram is that human activities have altered the predation pressures. There's been more
enhancements of arthropods, a reduction for birds. All of the effects you see in this diagram of
increased heat island, competition exclusion of the native species; the net effect is just a lower
diversity of species in an urban environment. Not everybody has been able to adapt.
Slide 60
Text: Organize through a systems approach
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What is a system
Boundary
Force
State of equilibrium
Threshold
[Photo of MacKenzie River] [Diagram of flow of ice on the river]
Audio: A threshold can be thought of as pushing something over the edge. Imagine yourself
teetering on a balcony on a second floor apartment building overlooking a pool, right? You being
on the threshold would be sitting on the edge of the balcony and you're about to go over the
edge. It's a scary thought, please don't do it. But thresholds existent system, so if you think about
the MacKenzie River in Canada, it gets frozen over in winter and at some point, a threshold is
reached where the ice breaks up into sheets, chunks and pans, and that's a change in the threshold
from a frozen system to a system of flowing water. And when that the threshold is reached, you
get the ice breakup, and a lot of hazards that relate.
Slide 61
Text: Organize through a systems approach
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What is a system
Boundary
Force
State of equilibrium
Threshold
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
25
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
[Photo of massive debris-flow event] [Map of landslides in the United States]
Audio: Some other examples of thresholds would be landslides or/and including massive debrisflow events as you see in the lower left-hand corner. The map is a map of landslides in the
conterminous of the United States. And where do thresholds come on? Well, if you think about a
landslide, I like to think about it in terms of that diagram in the lower right, you got a particle.
And when that particle or land moves, it's because of shear stress. The water moving over the
surface, water sinking into the surface, that particle is destabilized then landslides. And that
landslide--the tendency the landslide is against the resistance to transport, and the tendency to
landslide is enhanced by gravity. So on one side, you have the gravity, steep slope pointing the
particle down. You got the shear stress and the weakening from wetting of the soil on the ground
and then you got the resistance in the material. At some point, the shear stress and the gravity is
going to ripped out Earth and it's going to move in a landslide or a debris-flow and that's an
example of a threshold being reached.
Slide 62
Text: Organize through a systems approach
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What is a system
Boundary
Force
State of equilibrium
Threshold
[Screenshot of video clip]
Audio: Pause this presentation and click on the link to watch a video about a landslide threshold.
But before you watch the video, pay attention to that one rock at five seconds into the video, you
may be able to swing it back and forth. This is what's called, "the translation of landslide that
happened in Tennessee." And that one rock moved. That cultured the balance of the resistance of
the material. And the point of that, one rock was enough to kick over the whole thing into a
landslide condition, and it's a fabulous video.
Slide 63
Text: 6. Linkages to human geography: political, cultural, economic, and social
[Timeline of events should humans disappear]
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
26
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
Audio: The last part of this presentation is the core of geography as a field. Geography is all
about linking the physical world, the patterns that you see to the human world. At its core,
geography is about changes to the environment imposed by humans and analyzing them spatially
with such tools as Geographic Information Science, things like Google Earth but much more
sophisticated. This is a very scary image about what happens if we disappeared, if our effect on
the natural world suddenly disappeared and that somebody is plotting of what would happen
immediately in over 50,000 years. Immediately, the endangered species would start recovering.
Within a hundred years, urban streets and buildings would be overgrown. After 50,000 years,
we'd just be archeological remains. It's turning things backwards. Most people study the effect of
people on the landscape presently. This is like what would happen if we disappeared? And
there's an entertaining science fiction book written by George Stewart called Earth Abides, about
just what would happen if almost the entire human population would be wiped out by disease
and Earth is the main character on the book and Earth Abides is the name of the book.
Slide 64
Text: 6. Linkages to human geography: political, cultural, economic, and social
[Photo of a building] [Diagram of process of elements entering soil]
Audio: So let me jump to the microscale and just give you a new example of linkages between
the patterns and the physical geography and the human geography. The soil that forms in a
tropical forest or tropical savanna is called oxisol. An oxisol is where there so much rainfall that
all of the different elements and minerals dissolve and are leached out away to groundwater
except for the most stable, the iron oxides, Fe2O3 and aluminum oxides, Al2O3 are what remain.
And not enough time goes on; you get just a lot of iron and aluminum in the soil. And in India,
there's no need to bake bricks. You simply cut up the oxisol soil. You lay it out and as soon as it's
dried, it becomes brick hard because it's composed of mostly iron and aluminum and you can
build houses from it. And the story here is that when people cut down tropical rainforests and the
soil dries out, it becomes brick hard and it's very difficult for a rainforest to reestablish itself on
dry brick.
Slide 65
Text: 6. Linkages to human geography: political, cultural, economic, and social
Arctic warming at the front line of global change
{Diagram of projected sheet ice]
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
27
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
Audio: Another example of a projected or a hypothesized linkage is the reduction in sea ice in
the Arctic. The hypothesis by many scientists is that global warming is occurring and the effects
of a global warming will be seen most dramatically and first in the Arctic where the amount of
sea ice is projected to decrease with dramatic changes to the ecoregion. This is a hypothesis and
it's to be tested by ongoing observations. But it's an example of the future linkages potentially
between our putting out greenhouse gases and the overall effect on the planet.
Slide 66
Text: 6. Linkages to human geography: political, cultural, economic, and social
[Diagram of Vaiont River Valley] [Photo of mudslide entering a home] [Photo of a house
covered with boulders almost to its roof]
Audio: Maybe it'd be better to think about this closer to home in a more dramatic side. The
Vaiont River in the Italian helms is incredibly amazing example of humans altering the natural
landscape. A brilliantly engineered dam was built to block the Vaiont River, to create a reservoir
for hydroelectric power. But the lake rouse up to the point where the bottom of the mountain was
saturated with water and it's started to move, started to slide. So the engineers freaked and started
to drain the lake very quickly. That was a bad move because the lake water was actually
supporting the bottom of this giant slide block to be. When they drop the water in the lake, the
bottom of the slide block was so saturated with water that it just started to slide more quickly.
The rockslide eventually moved very fast and the water in the lake was displaced over the dam
creating massive flooding and loss of life. At the microscale, you can see images on the right of
debris-flows and mud flows that have flowed out of mountain canyons in the United States--in
the Western United States overwhelming houses. So where we build in places where there are
natural hazards or where we would we create hazards, there are linkages between our activities
and the patterns on planet Earth.
Slide 67
Text: The system where you live






What are the energy inputs?
What are material inputs?
What are the boundaries of your system?
What are the components of the system and how do they interact?
Is the system in equilibrium, and how do people disturb that balance?
Understanding systems in neighborhoods can drive policy decisions. Read this case story.
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
28
GEO STANDARD SEVEN
[Diagram of social & biological context of residential landscapes]
Audio: Thinking about where you live as a system is not that difficult. I think everybody on
planet Earth can do it. You can think about where you live in terms of the energy inputs, the
material inputs, the boundaries of the system. And if you read this case story about
neighborhoods in Metropolitan Phoenix viewed as systems, where there's the social and the
physical geography context of the residential landscapes, where we live, it's a way to think about
the interaction between people and place. I encourage you to pause it--this slide, take a look at
the diagram and click on the link and read a short case story.
Slide 68
Text: The physical processes that shape the patterns of Earth’s surface
“Scientists observe nature then developed theories that describe their observations. Science is
driven by nature itself and nature gives us no choice. It is what it is.”
-Meg Urry, Yale, Astronomy
Audio: In summary, I love this quote by Meg Urry. Scientists observe nature then developed
theories that describe their observations. Science is driven by nature itself and nature gives us no
choice. It is what it is. Embedded in makes quote is the idea of patternicity. We as a species are
driven to observe patterns, to make observations, to think about them scientifically and that's
what the standard is all about.
Slide 69
[Photo of Ron Dorn]
Audio: This presentation is a courtesy of Ron Dorn on the speaker, a professor of Geographical
Sciences in Urban Planning at Arizona State University. I hope you've enjoyed this explanation
of Geography Standard 7.
Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies
29