Why is each point on Earth
unique?
• Uniqueness of a region.
• Feelings brought about by that places features
• Examples: Hometown, Hawaii, Florida Keys
• Finding location (4 ways)
•Place names
• Toponym
•Site
•Situation
•Mathematical location
• Actual location of a city
• Absolute location
• Physical characteristics of a place
• Climate, soil, vegetation, elevation,
etc.
• Humans can change their site
• Location of a place relative to other places,
regions, geographic features, resources
• Relative location
• Helps find unfamiliar places by
comparing it to familiar ones
• Down the street across from the middle school
• Importance of location is revealed
by its situation
• Singapore’s situation (?) makes it an
important trading center for Southeast
Asia
• What is Singapore situated near to
give it importance?
¼ of world
trade passes
through Strait
of Malacca
each year
• Site in Florida?
• What is the site’s situation that gives it
importance?
• What places have bad situation?
• Location of any place can be described
precisely by meridians and parallels
• Meridians (lines of longitude)
• Prime meridian, culturally defined (?) to be
through Greenwich, England
• Parallels (lines of latitude)
• The Equator
• Degrees divided into minutes (’) and seconds (”)
for more accuracy
• Equator has to be 0 degrees latitude
• Largest circumference of Earth
• Any place on Earth could have been
chosen for 0 degrees Longitude (cultural
reasons)
•All longitude lines are same length around
Earth
(22° 15' N, 114° 10‘ E)
Every 15 degrees of longitude = 1 hour traveled
• How many longitudinal degrees total
around the Earth?
• Divide that by 15 (the number of degrees
per one hour traveled)
• What do you get?
• Cultural, economic, and environmental forces
combining to make distinctive landscapes across
Earth.
• Each region= a different landscape
• People = the most important agents of change
to Earth’s surface
• The visible human imprint on the landscape.
Religion and
cremation
practices
diffuse with
Hindu
migrants
from India to
Kenya.
Layers of imprints in a cultural landscape that
reflect years of differing human activity.
Athens, Greece
ancient Agora
surrounded by
modern
buildings