Reflections
1. Geography for you may be a new subject; or, perhaps, one you have already studied at school. Note down in a few sentences what you think you are likely to get out of a course in geography. Keep this statement in your file so that you can look back at the end of term and compare what you expected to gain with what you actually gained.
2. it is sometimes said that disciplines are distinguished from one another by the questions they ask. we illustrate this in section 1.1 with a very simple environment, the beach. what special questions do geographers ask? what questions should they ask?
3. how much can geographers studying the behavior of humans learn from biologists studying the behavior of animals? list(a) some advantages and(b) some disadvantages of such cross-borrowing between disciplines.
4. human-environment relations may be usefully seen in system terms(H/E). try to construct a diagram with arrows and boxes showing how (a) how the beach environment affects human behaviour and (b) hoe human behaviour (e.g. building sea defences) affects the beach.
5. most geographic distributions are variable over time. consider the graphs of population density over time in figure 1.7. try to construct similar graphs for (a) the campus restaurant,(b) the local shopping mall, and (c) the local airport. comment on the similarities and differences in these graphs.
6. the scale of a geographic's interest ranges from the micro geographic to the macro geographic (see Box 1.c.). try to place your own country and your own city on that geographic scale.
7. use locally available maps will be at scales of your choice. (for American students the maps will be a scale of 1:24000, 1:62500 and 1:250000 ; students in other countries should check with table 1.1 for guidance). Familiarize yourself with the conventional symbols used on such maps, and note how the map scales control the richness of the information that can be conveyed.
8. review your understanding of the following concepts using the text and the glossary in Appendix A of this book: choropleth maps ,
orders of geographic magnitude,
feedbacks,
region
isopleth maps
scale
location
space
model
time-space geography