This document provides an overview of geographic concepts including human geography, space and place, types of maps, location, and map projections. It also covers topics like climate, biomes, coastal processes, population geography, agricultural revolutions, and theories of population growth. Key ideas discussed include how geography studies the relationship between humans and their environment, the different elements that define space and place, and factors that influence climate and biome distributions.

1. People Places Landscapes 3/23/2015 4:48:00 PM
03/23/15
Geographic approach: space and place
 “The why of where”
The study of geography involves the study of earth as created by natural
forces and modified by human action.
 Seeks to understand and study the spatial organization of human
activity and people’s relationship with their environment.
Human geography
 Focuses on spatial patterns and spatial organization
 Focuses on human interactions with their environment
 Focuses on the importance of place.
Space and place
 Space: notions of location, distance, and area are all part of space.
 Place: specific geographic settings. Spaces with meaning attached
to them.
03/25/15
1st law of geography
 everything is related to everything else, but near things are more
related than are distant things.
Friction of distance: the deterrent or inhibiting effect of distance on human
activity
Distance decay: the rate at which a particular activity or phenomenon
diminishes with increasing distance
Types of maps
 Reference maps
o Show the location of places and geographic features
 Thematic maps
o Typically show the degree of some attribute or indicate
movement
Location
 Absolute location
o Precise position of a feature, as described by coordinates like
latitude and longitude

2.  Relative location
o Description of the position of a place relative to another
feature
Site and situation
 Site
o The physical attributes of a location (soil, vegetation, and
landscape)
 Situation
o Location as defined relative to other places and human
activities (proximity to settlements, position in road networks.
Emphasis is often on accessibility).
Making maps
 All maps are representations of reality.
 Mapmakers must necessarily be selective to some degree
Map projections
 No map can preserve area, distance, shape, proximity, and
direction.
 The mapmaker must decide which projection provides the optimal
compromise for his purposes. In particular, does (s)he want to
preserve area or shape?
GIS (and remote sensing)
 Layers of mapped information, each on a different theme
 GIS can be queried to integrate the info from these datasets
03/30/15
Types of maps
 Point maps
o A symbol, often a dot, is placed on the map to represent
every case.
o In some cases the point symbol can be made larger or
smaller to show different number of cases in different places.
 Line maps
o A line is used to show the direction of a flow
o The width of the line can be used to show the volume of the
flow.
 Chorpleth maps

3. o Shows characteristics of particular areas
o Data are divided into several categories
o Each category is then given a different shade of particular
color to represent it on the map.
04/01/15
The changing global context
Globalization
 The increased interconnectedness of the world that has come about
through expansion of the global economy into a worldwide network.
Time-space convergence
 Reduction of time needed to travel and communicate between
places as a result of improving technology and infrastructure over
time.
Flattening
 Refers to the time-space compression that has occurred that means
that it is now easy and cheap to manufacture goods overseas.
 Note that the world is not completely flat, some parts are flatter
than others. In other words, there are winners and losers in the
process.
Agricultural revolution
 Increase in food produced per person meant that some people
could do things other than find food, these people could become
specialist craftsmen.
 Settling in one place meant that people could accumulate more
goods, like cloth, pots, tools, etc.
State-level societies
 With increasing specialization of labor, a governmental elite
eventually emerged in some communities.
 Earliest state-level societies may have been communities based
around waterways as some form of central government was needed
to direct the massive irrigation projects.
Capitalism
 Capitalism means that in the world economy, people, corporations,
and states produce goods and exchange them on the world market,
with the goal of achieving profit.

4. Colonialism
 Colonialism involves the establishment and maintenance of political
and legal dominance by a state over a separate and alien society.
International division of labor
 Specialization of different regions or countries in the production of
different goods.
 Specifically, colonies specialized in raw materials and food stuffs,
which helps the colonizers to specialize in manufactured goods.
 Each country/region to specialize in goods for which they had a
comparative advantage.
Modernization theory
 Traditional society, preconditions for takeoff, takeoff, drive to
maturity, high mass consumption.
 Societies are at different stages along a path to development
 All societies seen as having the potential to develop
 All societies should follow western model of economic development,
as this has worked in the past.
Dependency Theory
 The world is split into poor countries and rich countries.
 The nature of the political economic relationship between these
countries limits the development possibilities of poorer areas, while
sustaining the growth of the richer areas.
 Dependency Theory scholars include Raul Prebisch and Andre
Gudner Frank.
Terminology
 Developed and developing, udner developed, or less-developed
countries.
 High income and low income countries
 Core and periphery
 Western nations
 Global North and Global South
 First, second, third worlds.
04/06/15
Population Geography, trends

5. Population geography
 Population distribution and change
 Population structure: fertility and mortality
 Migration
 Population and resources
The “problem” of growing population
 Demographic momentum
o The potential for a population to continue to expand despite
reproductive rates being reduced, as a large population
moves into its child-rearing years.
 Population distribution
o 90 lives on 10 of land area
o 90 lives north of the equator
o most people live near water
o 80 live below 500m altitude
The “problem” of aging population
 Dependency ratio
o The ration between the working population (defined by age,
15-64) and the dependent population (under 15 and over 65).
 Rates
o A measure quoted against another quantity or measure
04/08/15
Population theories
Theory 1, Thomas Malthus
 Wrote “An essay on the principles of population”
 Population increases geometrically, food only production only
increases arithmetically.
 Eventually, population will outstrip food.
 Preventative checks: moral restraint and vices (e.g. birth control)
 Positive checks (those that affect death rates): misery, disease,
famine, and war.
 Widespread poverty
 Poverty associated with the will of God, earth viewed as a place of
punishment

6.  Reaction to Utopianism
 Beginning of industrial Revolution
 Criticisms
o Does not allow for technological developments to increase
food supply
o Ignores all necessities except food
o Failed to foresee expansion in trade
o Did not accept the possibility of people voluntarily increasing
preventative checks
 Neo-Malthusians: Paul Ehrlich, Garrett Hardin
o See population growth as leading to environmental problems
o Supports birth control
Theory 2: Ester Boserup
 Danish economist, published the conditions of agricultural growth
 Opposed Malthus’ views
 Argued that population growth stimulates agricultural and technical
innovations, so food production keeps pace with population growth.
 Perspective 2, Optimistic Economists
o Population growth and consumption are not harmful per se
o Instead they provide more innovators and the stimulus to find
solutions to the environmental problems.
o Primarily an economic approach
 Criticism
o Will human ability to increase food production by innovation
be able to keep pace with population growth forever?
o Is forcing people to work harder and innovate more and more
rapidly desirable?
Theory 3: Karl Marx
 Argued that no such thing as overpopulation exists
 Instead it is misdistribution of resources that keeps poor people
poor.
 Criticism
o
o
Theory 4: Demographic Transition Model
 Population increases, birthrate decreases, death rate decreases.

7.  Criticism
o Too simplistic
o It suggests that low income countries will necessarily follow
the same path as the West
o It implies that high rates of population growth are
undesirable.
04/12/15
First agricultural revolution (8,000 to 7,000 BC)
 Desirable food crops were selected and grown at the expense of
other plants.
 Creation of early hybrid plants e.g. emmer (bread wheat)
 Domestication of animals
Subsistence farmers
 Agriculturalists who produce most of what they consume and
consume most of what they produce.
Soils
 Agriculture requires from the soil
o Nutrients from minerals
o Biomass (humus) to maintain soil structure and release
further nutrients
 Sources of minerals:
o Volcanic ash
o Glaciation scouring rock surfaces
o Water courses carrying matter (alluvial soils)
Intensive agriculture
 High yields from small land area. Requires high levels of nutrients
(either naturally or artificially added), and supports high population
densities, e.g. Nile Valley.
Extensive agriculture
 Large areas of land needed to support low density populations.
Often undertaken in areas with poor soils, e.g. sheep stations of
Australian outback.
Early agricultural improvements (2,500 BC to 1600 AD)

8.  Partly a result of extending the area under cultivation
(Extensification)
 Partly a result of innovations that allowed intensification of
production:
o Use of organic fertilizers and fodder
o Application of irrigation water
o Development of metal tools and plow
o Use of crop rotation and fallow period
Environmental consequences
 Loss of biodiversity
 Deforestation and land use change
 Soil erosion and overgrazing
Second agricultural revolution (1,600 to 1900 AD)
 Intensification of farming as laborers moved to undertaking
industrial work, began in Europe
 Involved
o Increase in size of plots
o New breeds of animals
o New crops introduces from overseas
o Mechanization e.g. reaper, steel plow, steam power
o More advanced techniques of soil preparation, crop care and
harvesting.
o Development of a commercial market for food.
04/15/15
Cash crops
 A crop produced for its commercial value rather than for use by the
grower.
 Generally exploitative of cash crop growers
The green revolution
 Started late 60s early 70s
 New hybridized crop varieties
o Wanted to make more productive crops
 Aim was to eliminate hunger by improving crop performance
 Involved five elements of intensification:

9. o Mechanization
o Pesticides
o Irrigation
o New hybridized crop varieties
o Chemical fertilizers
Success of Green Revolution
 Population grew rapidly, but food supply grew even more quickly.
o 1950s: 14 million tons of food worldwide; approx. 3 billion
people.
o 1990s: 144 million tons of food worldwide; approx. 5.5 billion
people
Advantages
 Hugh increase in good production through intensification of
production
 Long term sustainability of production facilitated by artificial inputs.
Environmental Problems
 Salinization of soil
 Aquifers drying up
 Top soil erosion
 Soil nutrient depletion
 Pollution of waterways
 Pesticide-resistant species
 Dams
Practical problems
 Distribution and storage problems
 Interdependency issues, e.g. fertilizer often requires irrigation. Very
expensive to supply all necessary inputs.
 Only enough food on global scale; regionally, population is growing
considerably faster than food production in some areas.
Social problems
 Not everyone was included in the “Green Revolution” e.g. people in
remote areas, the illiterate
 Forced everyone into the cash economy.
Possible solutions
 Improve efficiency

10. o Develop more efficient ways to apply fertilizers, pesticides,
and irrigation water
o Aim: get the benefits without the negative environmental and
economic consequences of overuse
 E.g drip irrigation, use of vegetation belts along streams
to absorb excess pesticides.
 Genetic engineering
o In many ways an extension of hybridization techniques
o Develop new, higher-yielding, hardier, faster-growing crop
varieties
o Develop crop varieties with “pesticide genes”
o Develop crop varieties that produce nutrient-rich foods, e.g.
Vitamin A-rich rice
o A third green revolution
 Other
o Urban agriculture
o Encourage people to eat lower down the food chain
o Organic and Fair Trade goods
o Integrated food production systems, e.g. intercropping
 Different crops use different nutrients
 Different harvesting seasons
 Leguminous crops can fix nitrogen in soil
 Larger plants can protect the soil from sun, wind and
rain and allow smaller crops to be grown underneath.
 Fewer pest outbreaks
 If one crop fails, there are alternative
 Crops likely to mature at different times (year round
income)
 Can provide farmer with a balanced diet
 May provide supplemental non-agricultural income for
farmer (Shea nut sales)

11. Our Dynamic Earth 3/23/2015 4:48:00 PM
03/24/15
Coastal processes
Hazards
 Wild animals
 Dangerous landscapes
Five major hazards
 Storm surge
 Tsunami
 Erosion
o Main source is the ocean
o The process whereby materials of the earth’s crust are
loosened, dissolved, or worn away and simultaneously moved
to another area
o Landscape of coastal erosion
 Sea cliff
 Wave cut notch
 Sand, pebbles, and boulders
 Beach face
o Differential cliff erosion: sea stacks, sea caves, and arches
 Currents
o Rip currents
 Sea level rise
Waves and wind
 Wind is the ultimate power source for waves
 Wave size is determined by: speed, duration, and fetch
Rogue wave
 Constructed interference
 One, unusually large wave
Plunging breaker, steep beach
Spilling breaker, gradually sloped beach
Beaches
 Offshore
 Nearshore
 Foreshore (waterline)
 Berm

12.  Backshore (high-water line)
03/26/15
Coastal erosion
Mitigation
 Groins
 Beach nourishment
Two construction related responses to coastal erosion:
 Hard stabilization
o Sea wall
o Groins
o Jetties/breakwaters
o Riprap
o Traps sand without needing to be artificially replenished
o But can lead to greater erosion downstream and lead to
changed water flow patterns
 Soft stabilization
o Beach nourishment
o Does not lead to erosion downstream, may replenish
downstream
o Very expensive, needs regular replenishing
Non-construction approach
 Zoning
 Pilings to elevate houses
03/31/15
Biogeography and climate
Climate: long-term atmospheric conditions of a place
Weather: short-term atmospheric conditions of a place
Climate defined by two main factors
 Temperature
 Precipitation
Five factors for temperature
 Latitude

13.  Elevation
 Continentally
 Ocean currents
 Cloud cover
Three factors for temperature
 Orographic effects, prevailing winds
 Continentality
 Atmospheric pressure belts
Major climate groups
 A – Tropical Humid
 B – Dry
 C – Mild mid latitude
 D – Severe mid latitude
 E – Polar
 H – Highland
Biomes: Regions of the world with similar climates and plants/animals
associated with them
1. Tropical rainforest
2. Dry broadleaf
3. Dry coniferous
4. Temperate, broadleaf forests
5. Temperate coniferous forests
6. Boreal forests/taiga
7. Tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrub lands
8. Temperate grasslands, savannas, an shrub lands
9. Flooded grasslands and savannas
10. Montane grasslands and shrub lands
11. Tundra
12. Mediterranean forests, woodlands and scrub
13. Deserts and Xeric shrub lands (evaporation exceeds rainfall)
14. Mangroves
04/07/15
Climate Change
Glaciation

14.  We are currently in a relatively cool period of earth’s history.
Why does climate change?
Natural climate forcing, Climate variability
 Milankovich Cycles (climate forcing from changes in Earth’s orbit)
o There appeared to be cycles that lasted 10000 years. The
orbit around the sun changes, the tilt and speed changes.
o Eccentricity
 The change between circular and elliptical orbit, the
change in solar radiation from distance.
o Tilt (40,000 cycle)
o Precession (26,000 years
 Solar forcing
o There may be variations in the sun’s output
 Volcanic forcing (particulates)
o The year without a summer
Evidence of past climate change
 Instrumental records begin in 1850s, proxy data used for prior
time.
o Dendroclimatology
 Tree growth rings show climate changes (narrow for
cold, wide for warm)
o Ice Cores
 Bubbles of gas in ice can tell us the composition of the
atmosphere.
o Ocean sediments
 Can contain small fossils,
o Pollens
 Lots of warm weather pant pollen means warm climate,
cool weather plant pollen means cooler climate.
o Coral
 Isotopes
Anthropogenic forcing
 Emission of greenhouse gases is warming the Earth
 Emission of particulate pollutants is cooling the earth (global
dimming) this may be offsetting up to 50% of the temperature rise
we would otherwise see from greenhouse gas emissions.

15. Impacts of climate change
Mitigation
04/14/15
Excess water
Cryosphere: permafrost, sea ice, ice caps, glaciers, and ice sheets.
Glacial processes
 Pleistocene Glaciation
 Formed by compacted snow
o Water vapor, snowflakes, granular snow, neve, glacier ice.
 Glacial budgets
 Accumulation, ablation (loss of snow)
 Glacial freezing and melting
o Now we see less accumulation and more melting, resulting in
smaller (shrinking) budgets.
 Surface melt
o Lowers albedo
 Basal slip
o Glaciers are constantly moving down hill.
o Fastest flow is in the plastic middle
o Tension between the two layers creates crevasses
Permafrost melting
 Methane is stored in permafrost, as it melts methane is released.
Sea Ice Melting
 Sea level rise
o Increased flooding
o Relative sea level
 Subsidence
 Tectonic activity
 Isostatic rebound
 Tectonic activity
o Coral can’t survive if they are too deep (away from the sun)
Tipping points and abrupt climate change
 May result from:

16. o A rapid change of sea level as a result of the collapse of ice
sheets
o Abrupt changes in ocean circulations
o Rapid release of methane from methane hydrate deposits in
permafrost and ocean sediments

17. Jewish Humor: Origins and Meaning 3/23/2015 4:48:00 PM
03/26/15
Henri Bergson
 1920s Nobel prize winner
 Philosophy predates Freud by a few years
 Humor, as a source for laughter, can teach us about the world we
live in.
 Approaching laughter as social and psychological phenomenon.
Three observations
 The concept of the comic is human
o “That the comic does not exist outside the pale of what is
strictly HUMAN.”
 The absence of feeling
o We numb our empathy
o Laughter has no greater foe than emotion
 “To produce the whole of its effect, then, the comic
demands something like a momentary anesthesia of the
heart. Its appeal is to intelligence, pure and simple.”
 There is some utility to humor’s function in society
Laughter “corrects men’s manners.”
 The aim is a general improvement
 Keeping to the social codes
 Humor is socially utilitarian
Incongruity of humor
 We expect one thing, and get another
 “Hence those definitions which tend to make the comic into an
abstract relation between ideas: “an intellectual contrast,” “a
palpable absurdity,” etc.—definitions which, even were they really
suitable to every form of the comic, would not in the least explain
why the comic makes us laugh.”
Incongruity (Kant), hostility (Hobbes), superiority (Socrates)
Hobbes: the small minded laugh at the imperfection of others.
 Hostility expression of humor
 Aligns himself with Socrates
SMART WORDS
Hebephrenic

18.  Laughter that is uncontrolled and is not from a humor
Mementomori
 Daily reminders of mortality, skull on desk
Atomization
 Separate culture, Manhattan vs. suburb
03/31/15
The three central points of Bergson’s essay on humor is that first, the
concept of comic is human. He argues that no other species laughs like
humans do, and beyond that humans only laugh at what is human. This isn’t
to say we don’t occasionally laugh at other animals or rocks, but this is
because they remind us of something human. Second, humor is the absence
of feeling. To truly laugh, we must numb our empathy. And finally, humor
functions as a utility to society. Humor is corrective.
SMART WORDS
Pathos
 Appealing to emotion rather than reason or logic
Catharsis
 The release of sorrow and pity
Bathos
 An effect of anticlimax
Defamiliarization
 Taking the familiar, putting it in a new light to give it new meaning.
Uncanny
 Strange, alien, unnatural
Talmud
 The oral law
Torah
 The five books of Moses, the Hebrew term for the books. Written
law
Tanakh
 The books of the prophets and the writings. The Hebrew bible.
Midrash


19. Exegesis
 Explanatory tradition.
Pilpul

Reductio ad absurdum
 Taking something to the point of absurdity
So evidently there is nothing very benevolent in laughter. It seems rather
inclined to return evil for evil.
Humiliation is humor’s strongest means of correction
04/02/15
SMART WORDS
Hasidic

Kabbalah

Defenestration

Misogyny

Philosemitic
 Allowing the misconception of being Jewish (Charlie Chaplin)
Judenwitz
 Jewish humor
Shlemiel
 Bumbling idiot
Shlimazel
 Bad luck character
Deicide
 Killing of god
The Jew as Pariah
 An outcast people

20.  The Pariah becomes a person in Jewish culture
 They value the Pariah, despite the larger culture devaluing the
Pariah
 Politically nonexistent
 Jews as Pariah people have turned to art to re-appropriate the
term.
Heine “Disputation”
 Expresses biting, satiric humor
 Converted to Christianity to achieve better status, prominence.
 First to allude to Jewish humor.
 Judenwitz, anti-Semitic slur. German humor was the “dominant”
 Introduced the term Shlemiel to German language.
 Jews were made to debate Catholics on theology
o Because the Jews never won, it was shorthand for the catholic
oppression of the Jews.
o
U of comedy, inverted U of tragedy
04/07/15
The Jew as Pariah becomes a person of value despite perceptions of being
an outcast. In a way they are re-appropriating the term to their advantage.
Kafka
 Born in 1883 to well off parents
 Studied law
 Worked in insurance agent throughout his life.
 Caught tuberculosis, went to Austria, died in 1924.
 Asked his friend to burn all of his manuscripts, Braud(?) edited and
published his work.
 The only weapon of the pariah is thinking, against society, to
exposed the nothingness of society.
 In his work: we see the drama of assimilation, the average Jew who
wants his rights as a human being.

21. Sholem Aleichem
 Writes mostly in monologue
 Typically a comic voice
 Performative quality
Tevye the Dairyman
 Hebrew is in italics
 Has to do with frontier humor, Mark Twain.
o A man’s voice talking, associated with monologues
Today’s Children
 Constantly keeping score with God (p. 44).
 Humor comes in the contrast between the high and the low (Yiddish
and Hebrew?)

SMART WORDS
Implied author
 We can’t say what the author actually thought; what the we infer
the author meant.
Convention
 Unspoken agreement about a genre
Dialect
 A particular way of using language. Stylized method of representing
speech.
Cheder
 One room elementary school where you learn Hebrew
04/09/15
The little man is put upon, meek, pecked at, and yet admirable.
 Tevye
Tevye
 Little man chasing big ideas.
 Hero because his character embodies the role of the individual in a
world of “systems” where the individual doesn’t matter.
Unbroken chain of humor influence into the American Mainstream
 Sholem Aleichem  Nat Hiker  Larry David
Hodel: political revolutionary
Chava: marrying a non-Jew, converting to Christianity.

22. “Jewish humor is an instrument for turning pain into laughter”
SMART WORDS
Shtetl
 Small town
Ashkenazi
 Jews from central, eastern Europe, Russia.
Sephardi
 Northern African Jews
Theodicy
 To justify god’s ways to man. “Why do bad things happen to good
people”
Shiksu
 Derogatory word for non-Jewish woman.
Shayge…
 Derogatory word for non-Jewish man.