The Five Themes of Geography Definitions—Reference Sheet

Geography is more than memorizing names and places. Geographers organize space in much the same way that historians organize time. To help organize space, geographers are concerned with asking three important questions about things in the world:

• Where is it? • Why is it there? • What are the consequences of it being there?

The five themes of geography help answer these questions: • Where is it located? • What's it like there? • What is the relationship between humans and their environment • How and why are places connected with one another? • How and why is one area similar to another?

No one theme can be understood without the others. Read the articles that describe each theme. After reading the article, try to define the theme. Record your answers in the graphic organizer.Definitions:Theme #1:This theme describes how ideas, people, and goods go from one place to another.

Theme #2:This theme describes the similarities between multiple places in an area. An example would be Latin America. Many countries in Latin America speak Spanish or a language derived from Latin.

Theme #3:This theme describes the uniqueness of a location. There are human characteristics that describe the people in the location, such as, ethnicity, language, food, etc. There are also physical characteristics that describe the physical things in that location, such as, landforms, climate, etc. For example: if I were to describe a location that has a lot of animals on display, you may think about a zoo. The animals on display describes the zoo.

Theme #4:This theme describes how humans work with the environment. It describes the changes, good and bad, that result with humans living in the environment.

Theme #5:This theme can be specific (absolute) or general (relative). The specific part of this theme can be defined by longitude and latitude or a specific address. The relative part of this theme is generally compared to a location (example: Ms. Morgan’s classroom is next to Ms. Allen’s classroom).

Article 1 Movement THE GREAT MIGRATIONIn the spring of 1916, the attention of the American press and public was focused on the Great War in Europe. Few noticed the tiny stream of Southern black men brought north by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company to work on the rail lines. But following this experiment, between 1916 and 1918 alone, nearly 400,000 African Americans - five hundred each day - took what they hoped was a journey into freedom.The migration was a defining moment in the history of African Americans. It lessened their overwhelming concentration in the South, opened up industrial jobs to people who had mostly been farmers, and gave the first significant push towards their urbanization.In 1910, seven million of the nation's eight million African Americans resided in the South. But over the next fifteen years, more than one-tenth of the country's black population would voluntarily move north. The Great Migration, which lasted until 1930, was the first step in the full nationalization of the African American population.The Great Migration involved people who left the South by selling all they had; land, household goods, clothes anything that could be translated into cash. They were encouraged by northern business, labor agents, the black press, family and friends, but most of all, by their own understanding of "an opportunity whose time had come." They laid the foundations for an even larger migration, the Second Great Migration, which was to push five million of their kin, friends, and neighbors, north and west between the Second World War and 1970.It was not easy to get to "the Promised Land." Because of the expense of the journey, migrants usually traveled alone. After settling in the north, men would often send money home to help the family left behind. Women migrants, more often than not, would have to leave their young children with family members. Some waited years to be reunited. Families that were able to travel together were privileged. Single men, women, and families were waiting for the train north at the Union Railroad Depot in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1921.Railway lines often dictated who would migrate where. Chicago was a preferred destination for migrants from Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas because the railroads had direct lines to the Windy City. Although some migrants were offered free transportation by their future employers, the majority paid their own fares. Railway companies offered special rates for groups of ten to fifty, thus reducing expenses and at the same time stimulating demand.

Adapted from: http://www.inmotionaame.org/print.cfm;jsessionid=f8302994571451744479212?migration=8&bhcp=1

Article 2: Place

Zanzibar, located in the Indian Ocean is just off the coast of Tanzania, is one of the top 10 Africa’s top tourist destinations largely due to the fact that it has a very fascinating history and unbelievably beautiful beaches. It was one of the regions in Africa where the Stone Age was highly established and it became a wealthy and advanced region, which consisted of many independent merchant cities. Zanzibar was well-known for spices and ivory and part of its history was that it was a major hub during the era of slave trade.The Stone Town of Zanzibar is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one the island’s biggest attractions boasting of lovely traditional houses, narrow alleyways, a Sultan’s palace and many mosques. You’ll enjoy clear, shallow sandbars perfect for wading, turquoise-ble water; and many small, nearly deserted islands.

Adapted from: http://answersafrica.com/10-amazing-and-popular-tourist-attractions-in-africa.html

Article 3: Location

Source: Google Maps

Article 4: Human Environmental Interaction MODERN-DAY PLAGUEDeforestation is clearing Earth's forests on a massive scale, often resulting in damage to the quality of the land. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year.The world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation.Forests are cut down for many reasons, but most of them are related to money or to people’s need to provide for their families. The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers cut forests to provide more room for planting crops or grazing livestock. Often many small farmers will each clear a few acres to feed their families by cutting down trees and burning them in a process known as “slash and burn” agriculture.Logging operations, which provide the world’s wood and paper products, also cut countless trees each year. Loggers, some of them acting illegally, also build roads to access more and more remote forests—which leads to further deforestation. Forests are also cut as a result of growing urban sprawl.Not all deforestation is intentional. Some is caused by a combination of human and natural factors like wildfires and subsequent overgrazing, which may prevent the growth of young trees.Deforestation has many negative effects on the environment. The most dramatic impact is a loss of habitat for millions of species. Seventy percent of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests, and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their homes.Deforestation also drives climate change. Forest soils are moist, but without protection from sun-blocking tree cover they quickly dry out. Trees also help perpetuate the water cycle by returning water vapor back into the atmosphere. Without trees to fill these roles, many former forest lands can quickly become barren deserts.Removing trees deprives the forest of portions of its canopy, which blocks the sun’s rays during the day and holds in heat at night. This disruption leads to more extreme temperatures swings that can be harmful to plants and animals.Trees also play a critical role in absorbing the greenhouse gases that fuel global warming. Fewer forests means larger amounts of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere—and increased speed and severity of global warming.The quickest solution to deforestation would be to simply stop cutting down trees. Though deforestation rates have slowed a bit in recent years, financial realities make this unlikely to occur.A more workable solution is to carefully manage forest resources by eliminating clear-cutting to make sure that forest environments remain intact. The cutting that does occur should be balanced by the planting of enough young trees to replace the older ones felled in any given forest. The number of new tree plantations is growing each year, but their total still equals a tiny fraction of the Earth’s forested land.

Source: http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation-overview/

Article 5: Region MENA – MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICAThe Middle East and North Africa are two areas that are often grouped together because they have many things in common. Islam is the dominant religion of the area and almost everyone speaks Arabic. Most of the Middle East and North Africa is composed of desert where very little rain falls. There are, however, many exceptions: Most Iranians speak a Persian language called Farsi. Until 1935, Iran was known as Persia, a culture

that has existed for thousands of years. Most people in Turkey are Muslims but speak Turkish rather than Arabic. Lebanon includes a significant Christian minority. Lebanon once had a Christian majority, but Muslims

now outnumber Christians because Muslims have tended to have more children. Most people in Israel speak Hebrew and practice Judaism. After World War II ended, the United Nations

created Israel as a homeland for Jews. About twenty-five million Kurds live in the mountains between Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. The Kurds

are Muslims, but they have the own language and culture. Many Kurds want to keep their traditional lifestyle and resist assimilating into the population of their host nations.

A minority of the people of Morocco and Algeria speak Berber languages. The Berbers are the descendants of the people who lived in North Africa before the Arab invasion. The Berber language and traditions are more common in the isolated places of North Africa such as mountains and deserts. Most Berbers today are Arabic-speaking Muslims.

Many of the nations of the Middle East and North Africa were once controlled by European nations. As a result, English, French and Italian are often spoken in the region.

Adapted: http://www.mrdowling.com/607mena.html