Geography Standards for Data to Graphics

Geography standards are structured by themes (with suggested lesson plans for different grade level themes). (For a complete overview of the geography standards (including links to its suggested lesson plans) click here..
 

THE WORLD IN SPATIAL TERMS

STANDARD 1: How to Use Maps and Other Geographic Representations, Tools, and Technologies to Acquire, Process, and Report Information From a Spatial Perspective

Geographic information is compiled, organized, manipulated, stored, and made accessible in a great many ways. It is essential that students develop an understanding of these ways so they can make use of the information and learn the skills associated with developing and communicating information from a spatial perspective.

The study and practice of geography require the use of geographic representations, tools, and technologies. Geographic representations consist primarily of maps and also include globes, graphs, diagrams, aerial and other photographs, and satellite-produced images. Tools and technologies consist primarily of reference works such as almanacs, gazetteers, geographic dictionaries, statistical abstracts, and other data compilations.

Maps are graphic representations of selected aspects of Earth’s surface. They represent compilations of geographic information about selected physical and human features. Using point, line, and area symbols, as well as color, they show how those features are located, arranged, distributed, and related to one another. They range in appearance and purpose from a simple freehand line drawing of how to get to a friend’s house to a complex multicolor depiction of atmospheric conditions used in weather forecasting. No single map can show everything, and the features depicted on each map are selected to fit a particular purpose. Maps can depict not only visible surface features such as rivers, seacoasts, roads, and towns, but also underground features such as subway systems, tunnels, and geographic formations. They can depict abstract features such as political boundaries, population densities, and lines of latitude and longitude.

In the classroom, maps serve both as repositories of many kinds of geographical information and as an essential means of imparting that information to students. Maps constitute a critical element of geography education. However, they do have limitations. One major limitation is that it is not possible to accurately represent the round Earth on a flat surface without distorting at least one Earth property, such as distance, direction, or size and shape of land and water bodies. Therefore, different map projections are used to depict different Earth properties (e.g., equal area projections show landmasses in correct areal proportion to one another but with distortions of shape). No single map can accurately depict all Earth’s properties, so it is essential that students know how to look at a given map and know which properties are rendered correctly and which are distorted.

As scale models, globes constitute the most accurate representation of Earth in terms of the properties of Earth’s surface features—area, relative size and shape, scale and distance, and compass direction are proportionately and therefore correctly represented on globes. Globes present an essential overview of Earth, and they can be very useful in the teaching of such concepts as location, spatial patterns, Earth-Sun relationships, and time. However, globes have limitations: They are cumbersome to handle and store, small-scale, and only half of Earth can be observed at once.

In addition to maps and globes, graphs, diagrams, aerial and other photographs, and satellite-produced images also provide valuable information about spatial patterns on Earth. They are very diversified in the kinds of information they present and, under certain circumstances, they have classroom value as both supplements to and substitutes for globes and maps. However, they also have limitations: For instance, they may not be immediately understandable to students, who may need special instruction in their use.

The tools and technologies used in geography encompass a great variety of reference works, ranging from encyclopedias and other multivolume publications covering many topics to single reports on specialized subjects. Some of these works are in narrative form; some are primarily compilations of data represented in tabular form. Some are easy to understand and use; some are not. Students need to develop an understanding of the kinds of reference works that are available to them, as well as learn how to obtain information from the works, how to gauge the general reliability of that information, and how to convert information from one form to another (e.g., take data from a table and present it in a written narrative).

Traditionally reference works have been available solely in printed form. Currently, however, more and more of them are also being made available in the form of computer-based databases and computer-based information systems. This development is a result of computer systems becoming an essential tool for storing, analyzing, and presenting spatial information. Because of their speed and flexibility, such systems enable the geographically informed person to explore, manipulate, and assess spatial data far more effectively than do conventional printed materials. Furthermore, current developments in multimedia techniques such as animation, sound, and interactive learning procedures, promise an even more flexible and creative approach to geographic learning.

Throughout their K-12 schooling, students should continue to have direct experience with a wide variety of geographic representations, especially maps. Maps can become increasingly abstract with each succeeding grade level reflecting the developmental changes in students’ abilities to represent and manipulate spatial and symbolic information. In the early grades, students should come to see maps, like the written word, as a source of information about their world. They should be given opportunities to read and interpret different kinds of maps and to create maps of their classroom, school, and neighborhood using various media (e.g., pencils, cutouts). Subsequent experiences in map reading and mapmaking should become more sophisticated and abstract as students develop a more comprehensive understanding of the knowledge, skills, and perspectives involved in maps and mapping activities.

In addition, students should be given an opportunity to become familiar with computer systems and computer-based geographic information systems. As such systems become increasingly common in the home, school, and workplace for many different purposes, people will learn to use them as comfortably and effectively as they have traditionally used printed materials. Therefore, it is essential that students of geography be exposed to as many forms of geographic data processing as possible and come to understand the role of computer systems in both the study and practice of geography.

Knowing how to identify, access, evaluate, and use all of these geographic resources will ensure students of a rich school experience in geography and the prospect of having an effective array of problem-solving and decision-making skills for use in both their other educational pursuits and their adult years.

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THE WORLD IN SPATIAL TERMS

STANDARD 2: How to Use Mental Maps to Organize Information about People, Places, and Environments in a Spatial Context

To be geographically informed, a person must keep in mind a lot of information about people, places, and environments and must be able to organize this information in the appropriate spatial context. A very effective way of doing this is to create and use what can be called “mental maps.” Such a map is an individual’s internalized representation of some aspect or aspects of Earth’s surface. It represents what the person knows about the locations and the characteristics of places at a variety of scales (local to global) from the layout of the student’s bedroom to the distribution of oceans and continents on the surface of the Earth. These maps in the mind provide students with an essential means of making sense of the world, and of storing and recalling information about the shapes and patterns of the physical and human features of Earth. Learning how to create and use mental maps, therefore, is a fundamental part of the process of becoming geographically informed.

Mental maps have several distinguishing characteristics:

• Mental maps are personal and idiosyncratic and are usually a mixture of both objective knowledge and subjective perceptions. They contain objective and precise knowledge about the location of geographic features, such as continents, countries, cities, mountain ranges, and oceans. They also contain more subjective and less precise information, such as impressions of places, rough estimates of relative size, shape, and location, and a general sense of certain connections between places as well as priorities that reflect the mapmaker’s own predilections.
• Mental maps are used in some form by all people throughout their lives. Such maps enable people to know what routes to take when traveling, comprehend what others say or write about various places, and develop an understanding of the world. Mental maps represent ever changing summaries of spatial knowledge and serve as indicators of how well people know the spatial characteristics of places. People develop and refine their mental maps through personal experience and through learning from teachers in the media. They refine at least some of their maps to ever higher levels of completeness and accuracy, and they continue to add information so the maps reflect a growing understanding of a changing world. Critical geographic observation is essential to this development and refinement process, because mental maps reflect people’s skill in observing and thinking about the world in spatial terms (and have nothing to do with their ability to draw).
• As students read, hear, observe, and think more about the world around them, they can add more detail and structure to their maps. As students get older, their mental maps accumulate multiple layers of useful information, and this growth in complexity and utility can provide them with a sense of satisfaction as more places and events in the world can be placed into meaningful spatial context.

If geography is to be useful in creating a framework for understanding the world—past, present, and future—then coherent mental maps must take shape and become increasingly refined as students progress through their school years. Students should be encouraged to develop and update their mental maps to ensure that they continue to have essential knowledge of place location, place characteristics, and other information that will assist them in personal decision-making and in establishing a broad-based perception of Earth from a local to a global perspective. In addition, they need to understand that developing mental maps is a basic skill for everyone who wants to engage in a lifetime of geographic understanding.

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THE WORLD IN SPATIAL TERMS

STANDARD 3: How to Analyze the Spatial Organization of People, Places, and Environments on Earth’s Surface

Thinking in spatial terms is essential to knowing and applying geography. It enables students to take an active questioning approach to the world around them and ask what, where, when, and why questions about people, places, and environments. Thinking spatially enables students to formulate answers to critical questions about past, present, and future patterns of spatial organization to anticipate the results of events in different locations, and to predict what might happen given specific conditions. Spatial concepts and generalizations are powerful tools for explaining the world at all scales, local to global. They are the building blocks on which geographic understanding develops.

Thinking in spatial terms means having the ability to describe and analyze the spatial organization of people, places, and environments on Earth’s surface. It is an ability that is central to a person’s being geographically literate.

Geographers refer to both the features of Earth’s surface and activities that take place on Earth’s surface as phenomena. The phenomena may be physical (topography, streams and rivers, climates, vegetation types, soils), human (towns and cities, population, highways, trade flows, the spread of disease, national parks), or physical and human taken together (beach resorts in relation to climate, topography, or major population centers). The location and arrangement of both physical and human phenomena form regular and recurring patterns.

The description of a pattern of spatial organization begins by breaking it into its simplest components: points, lines, areas, and volumes. These four elements describe the spatial properties of objects: a school can be thought of as a point, connected by roads (which are lines) leading to nearby parks and neighborhoods (which are areas), whereas a lake in a park can be thought of as a volume. The next step in the descriptive process is to use such concepts as location, distance, direction, density, and arrangement (linear, grid-like, random) to capture the relationships between the elements of the pattern. Thus the U.S. interstate highway system can be described as lines connecting points over an area—the arrangement is partly grid-like (with north-south and east-west routes as in the central United States) and partly radial or star-shaped (as in the highways centered on Atlanta)—and the pattern of interstates is denser in the East than it is in the West.

The analysis of a pattern of spatial organization proceeds with the use of such concepts as movement and flow, diffusion, cost of distance, hierarchy, linkage, and accessibility to explain the reasons for patterns and the functioning of the world. In the case of a physical pattern, such as a river system, there is a complex hierarchical arrangement linking small streams with drainage basins and large rivers with drainage basins that are the sum total of all the drainage basins. There are proportional spatial relationships between stream and river length, width, volume, speed, and drainage basin area. The gradual changes that can occur in these properties of a river system are related to climate, topography, and geology.

Central to geography is the belief that there is pattern, regularity, and reason to the locations of physical and human phenomena on Earth’s surface and that there are spatial structures and spatial processes that give rise to them. Students must be encouraged to think about all aspects of the spatial organization of their world. Understanding the distribution and arrangement of Earth’s physical and human features depends on analyzing data gathered from observation and field study, working with maps and other geographic representations, and posing geographic questions and deriving geographic answers.

Spatial relationships, spatial structures, and spatial processes are simple to understand, despite their apparent unfamiliarity. For example, the spatial organization of human settlement on Earth’s surface is generally a pattern of a few large cities which are widely spaced and many smaller towns, which are closer together. A comparative analysis of those cities and towns shows that cities offer a wide range of goods and services whereas small towns offer fewer goods and services. Taken together, the description and the analysis explain why consumers shop where they do, why they often buy different products at different locations, and also why changes occur in this spatial pattern.

Understanding patterns of spatial organization enables the geographically informed person to answer three fundamental geographic questions: Why are these phenomena located in these places? How did they get here? Why is this pattern significant? Description and analysis of patterns of spatial organization must occur at scales ranging from local to global. Students confront a world that is increasingly interdependent. Widely separated places are interconnected as a consequence of improved transportation and communication networks. Human decisions at one location have physical impacts at another location (for example, the decision to burn coal rather than oil in a power plant may result in acid rain damaging vegetation in a location hundreds of miles away).

Understanding such spatial linkages requires that students become familiar with a range of spatial concepts and models that can be used to describe and analyze patterns of spatial organization. This knowledge can be grounded in the students’ own immediate experiences, and yet it will give the students the power to understand the arrangement of physical and human geographic phenomena anywhere on Earth.

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PLACES AND REGIONS

STANDARD 4: The Physical and Human Characteristics of Places

People’s lives are grounded in particular places. We come from a place, we live in a place, and we preserve and exhibit fierce pride over places. Our sense of self is intimately entwined with that of place. Who we are is often inseparable from where we are. Places are human creations and the geographically informed person must understand the genesis, evolution, and meaning of places.

Places are part of Earth’s space, large or small, that have been endowed with meaning by humans. They include continents, islands, countries, regions, states, cities, neighborhoods, villages, rural areas, and uninhabited areas. They usually have names and boundaries. Each place possesses a distinctive set of tangible and intangible characteristics that help to distinguish it from other places. Places are characterized by their physical and human properties. Their characteristics include climate, landforms, soils, hydrology, vegetation, and animal life. Their human characteristics include language, religion, political systems, economic systems, population distribution, and quality of life. Places change over time as both physical and human processes operate to modify Earth’s surface. Few places remain unchanged for long and these changes have a wide range of consequences. As knowledge, ideologies, values, resources, and technologies change, people make place-altering decisions about how to use land, how to organize society, and ways in which to relate (such as economically or politically) to nearby and distant places. Out of these processes emerge new places, with existing places being reorganized and expanded, other places declining, and some places disappearing. Places change in size and complexity and in economic, political, and cultural importance as networks of relationships between places are altered through population expansion, the rise and fall of empires, changes in climate and other physical systems, and changes in transportation and communication technologies. A place can be dramatically altered by events both near and far.

Knowing how and why places change enables people to understand the need for knowledgeable and collaborative decision-making about where to locate schools, factories, and other things and how to make wise use of features of the physical environment such as soil, air, water, and vegetation. Knowing the physical and human characteristics of their own places influences how people think about who they are, because their identity is inextricably bound up with their place in life and the world. Personal identity, community identity, and national identity are rooted in place and attachment to place. Knowing about other places influences how people understand other peoples, cultures, and regions of the world. Knowledge of places at all scales, local to global, is incorporated into people’s mental maps of the world.

Students need an understanding of why places are the way they are, because it can enrich their own sense of identity with a particular place and enable them to comprehend and appreciate both the similarities and differences in places around their own community, state, country, and planet.

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PLACES AND REGIONS

STANDARD 5: That People Create Regions to Interpret Earth’s Complexity

Region is a concept that is used to identify and organize areas of Earth’s surface for various purposes. A region has certain characteristics that give it a measure of cohesiveness and distinctiveness that set it apart from other regions. As worlds within worlds, regions can be used to simplify the whole by organizing Earth’s surface on the basis of the presence or absence of selected physical and human characteristics. As a result, regions are human constructs whose boundaries and characteristics are derived from sets of specific criteria. They can vary in scale from local to global; overlap or be mutually exclusive; exhaustively partition the entire world or capture only selected portions of it. They can nest within one another, forming a multilevel mosaic. Understanding the idea of region and the process of regionalization is fundamental to being geographically informed.

Understanding the nature of regions requires a flexible approach to the world. The criteria used to define and delimit regions can be spatially precise as coastlines and political boundaries or as spatially amorphous as suggesting the general location of people with allegiances to a particular professional athletic team or identifying a market area for distributing the recordings of a specific genre of music. Regions can be as small as a neighborhood or as vast as a territorial expanse covering thousands of square miles in which the inhabitants speak the same language. They can be areas joining people in common causes where they can become areas for conflict, both internal and external. Geographers define regions in three basic ways:

The first type is the formal region. It is characterized by a common human property, such as the presence of people who share a particular language, religion, nationality, political identity or culture, or by a common physical property, such as the presence of a particular type of climate, landform, or vegetation. Political entities such as counties, states, countries, and provinces are formal regions because they are defined by a common political identity. Other formal regions include climate regions (e.g., areas with a Mediterranean climate), landform regions (e.g., the Ridge and Valley and Piedmont regions of Pennsylvania), and economic regions (e.g., the wheat belt of Kansas, the citrus-growing areas of south Texas, and the irrigated farmlands of the Central Valley of California). Formal regions can be defined by measures of population, per capita income, ethnic background, crop production, population density and distribution, or industrial production, or by mapping physical characteristics such as temperature, rainfall, growing season, and average date of first and last frost.

The second type of region is the functional region. It is organized around a node or focal point with the surrounding areas linked to that node by transportation systems, communication systems, or other economic association involving such activities as manufacturing and retail trading. A typical functional region is a metropolitan area (MA) as defined by the Bureau of Census. For example, the New York MA is a functional region that covers parts of several states. It is linked by commuting patterns, trade flows, television and radio broadcasts, newspapers, travel for recreation and entertainment. Other functional regions include shopping regions centered on malls or supermarkets, area served by branch banks, and ports and their hinterlands.

The third type of region is the perceptual region. It is a construct that reflects human feelings and attitudes about areas and is therefore defined by people’s shared subjective images of those areas. It tends to reflect the element of people’s mental maps, and, although it may help to impose a personal sense of order and structure on the world, it often does so on the basis of stereotypes that may be inappropriate or incorrect. Thus southern California, Dixie, and the upper Midwest are perceptual regions that are thought of as being spatial units, although they do not have precise borders or even commonly accepted regional characteristics and names.

Some regions, especially formal regions, tend to be stable in spatial definition, but may undergo change in character. Others, especially functional regions, may retain certain basic characteristics, but may undergo spatial redefinition over time. Yet other regions, particularly perceptual regions, are likely to vary over time in both spatial extent and character.

Regional change, in the context of the human spatial organization of Earth’s surface, is an area of study that provides students with opportunities to examine and learn about the complex web of demographic and economic changes that occur.

Regions serve as a valuable organizing technique for framing detailed knowledge of the world and for asking geographic questions. Because regions are examples of geographic generalizations, students can learn about the characteristics of other regions of the world by knowing about one region. Knowing about the physical processes that create the Mediterranean climate and vegetation of southern California, for example, can serve as an analogue for learning about other regions with Mediterranean climates and vegetation in Australia, Europe, South America, and Africa. Regions provide a context for discussing similarities and differences between parts of the world.

Through understanding the idea of region, students can apply geographic knowledge, skills, and perspectives to solving problems as immediate as making an informed decision about a neighborhood zoning issue or as long-range as predicting the reconfiguration of political and economic alliances owing to resource shortages or changes in the global ecosystem. Most importantly, studying regions enables students to synthesize their understanding of the physical and human properties of Earth’s surface at scales that range from local to global.

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THE USES OF GEOGRAPHY

STANDARD 17: How to Apply Geography to Interpret the Past

Geographers and historians agree that the human story must be told within the context of three intertwined points of view—space, environment, and chronology. The geographically informed person understands the importance of bringing the spatial and environmental focus of geography to bear on the events of history and vice versa, and the value of learning about the geographies of the past.

An understanding of geography can inform an understanding of history in two important ways. First, the events of history take place within geographic contexts. Second, those events are motivated by people's perceptions, correct or otherwise, of geographic contexts. By exploring what the world was like and how it was perceived at a given place at a given time, the geographically informed person is able to interpret major historical issues. For example, why did the land invasions of Russia by Sweden under Charles XII, France under Napoleon, and Germany under Hitler all fail? And why did people want to build the Panama and Suez Canals?

Answering such questions requires a geographic approach to the spatial organization of the world as it existed then and as that world was seen by the people of those times. In the case of the land invasions of Russia, the failure of the invaders can be linked to the dimensions, conditions, and constraints of the physical and human environments involved: the harsh weather conditions to be endured, the prevalence of rivers and marshes to be crossed, the vehicle-impeding mud to be overcome, the vast distances to be traversed, the shortages of food and other supplies, and the hostility, determination, and home-ground advantage of the defenders. As all three invasions demonstrated, space and environment form a context within which people make choices.

The geographic approach to the past also requires looking at the ways in which different people understood and assessed the physical and human geographical features of their spatial and environmental contexts. In the case of the Panama and Suez Canals, the geographic approach involves an assessment of how people and governments perceived and valued transportation costs in terms of both money and time, the topography and geology of the area, the available technology and labor force, the political forces operating in Central America, Europe, and Southwest Asia, and the economic returns that would ensue. Such an assessment leads to understanding that the canals were constructed because it was determined that the efforts and costs would be worthwhile in terms of the resulting economic and political gains. Looking at the past geographically requires that attention be given to the beliefs and attitudes of the peoples of bygone times regarding the environment, human migration, land use, and especially their own rights and privileges versus those of others. Such information can be obtained through the study of visible remains of buildings and other facilities, which offer clues to what occurred and why. A careful geographical analysis of today's cultural and physical landscapes is a valuable resource for learning about the past.

The geographies of past times carry important messages for today's people. The events of human history have been played out on a vast and complex geographic stage, and countless generations have had to make the best of what Earth has provided in the form of climate, land and water resources, plants and animals, and transportation routes; all of these things are shaped by the ongoing interactions of physical and human systems and have created the contexts in which history has unfolded. The study of history, without these rich contexts, is one-dimensional. In like fashion, the study of geography, without an appreciation of history, is one-dimensional. Understanding the geographies of past times, therefore, is as important as understanding the geography of the present. Students must appreciate that viewing the past from both spatial and chronological points of view can lead to a greater awareness and depth of understanding of physical and human events, and is an essential ingredient in the interpretation of the world of today. Students must also understand that the geographic approach helps to explain why events did happen in a particular way but not necessarily why they must have happened in that way.

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THE USES OF GEOGRAPHY

STANDARD 18: How to Apply Geography to Interpret the Present and Plan for the Future

Geography is for life and not simply an exercise for its own sake. As the world becomes both more complex and more interconnected—as a result of economic development, population growth, technological advancement, and increased cooperation (and, to some extent, conflict)—the need for geographic knowledge, skills, and perspectives increases among the world’s peoples. Geography is the key to nations, peoples, and individuals being able to develop a coherent understanding of the causes, meanings, and effects of the physical and human events that occur—and are likely to occur—on Earth’s surface.

Consequently, the practical applications of geography (along with other aspects of geographic literacy) need to be fostered in all students in preparation for life as the responsible citizens and leaders of tomorrow.

Through its spatial emphasis, geography enables students to comprehend spatial patterns and spatial contexts; connections and movements between places; the integration of local, regional, national, and global scales; diversity; and systems. Through its ecological emphasis geography enables students to comprehend physical processes and patterns; ecosystems; the physical interconnections between local and global environments; and the impact of people on the physical environment.

Taken together, these sets of understanding enable students to pose and answer geographic questions about the spatial organization of the world in which they live. At a local and personal level students need to understand the reasons for and implications of decisions about such issues as community recycling programs, the loss of agricultural land to new housing, the choice between spending tax dollars on a sewage treatment plant or housing for senior citizens, the expansion of the runways of a local airport, or the introduction of air quality standards. They also need to be aware of the impact of such decision-making on their own lives and the lives of others, and that eventually, as community members and voting citizens, they will be asked to participate in the decision-making process. Such participation demands the knowledge and judgment of geographically informed people who know where to find relevant information, how to evaluate it, how to analyze it, and how to represent it.

Geographic literacy also has great significance at a more global and less personally immediate level. With a solid foundation in the interlinked knowledge, skills, and perspectives of geography, students will be better able to analyze and reach informed opinions about a variety of issues—ranging from the implications of resource depletion and the economic and social tensions caused by exponential population growth to what will happen with the family of nations as old political structures change, new alliances are formed, and realignments cause mass migration of refugees seeking asylum, security, and economic opportunity.

With a solid understanding of geography, people are better able to decide where to live and work, how and where to travel, and how to assess the world in spatial terms. In a world where people are competing for territory, resources, markets, and economic positions, knowing too little about geography is a liability, which compromises the capacity of people to function successfully at home or abroad. Creating effective and lasting solutions to the world’s pressing problems requires that today’s students mature into adults who can make skilled and informed use of geographic knowledge, skills, and perspectives to identify possible solutions, predict their consequences, and implement the best solutions. That is why it is imperative that all students in the United States achieve geographic literacy.

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