Parent Primer: Geography

By Toby Leah Bochan

Since you were in school, the world has changed a lot — literally! The borders and names of many countries are not the same as they were when you were in school. If your child is memorizing names of countries and world capitals, the best way to help is to pull out the atlas and quiz him — or emcee a Geography Bee. To help with the rest of your child's geography learning, we've created this guide to jog your memory and review basic concepts and vocabulary.

What Is Geography?
Maps 101
Climate & Terrain
Geographical Terms

What Is Geography?

Geography is the study of place and space on Earth. It's about looking at how humans influence the land they live on and how the places people live shape their existence. In general, geographers seek to answer three questions:

Where are people and environments located?
Why are they located there?
Are there patterns to these locations? What significance do the patterns have?

Geography has three main branches:

Physical describes and studies features of the Earth, such as the oceans and rock formations, the planet's climates, and where plants and animals live.
Human or cultural is focused on how humans and the land interact. This study includes country and state borders, city landscapes, road maps, and neighborhoods.
Regional compares the differences and similarities between various areas.

Globe Basics

On Earth, there are seven continents: North America, South America, Antarctica, Australia (the smallest), Africa, Europe, and Asia (the largest). Most of the Earth's surface (over 70%) is covered by water. The oceans are: Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian. The major seas within these bodies are: Arctic, Caribbean, Mediterranean, and Gulf of Mexico.

Maps 101

A map is simply a picture that represents an area of any size — from your child's bedroom to the whole world. Most maps are drawn from a bird's-eye view, and are almost always drawn in some sort of scale (i.e. 1 inch on a road map = 10 real miles) so that all the information can fit on the page.

There are many kinds of maps:

Geologic — Uses symbols, lines, and colors to show what kinds of materials compose Earth's surface and/or how materials (i.e. oil, limestone, coal) are distributed both across and beneath the surface.
Hydrolic — Displays information about water, such as depth or temperature.
Photoimage — Made of actual photographs such as satellite images or aerial pictures from planes or balloons.
Planimetric — Doesn't show elevation features. Most road maps and maps of US states are planimetric (sometimes referred to as a line map).
Road — Shows the routes (roads, highways, etc.) that allow people to travel from one place to another. Includes some information about physical features (like lakes and mountains) and information about cities, towns, street names, etc.
Thematic — Displays information about a specific topic over another map. For example, a thematic map might display national voting results on a U.S. map by alternating colors.
Topographic — Describes the shape and elevation of an area through contour lines (or shaded relief). The contour lines show how high or low one area is relative to sea level.

Maps are often used to locate specific places or landmarks and find the ways and distances between two locations. So you can find an exact point, maps use a geographic grid: imaginary lines running north and south and east and west.

There are many terms used to describe location:

Absolute Location — The position of any place on earth as described by its latitude and longitude.
Hemisphere — One half of the globe. The equator divides the earth into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, while the Prime Meridian divides the earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
Latitude — Imaginary lines that cross the surface of the Earth parallel to the equator (east to west) and tell how far north or south of the equator a place is located.
Longitude — Imaginary lines that cross the surface of the Earth perpendicular to the equator (north to south) and tell how far east or west a place is from the Prime Meridian.
Prime Meridian — An imaginary line running north to south through Greenwich, England, that's used as the reference point for longitude. It is also the reference point for time, which is measured relative to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
Region — An area that includes a number of places that have something in common, either physical or cultural. For example, the "upstairs" in your house is a physical region where a number of rooms live. Chinatown in New York City (and in other U.S. cities) is a region defined by the culture of its inhabitants and businesses.
Relative Location — A description of one place based on the location of another, i.e., "the building is north of the river," or "the school is three blocks downtown from the library."

Finally, a few terms about population your child might encounter:

Population Density — By dividing the number of people in an area by the amount of land in that area, you get the population density. For example, if 1,000 people live in an area of 10 square miles, the population density is 100 people per square mile.
Population Distribution — Tells whether the people in an area are evenly spread throughout the area or unevenly spread. For example, do most people live in one city or along one road or river?

Climate & Terrain

One way to compare different places in the world is by looking at the climate and terrain of those locations. Your child may be asked to look at how a culture has adapted to year-round cold weather, consider what kinds of places trees can grow, or identify where one would find an oasis.

Climates are classified by latitude and the kinds of plants that can grow there. Going from closest to farthest from the equator, the five main types of climates are:

Tropical — Made up of rain forests and savannas.
Dry — Comprised of deserts and steppes.
Temperate — Sometimes called "warm rainy climates," these have cold winters and warm summers.
Continental — Sometimes referred to as a "cold snow forest climate." Much of North America and Asia has a continental climate, which is characterized by extremes in temperature and very cold winters.
Greenland —Greenland and Antarctica exist in this climate, which is home to tundra.

A sixth kind of climate is determined by high altitude (mountains) and is known as a highland climate.

Most people on earth live in either a tropical, temperate, or continental climate. These climates are the only places that trees can grow — therefore they are sometimes grouped together and called tree climates.

The climate that an area has is related to the terrain. Some helpful types of terrain to know are:

Prairie — A meadow or grassland; level or rolling land covered mostly by grasses.
Savanna — An open, level, tropical or subtropical grassland.
Steppe — Dry land that is usually level and mostly treeless (associated with Russia).
Tundra — Found in the Arctic, this land in frozen solid through most of the year (permafrost). Only moss, lichen, herbs, and low shrubs can grow there.
Wetland — Land that contains a lot of moisture in the soil, such as swamps or bogs.

Geographical Terms

There are a lot of words used to describe the features of land and water, and the way the two interact. Some of the more specific terms used are:

Archipelago — A group of islands.

Atoll — An island made of a circular coral reef surrounding a lagoon. (Picture a coral donut with water in the hole.)

Barrier Reef — A coral reef parallel to a shore and separated from it by a lagoon.

Cape — A strip of land that juts out into water.

Isthmus — A narrow band of land that connects two bigger land areas.

Lagoon — A small lake or pond connected to a larger body of water; an area of water separated from the sea by sand dunes or coral.

Pass — A low place in a mountain range that allows people to travel through.

Peninsula — Land that is nearly surrounded by water that extends from a larger land mass.

Promontory — A high point overlooking (or projecting over) a body of water or lowland.

Plateau — A flat area of land that is higher than nearby land. Also known as a tableland or mesa.

Reef — A range or ridge of rocks, coral, or sand in the water near the surface.

Shoal — A stretch of shallow water, or a sandbank or sandbar that makes water shallow.

Strait — A narrow channel or passageway connecting two bodies of water.

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