Does Geography Matter? Essay

Beginning in 1607, when ambitious English colonists settled in Jamestown, and continuing until the last of the thirteen colonies was established; geography was a substantial factor in the development of colonial America. The crops that essentially saved the colonists lives, such as tobacco, rice, and indigo, wouldn’t have grown without a certain type and amount of soil to grow properly. Also, the Appalachian Mountains and the dense forests provided a barrier for the colonists, preventing them from going too far west right away, and causing the colonies to form in the arrangement they did. Finally, the population was the most dense in middle colonies, such as New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania partly because of the mild

The Five Themes of Geography are: Location – Absolute points on a map or grid or Relative to where something may be; Place – The physical and/or human characteristics of a locations; Human/Environment Interactions – How humans have impacted the landscape or environment; Relationship between places Movement – How humans interact on the earth (i.e. how they communicate over distance (short or long)) and Regions – a unit of space that has commonalities defined by physical, human and environmental geography. The Explorers of the New World may have not known what the Five Themes of Geography were but they quickly learned. Of the five themes the ones that they all took advantage of was the physical Location and Place as they learned to navigate

Social location, or the status in life that people have because of their place in a society, have a huge impact on everyone. The impact that social location created could be neutral, but most of the time it will have a positive or negative impact on people. For example, an African American could be discriminated because of his ethnicity, or a patient will choose an older doctor when he needs a treatment. Different social location that we have will affect our decisions in everyday life, and most of the time it happened subconsciously, which means we don’t realize that the decisions we make are based on our social location. Like everyone else, I was affected by my own social location, both positively and negatively.

Countries have different endowments. Differing climates give advantages to the production of different crops. Differing histories and inclinations result in different advantages in finance, skills and manufacturing.

S- it shows how when people migrate they bring ideas and culture with them. For example this is why there can be four different languages being spoken in one place.

Centralized Government made to establish rules and maintain order; as well as handle diplomatic matters.

1A.1.) A nation is a unified group of people with a common culture. An example of a nation without a state is the Kurds.This is because the Kurds do not have a state of their own since the Kurdish land includes parts of Iraq, Syria and Armenia and the Kurdish people are often the majority in cities in this region.

1. As latitude increases, the intensity of the solar energy that strikes an area decreases, and climates become cooler.

In Human Geography, we are studying industry. In order to understand how people build cities, we are now play SimCity. At first, when I open Simcity, I saw there was a woman she introduce herself to me, told me to build the road. Also there was a man appear, he introduce himself then show me the house and told me to grab the house and build up the beautiful house. When I finish build the first house the next thing she show me to go grab the Building supplies store and I go get it. After that she want me to build the factory. I build factory near the the house and people get mad at me because of the smell and it make a lot of noise. At first my smiling face was going down and down, and i didn't know why. Then my friend helped me to move factory

Geography is an important factor to consider when you look at this worlds past, present, or future. So whether it be the earths physical geographic features, the geopolitics stirring up trouble across the globe, or the economics of growing or shrinking countries; geography plays a major role. In todays society, geographic knowledge is one of the most important and valuable tools to possess. Without it, we are victims of ignorance and endanger ourselves, others, and the world. This ignorance, possessed by many, is posing a great risk of self-destruction. The author of “Why Geography Matters More Than Ever”, Harm de Blij, makes many strong points on this matter, but occasionally makes unsupported and unclear statements which tend to stray off topic.

Geography influences culture in many ways. A civilizations geography determines what kind of god(s) they believe in as well as influences from other cultures. These features provide a stepping stone for cultures that are solely based on geography.

Pomeranz hypothesises that it was Europe’s ability to transcend the ecological constraints placed on the them by limited resources that allowed Europe to cultivate superior economic growth. These ecological restraints were witnessed in the most economically advanced areas of Europe and China, Britain and the Yangzi Delta which are the focal point for this geographical argument.These constraints are seen in food stocks, fibres for textile production and most crucially in the supply of fuel. Pomeranz postulates two primary reasons for economic divergence both centred around environmental differences, the first of these is the close proximity of coal resources to European cities and the second was the role of the New World in allowing European nations to circumvent the scarcity of resources.

Mid-Term Examination Essay Questions 1. Economic geography is the study of the location, distribution and spatial organization of economic activities across the Earth. One can also say that it is the means to allocate and the use of natural resources by the defined area or place. It helps in implementing theories based on the use of geographical space and the location of human settlement and production activities.

Many studies have demonstrated the idea that institutions are the main factor of economic development because empirical evidence points to strong institutions being able to determine large growth of GDP per capita. Although the characteristics of strong institutions can be described as the potential fundamental cause of economic growth, the effects of geography and materials available to different certain regions have a huge hand in properly developing a society economically and allowing for further growth. The resources of the countries heavily depend on the raw materials available to each region and the kinds of animals they are able to domesticate. This is where the argument circulates around in which geography is a large determinant of whether a civilization or society can prosper in a certain area or not.

Using the spatial approach methodology, the effects of climate change on the agricultural sector can be determined through the differences between the type of land, agricultural production and other regional variables that relate the climate to the sector. The models that characterise this approach use statistical or programming methods to analyse changes in spatial production standards; the models used include Ricardian, (Mendelsohn et al., 1994), Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models and Geographic Information System models.