Geography Exam Review Essay

Directions:  Answer each question in a paragraph—be sure to give specific details and examples.  Remember that each of these questions has multiple parts to it.  You must type your responses out and hand it to me by the end of our class period.

Task #1 : Analyse the impacts of at least two urban dynamics operating in a large city of the developed world.

NOTE: Please write your answers to each question in a different color font to make this easier for the Professor to grade.

The West’s geography consists of the Mississippi where they would trade and get their supplies from. Then there were mountains with natural trails that people could travel through and also for mining. 4. The rise of the cattle boom was due to railroads making it cheaper and faster to travel and the demand for cattle was high. The fall was due to things like overgrazing and barbed wires.

Geology- It is the study of the Earth, which materials compose it, and how they work together, their processes (earthquakes, floods, erosion) and changes that they have gone through (mountains emerging, valleys, etc.). It also studies the organisms that had been on earth (fossils). It is a wide subject that can be subdivided into fields such as minerology, petrology and so on.

1. In a compared map of the Holy Land and the state of New Jersey, there are not a lot of differences in the amount of land. Although the Holy Land does not provide important resources, people have been fighting over it throughout history.

1. Global warring 2. The increase in the temperature 3. The south the farmers burn rain forest 4.

Outline the geographical processes relevant to the management of the Cronulla, Wanda and Kurnell area.

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. The reasons why some buildings are in the floodplains is because of agricultural industry. Another reason is population growth and expansion into those areas where people felt safe because of improvements of levees. Even though people were told about the dangers most people relied on disaster insurance instead of flood insurance. There should be laws that prohibit further development of these areas because it is costing the taxpayers lots of money for people that want to live in these areas that know the risks. If there were laws in place they could use some of the land as soccer fields and football fields as overflow ponds if they do want to build in a floodplain they need to raise the ground up by hauling in soils that will let the water pass through into those overfill ponds.

1) Modern astronomy basically begins with the re-emergence of the heliocentric view of the universe by Copernicus.   Who were the four other major contributors to the development of modern astronomy after Copernicus?  Explain what those contributions were.  Finally, why did it take so long for the geocentric view of the universe to be overthrown and what does that tell us about scientific research and our society, even today?

Scale- relationship between a specific place in the world, and the Earth as a whole.

Geography had a tremendous impact on early civilizations, the topography of the different regions played a key role in their development and formation. This statement by Fernand Braudel “ Geography is the stage in which humanity’s endless dramas are played out” (Getz et al., Exchanges, 26) is a very moving and telling description. The terrain, whether it is natural or man made is not the end all, be all. It does however affect the stage a great deal. Mountainous areas act as blockades, which keep the societies independent, plains open up the area, and rivers enable everything to move around freely. 2

Metropolitan areas exhibit an amazing diversity of features, economic structures, amounts of infrastructure, historic roots, patterns of development, and degrees of conventional planning. Yet, lots of the problems that they deal with are strikingly acquainted. For example, as metropolitan areas grow, they grow to be increasingly diverse.

Burgess’s concentric zone theory was presented in 1924. He presented a descriptive urban land use model that divided cities in a set of concentric circles expanding from downtown to the suburbs. His representation came from Burgess’ observations of various American cities, especially Chicago. Burgess model assumes a relationship between the socio-economic status of households and the distance from the Central Business District. The further from the district, the better the quality of housing, but the longer the commuting time. Making this Accessing better housing is done at the expense of longer commuting times and costs as well. According to Burgess, urban growth is a process of expansion and reconversion of land uses, with a tendency of each inner zone to expand in the outer zone. According to Burgess’ theory, a large city is divided in six concentric zones, Burgess’s model has its cons according to critics. It is said to be a product of its time. That is, it won’t work the same with present cities. The model was developed when American cities were growing very fast and when motorized transportation was still uncommon as most people used public transit. Thus the concept cannot be applied to those from the second half to the twentieth century where highways have enabled urban development to escape the reconversion process and to take place directly in the suburbs. The model in this case was developed for American cities and is limited elsewhere.