Study Guide
INTRODUCTION TO WORLD REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY

Introduction

1. Global Geography
Introduction
What is geography?
Geographers study the location and distribution of features on the earth surface.
Major concerns of Geographers:
Geographers are concerned with where features are located?
Why are they located where they are?
How are they constituted?
What their future is likely to be in our changing world?
Like other disciplines, geographers seek to establish order from the countless data confronting them.

What is a geographic Realm?
- It is a large regional unit based on a broad multiple criteria-reflecting physical, economic, political, urban, historical, and population as well as cultural geography
Criteria for Realms
Geographic realms are based on spatial criteria.
1.The largest unit into which the inhabited world can be divided
These include the physical (natural) and human
E.g. South America: because, physically it is a continent and culturally it is dominated by a social norm

1. The result of the interaction of human society and the natural environment
E.g. A functional interaction revealed by farms, mines, fishing ports, transport routes, dams and bridges

3. The most comprehensive and encompassing definition of the great cluster of human kind in the world today
E.g. China and India, Africa (southern margin of the Sahara to the Cape of Good Hope)


Based on these criteria the world is grouped into 12 Geographic Realms

Europe
Russia
North America
Middle America
South America
Sub Sahara Africa
North Africa/South West Asia
South Asia
East Asia
South East Asia
Austral Realm
Pacific Realms

P.S Transitional Zone: Represents an ever-changing zone of regional interaction. There are clearly defined transitional zones e.g. Africa the transitional zone from the Sub-Saharan to North Africa.
Unclearly defined transitional zones: Belarus (between Europe and Russia) and Kazastan (between Russia and Muslim South West Asia)
P.S Geographic realm changes over time. Colonization, westernization and Europeanization of the world changed the geographic realm.


What is Region?
An area of the earth surface marked by specific criteria. Different criteria used to delineate regions. (Physical characteristics (climate), income levels, population density, functions etc.

Properties of a Region
1. Area; intellectual construct as well as physical presence. ( existence)
2. Boundaries; some are clearly defined others not self-evident; must be determined e.g. highly dense populated area; population over 500 etc?
3. Location:-
-Absolute location; providing latitudes and longitudes with respect to the earth’s grid coordinate.
Relative location: location in reference to other regions. Name of some regions reveal aspect of their relative location: Eastern Los Angeles, North Holly Wood etc.
4. Homogeneity: sameness
This may lie in its cultural and physical characteristics eg. Siberia in Russia is marked by its sparse population in widely scattered, small settlement of similar farm, frigid climate

Formal Regions
They exhibit/display a measurable and often visible internal homogeneity.
P.S not all formal regions may be delimited by an area in which say 90% people speak a particular language though not visible, but it is real.


Functional Region:
Determined not by their internal sameness, but by their functional integration- thus the way they work. It is forged by a structured, urban-centered system of interaction. Formal regions form spatial systems- the areal extent of the activities that define them. A functional region has a core and a periphery

Importance of a map
Displaces enormous information
Suggests spatial relationship
Pose questions for research
Suggests where answers may lie

A scale is the ratio of the distance between two locations on a map and the actual location on the earth surface. It is also often expressed as a fraction. It represents the surface of the earth at various levels of generalization.

Regions and Cultures
Accordingly to Ralph Linton et al., Culture is the sum total of knowledge, attitude, and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by members of a society.

Russia
Understand the overall climatic pattern of this region.
The three main factors that influences Russia’s climate;
Latitudinal position
Continental position
Location of Mountains

Understand the differences between weather and climate
weather is the state of the atmosphere at a location at any given moment.
Climate: is the average weather condition of a place observed over a long period of time. Usually between 25-35 years

Learn the meaning of the following Key terms/words

Permafrost
Forward capital
Imperialism
Colonialism
Collectivization
Sovkhoz
Glasnost

Heartland theory
It is a geopolitical generalization derived by Sir Halford Mackinder, which saw the center of Eurasia continent as an important fortress against naval power. Mackinder saw the heartland as the stage for world domination.

Rimland Theory
Counterargument centerpiece in alternative geopolitical scheme to Mackinder’s heartland; concept introduced by Nicholas Spykman, who claimed that the rim or the outer edge of Eurasia was far more important for potential world domination because of its considerable natural and population resources

Transcaucasia:
The region constituted by Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. A mini-shatter-belt known as the Balkans of Asia; a historical and current region of ethnic and territorial conflict.

Self testing Questions

Where is Russia’s most population concentrated?
What does the field of climatology study?
What is the difference between weather and climate?
Why is farming difficult in Russia?
How far did the Russians penetrate into North America?
When was the Soviet Union formed?
Which was the largest of the former Soviet Socialist Republic?
What were the two main objectives of the Soviet Economic Planners?
When did the Soviet Union collapse?
What are Russia’s two largest cities?

Important Facts
Gorbachev opened up the dying Soviet Union to the world once again, removing the Iron curtain of secrecy and Isolation.
Boris Yeltsin was the first president of Russia
Gorbachev was the first president of the former USSR.

North Africa/Southwest Asia
Objectives of this chapter

Appreciate the complexities involved in defining and naming this realm
Describe the history of this realm, stressing its role in the development of many of the world’s leading religions, particularly Islam
Appreciate the significance of Islam for this realm as a whole, and the internal geographic variations of that faith.
Describe the production of oil in this realm, and the impact it has had on the development of countries that contain petroleum supplies

Key terms/word
Cultural hearth:
a source area or innovation center from which cultural traditions are transmittedCultural

Diffusion: The outward spreading of a culture trait from its hearth to other places.
Cultural Ecology: The multiple relationships between human cultures and their natural environment

Mesopotamia: The Tigris-Euphrates plains of present day Iraq-literally “land amidst the rivers”-which is the hearth of civilizationFertile Crescent: An arc stretching from the eastern Mediterranean coast to near the Persian Gulf, site of the early plant domestications and farming innovations
Hydraulic Civilization: Civilization able to control irrigated farming over large hinterlands, often held power over others in less fortuitous location

Spatial Diffusion: The spatial spreading or dissemination of a phenomenon across space through time

Expansion diffusion: The spreading of an idea or innovation through a fixed population in such a way that the number of those adopting grows continuouslyRelocation diffusion: Diffusion by migration wherein innovations are carried by a relocating population

Contagious diffusion: Local-scale diffusion, strongly controlled by distance from the point of originHierarchical diffusion: Macro-scale diffusion through a national or continental-scale urban hierarchy involving the “trickling down” of an innovation from atop a hierarchy to each of the lower levels in turn

OPEC: What countries constitute OPEC?

Basin Irrigation: An ancient irrigation method of the lower Nile Valley involving the trapping and later release of floodwaters

Perennial Irrigation: Modern Egyptian irrigation technique, using dams and levees to store and regulate the use of floodwater throughout the year.

Self Testing questions
Why is “Arab World” a misleading title for this realm?
Why is “Islamic world” just unsatisfactory?
Why is “Middle East” not much of an improvement?
Where and when did Prophet Mohammed live?
What are the five pillars of Islam?
What are the two main types of spatial diffusion?
How important is the Nile to Egypt?
What does Maghreb mean?
Which country of the Maghreb shows the highest GNP?
Name the 5 countries in the middle east
How old is the modern state of Israel?
Name the countries of the Arabian Peninsula
Name the countries of Empire state


Sub-Saharan Africa
Objectives of this section
Understand the interpretation of African Physiography and hydrography that offered by the continental drift hypothesis
Understand the cultural and economic trends that have shaped the regional structuring of West, Equatorial, East, and Southern Africa

Glossary

Medical geography: It is a subdiscipline concerned with the spatial aspects of health and illness

Endemic diseases: diseases in a host population that affects many people in a kind of equilibrium without causing rapid and widespread deaths

Epidemic diseases:
local or regional outbreak of a disease
Pandemic diseases:
An outbreak of diseases that spreads worldwideLand tenure: The way that people own, occupy and use land
Land Alienation:
Expropriation of (often the best) land by a conquering group

Exclave: a bounded (non-island) piece of territory that is part of a particular state but lies separated from it by the territory of another state

Self-testing questions
What is a landlocked state?
What countries in African are landlocked?
What is Apartheid?
How is the disease sleeping sickness transmitted
What percentage of Africans depend on farming for their livelihood?
Why is so little known about Subsaharan African before AD 1500?
What Administrative systems did the European employed in colonial Africa
How many languages are spoken in the realm?
what percentage of the realm’s population is urbanized?

West Africa
What countries are included in this region?
What is ECOWAS?
What is the most populated African country?
Who are Nigeria’s three leading people?
Which was the first of West Africa’s state to become independent? When?

Equatorial Africa
Which countries make up this region?

East Africa
Which countries constitute this region?

Southern Africa
Which countries are included in this region?

South Africa
Who are the Boers?
Name the leading ethnic groups in South Africa today
What is apartheid?

South Asia
South Asia is the world’s second largest population agglomeration, with nearly 1.4 billion people residing in 2002 in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives.

Glossary

Doubling time: period of time required for a population to double its size

Monsoon: the rainy season produced by an onshore airflow that dominates for weeks, occurring in the hot summer month when low atmospheric pressure over the land sucks in moisture-laden air from the adjacent cooler ocean; especially pronounced in India and Bangladesh

Caste system: The strict segregation of people according to the social class in Hindu society, largely on the basis of ancestral occupational status.

Centrifugal forces: a term employed to designate forces that tend to divide a country-such as internal religion, linguistic, ethnic or ideological differences

Centripetal forces : Forces that unite and bond a country together-such as a strong national culture, shared ideological objectives, and a common faith

Self-testing questions
What does population geography study?
Define density, arithmetic density and physiologic density
What countries constitute South Asia?
Who are the Aryans?


EAST ASIA

Glossary
“The people of the Han” Because the Hand dynasty (207 B.C-A.D) was the formative period of china’s traditional culture, most ethnic Chinese still refer to themselves in this way

Confucianism
Ideals deeply ingrained in the Chinese culture and national character, which still linger after more than a half century of communism

Extraterritoriality
Legal concept that the property of one state lying within the boundaries of another actually forms an extension of the first. Used in colonial-era china by European diplomats and others to carve out neighborhood enclaves that were off-limits to residents of the host country

Self testing questions

Which countries constitute Jakota Triangle?
What is an archipelago?
What are China’s three most important rivers?
Who was China’s most influential philosopher and teacher?
What is the concept of extraterritoriality?
What are the stages in Rostow’s development Model?

These are just basic study guide. Please thoroughly study your textbook and the notes on the website.

Good luck