Geography for Dummies - Jerry T Mitchell

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Résumé :

Introduction 1

About This Book 2

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 4

Where to Go from Here 4

Part 1: Getting Grounded: The Geographic Basics 5

Chapter 1: Geography: The Why of Where and Why You Should Care 7

Geography: Making Sense of it All 8

From ancient roots 8

?To modern discipline 9

Exposing Misconceptions: More Than Maps and Trivia 11

The Geographic Advantage 11

What is the capital city of Indonesia? 12

Why is Jakarta the capital of Indonesia? 12

Getting to the Essentials 13

Where things are in the world: The world in spatial terms 14

What locations are like: Places and regions 15

Why things are the way they are: Physical systems 16

Giving that human touch: Human systems 16

Interacting with the world around us: Environment and society 17

Putting geography to use: Uses of geography 18

Chapter 2: Thinking Like a Geographer 19

Changing the Way You Think - Geographically 20

Case Study #1: Where Something is Located 21

A fraction of its former self 22

Where lions hang out 23

What gives with grasslands? 23

Extinction made easy 24

Fewer lions? So what? 25

Summing up 26

Case Study #2: Where Something Should be Located 26

Summing up 27

Looking ahead 28

Chapter 3: Lining Up Locations 29

Welcome to Gridville 29

Feeling Kind of Square 30

Telling Someone Where to Go 31

Relative location 31

Absolute location 32

The best location to use 32

The Global Grid: Hip, Hip, Hipparchus! 32

Avoiding gridlock 33

The naming game 34

Getting Lined Up 36

Latitude 36

Longitude 38

Graticule 39

Minutes and seconds that don't tick away 40

Chapter 4: Truthiness in Mapping 41

Seeing the Light: Map Projections 42

Realizing Exactly How Flat Maps Lie 44

Singapore, please And step on it! 45

Wading through lies in search of the truth 47

Isn't there a truthful map anywhere? 48

The one and only honest map: The globe! 49

Honesty is the best policy, except 49

Telling the truth, but telling it skewed 50

Different Strokes for Different Folks: A World of Projections 51

All in the (map) family 52

Five noteworthy liars 53

Mapping a Cartographic Controversy! 57

Chapter 5: Telling a Spatial Story 59

Why We Need Tal(l) Dogs 60

Taking It to Scale 61

Going the distance 61

Comparing Earth at different scales 62

Showing the Ups and Downs: Topography 65

Spot heights 65

Contour lines 66

Shading or Color 66

Using Symbols to Tell the Story 67

Point symbols 68

Line symbols 68

Area symbols 70

New Ways of Seeing: How Technology has Changed How we Make and Use Maps 72

Geographic Information Systems 72

Global Positioning Systems 74

Remote sensing 75

Making Maps Yourself! 77

Part 2: Let's Get Physical: Land, Water, and Air 79

Chapter 6: Shape-shifting Earth 81

Starting at the Bottom: Inside Earth 82

Moving Continents: Big Pieces of a Big Puzzle 84

Where have you gone, Gondwanaland? 85

Alfred Wegener, mover and shaker 85

Puzzle solved! 86

Getting Down to Theory 86

Making Mountains Out of Molehills 88

Folding the crust 88

Whose fault is it? 90

Plate tectonics: A four-letter word! 91

Experiencing Earthquak...

Biographie:
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Sommaire:
Jerry T. Mitchell, PhD, is Chair of the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina and an avid world traveler....