Pgs vii - xii

Physical Geography

• Maps
• Weather
• Climate
• Landforms
• Natural resources
• Human impacts on env't

Cultural Geography

• Population
• Culture (Introduction)
• Language
• Migration & spatial behavior
• Political geography
• Agriculture & food

MAPS

After reading the conceptual introduction in your atlas, you should understand:

• basic concepts of map projection
• how to identify and interpret a map's scale and legend
• how to read and interpret various types of thematic maps

In addition, the lecture will cover how geographic location, distance, and direction can all be described in either absolute or relative terms; you should be familiar with these concepts and able to distinguish advantages and disadvantages of different types of descriptions.

Links to Some Interesting Maps

The Walmart and Target expansion maps are great examples of dot density maps.

The New York Times has some wonderful examples of maps. I showed the Olympics medals and the global spending as examples of cartograms in class.

The 2008 presidential election cartograms are also interesting. The professor who developed those maps also wrote a book called The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live you can view seventeen images from this book (or buy it if you're fascinated).

You can see a few more images and additional information about variety of maps created for the 2004 Sports Illustrated Atlas project.

For those who are interested, you can read the background information about the happiness map ("subjective well-being").