LESSON 8.2 Geographical concepts and skills
LEARNING INTENTION By the end of this lesson you should be able to: • identify, explain and apply the seven geography concepts using the acronym SPICESS • describe the three geographical skills.
8.2.1 Introduction Geographical concepts help you to make sense of your world. You can use these concepts to both investigate and understand the world you live in. The concepts help you to think geographically. The seven major concepts are space, place , interconnection , change , environment , sustainability and scale . You will use the seven concepts to investigate two topics: water as a resource, and place and liveability.
FIGURE1 A way to remember these seven concepts is to think of the term SPICESS.
Space
Interconnection
Scale
Environment
S
P
I
C
E
S
S
Place
Change
Sustainability
What is space? The concept of space is about where things are located and distributed on the surface of the Earth . The space can be organised and managed by people or it can simply be where it is located in the natural environment. When referring to space in geography, we can have absolute or relative location. • Absolute location is the unique location of a site or geographical feature. For example, the absolute location of Ballarat is at 32 ° .33’ South latitude and 143 ° .51’ East longitude. • Relative location is the location of a place or feature in relation to other places. It can be described by direction and distance from other places and features. For example, Ballarat is 110 km WNW of Melbourne. What is place? The world is made up of places. We understand its places by studying their variety, how they inþuence our lives and how we create and change them. Places may be natural (such as an undisturbed wetland) or highly modiýed (such as a large city). Place refers to how people perceive a location. You often have mental images and perceptions of places — your city, suburb, town or neighbourhood. They may be very different from someone else’s perceptions of the same places.
230 Jacaranda Humanities Alive 7 Victorian Curriculum Third Edition
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