Geography in Bite-sized Chunks

by Will Williams

Overview

Encompassing the essentials of both the physical world and the human world,Geography in Bite-sized Chunksis an absorbing,accessible guide to all things geographical.

Have you forgotten all you ever learned about the essentials of climate and weather? Barely remember what a tectonic plate is and what it does? In this book you’ll find the answers to these questions and many more – broken down into fascinating bite-sized chunks.

Written in a highly accessible and engaging style, the subject is broken down into fundamental topics including the physical world, the human world, global issues, climate change, industry and the hydrological cycle. As a concise guide to key geographical topics, this book is the perfect starting point for anyone who is curious and concerned about planet earth, or who just wants to refresh the long-forgotten knowledge they learned at school.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789295917
Publisher:	Michael O'Mara Books
Publication date:	03/12/2024
Series:	Bite-Sized Chunks
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.75(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Will Williams has an MA (Hons) in Geography from the University of Oxford and has taught geography for many years.

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION
When you took off for the annual ‘Family Summer
Holiday’, it would be your father who would navigate:
navigateanddrive.Youandyoursibling(s)would
fight in the back of the car and your mother took sole
responsibility for ‘The Map’. This meant that when you
needed a detour or (whisper it) got lost, it was Mum who,
unfairly, would be to blame. Not that Dad ever looked at
the map; he preferred the method of learning the roads
and the sequence of settlements en route. Nowadays, folks
just plug in the destination location, set the satnav and off
they go, hopefully avoiding low bridges and dead ends.
This vignette encapsulates the role of geography in
everyday life and unfortunately demonstrates the limits
of its reach into many people’s lives. Avoiding all of the
talk about how the world of work has changed and how
we have all become more isolated from people in our
own communities: just think of the maps! Be it Lewis
and Clark in the USA, Flinders across Australia or
Livingstone in Africa, the great explorers didn’t set out
to create maps for us to then downgrade them in the face
of technology.
Mapsarewheremostpeoplefirstencounter
geography and though satnav demonstrates the limits
of people’s engagement now, maps have made a pretty
spectacular comeback. Modern geographers go nuts over
‘geographical information systems’ (GIS) and you too
may, probably unwittingly, have become a geographer
at least once in your working day. The Internet is awash
with maps: maps with data on them, maps that show you
where your friends (or at least their mobile phones) are,
maps that show you when your house will flood, maps
that locate your nearest restaurant, maps in fact that can
show anything and everything. So geography is here to
stay, a vital part of all our lives.
To be a geographer in the opening decades of the
twenty-first century is to be on the one hand excited
about the endless possibilities for travel, study and
fulfilment, yet on the other to be frustrated with the lack
of true joined-up thinking out there. Geography has a
unique and valuable role to play in bringing together the
strands that surround complex issues and produce clarity
of focus. Nowhere can this be seen in more sharp relief
than in the debate over climate change.
Across the world we know that use of renewable
resources must be a foundation for our descendants. We
know too that, locally, weather patterns have changed
over time as the climate has varied in the past. Also, we
know that carbon dioxide levels have rocketed upwards
since we have helped move carbon from its stores in the
ground, up into the atmosphere. But we don’tactually
know that the climate is changing because of man. It
probably is, but it doesn’t matter. The reality is that due to
dwindling supplies of fossil fuels sometime in the future,
we will have to change our reliance.
And it’s geography that plays a part in all facets of this
debate, and geographers who are perhaps uniquely placed
to spot the simple coherent pathway to explanation.
Be it economic concerns over the rising price of oil,
environmental concerns over the impact of fossil fuel
production and combustion, scarcity concerns where
national supplies will be cut off or political concerns over
one country’s influence on others – it doesn’t matter.
In the end we need to become more sustainable, hence
we need to adapt to renewable resources and we need
geographers to bring together the disparate fields of
enquiry to provide the ideas for moving to the next stage
of development.
This issue is our modern ‘Malthusian debate’ (see
p.117), that cornerstone of public consciousness that
yields column inches of erudite copy and its fair share
of mumbo-jumbo too. We now have the twenty-four-
hour news network and the live blogosphere to keep the
debate swirling around the world.
Who would have thought that when you were learning
your US state capitals, your longest rivers in the world
and your flags of the UN you were laying down the
foundations for a subject that would become more and
more relevant as the world has grown in complexity?
 

Table of Contents

CONTENTS
Foreword by Caroline Taggart7
Introduction11

THE PHYSICAL WORLD
Rivers16
Coasts41
Tectonics48
Climate and Weather79
Global Issues97

THE HUMAN WORLD
World Population116
Settlement137
Industry and Energy153
Tourism159
Development168

Afterword181
Further Reading183
Acknowledgements185
Index187