UNIT 1:UNIT 1:Texas Geography Texas Geography (topic)(topic)

How do physical and human How do physical and human characteristics shape our state? characteristics shape our state?

(Essential Question)(Essential Question)

Era of Natural Texas and Its PeopleEra of Natural Texas and Its People

• What is an era? A fixed period of time characterized by particular events, features, developments, or people.

• Why do historians divide history into eras? Historians divide history into eras in order to create blocks of time that have similar characteristics in order to organize and present information about the past.

Era of Natural Texas and Its PeopleEra of Natural Texas and Its People

• TEKS 1A– Identify the major eras in Texas history, describe their

defining characteristics, and explain why historians divide the past into eras, including Natural Texas and its People; Age of Contact; Spanish Colonial; Mexican National; Revolution and Republic; Early Statehood; Texas in the Civil War and Reconstruction; Cotton, Cattle, and Railroads; Age of Oil; Texas in the Great Depression and World War II; Civil Rights and Conservatism; and Contemporary Texas

6 Geographical Questions6 Geographical Questions• Location – Where is it?

• Place – What is it like?

• Regions – How does it compare to other places?

• Human-Environment Interaction – How do humans react to their environment and how does it affect them?

• Human Systems

• Physical Systems

LocationLocation – Where is it?– Where is it?• Absolute Location – The exact location

of a place on the earth’s surface

• Relative Location – The location of a place in relation to other places

• The Absolute location and Relative location of Texas affect it in many ways – How has Texas’ relative location to Mexico affected it? (Left Column) *Turn and talk to a partner

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PlacePlace – What is it like?– What is it like?• Place refers to the physical and

human characteristics of a location

• Physical Characteristics include:– Landforms, Climate, plants, animals

• Human Characteristics include:– Language, Religion, Architecture,

Music, Politics, ways of life

Physical CharacteristicsPhysical Characteristics

Human CharacteristicsHuman Characteristics

RegionsRegions – – How does it compare to other places?How does it compare to other places?

• Geographers divide areas into regions in order to better study them.

• Regions are places that are united based on common characteristics

• Regions can be based on physical, human, business and other characteristics

4 4 NaturalNaturalRegionsRegions

of of TexasTexas

Human-Environment InteractionHuman-Environment Interaction How do humans react to their environment

and how does it affect them? Use, adapt to or change.

• Ex: Pollution

Deforestation

Hurricanes/Tornadoes

Farming

Damming Rivers to make lakes

• Texans have adapted and modified the environment by:– building dams on rivers to harness power for

electricity.– irrigating the farms in the Great Plains region

to yield sufficient crops such as cotton, wheat, rice, corn, etc.

Human SystemsHuman Systems• Movement - How people move through

the environment

• Cultural Diffusion - new ideas brought by migrating people become widely accepted. Examples?

• People bring ideas and goods with them when they move from one place to another.

Physical SystemsPhysical Systems• Geographers analyze physical systems

such as mountains, volcanoes, hurricanes, glaciers to see how they interact with and shape places and regions.

• They also study plant and animal ecosystems that depend on each other and their surroundings in places and regions for their survival.

Movement in TexasMovement in Texas

Roy BedichekRoy Bedichek

He was an author and speaker; considered a “Naturalist”

who traveled and

documented the

Texas landscape for

over 30 years. Died in

1959.

Texas has the most varied climate of any other state in the U.S. It even varies greatly from

one area of the state to the next.

Absolute LocationAbsolute Location• Texas lies in what are called the middle latitudes,

the region about midway between the equator and the north pole.

• Because of this absolute location of Texas being not very far north of the equator, it has mild winters, and because it

is not very far south of the north pole is has mild summers.

NorthersNorthers• Sudden, icy blasts of cold air, called

northers, extend south from Canada and sweep across the plains of Texas.

• Despite its overall warmth, Texas is subject to periods of cold weather.

StormsStorms• Violent storms form when cool air from the north

collides with moist warm air from the Gulf of Mexico.

• Because Texas is on the Gulf, destructive storms such as hurricanes sometimes sweep across the state.

Relative LocationRelative Location• Because Texas is on the gulf coast, breezes

from the Gulf of Mexico cool Texas in the summer and warm it in the winter.

• Moisture from the Gulf gives Texas a lot of its rainfall. However,

some parts of Texas are so far from The Gulf it has little effect on climate there. In the hot, dry areas, water is a precious, natural resource.

ElevationElevation• Elevation also affects

the Texas climate. The temperature cools by 3 degrees every 1000-foot rise in elevation.

• The temperature rises as elevation decreases

Texas Growth by EthnicityTexas Growth by Ethnicity

Texas Population 1800-1850Texas Population 1800-1850

Texas Population 1850-2040Texas Population 1850-2040

TX Population 1800-2000TX Population 1800-2000

Texas Metropolitan GrowthTexas Metropolitan Growth

TX Population By AgeTX Population By Age