Place studies
Character of a place refers to the physical and human geographic characteristics that distinguish a particular place. Since these features can change over time the character of a place can change over time, too.
Place studies must apply the knowledge acquired through engagement with prescribed specification content and thereby further enhance understanding of the way students’ own lives and those of others are affected by continuity and change in the nature of places. Sources must include qualitative and quantitative data to represent places in the past and present. If possible, students can also conduct fieldwork in their local area. Depending on your location, students may observe examples of urban expansion and the environmental changes that occur in the form of newly created subdivisions, residential apartment developments and business service development. These are such things as: shopping centres; office complexes; business parks or office towers; road and rail infrastructure or additional amenities such as schools and parks.
Suitable data sources could include:
- statistics, maps
- geo-located data
- geospatial data, including geographic information systems (GIS) applications
- photographs
- text, from varied media
- audio-visual media
- artistic representations
- oral sources, such as interviews
Abiotic environmental factors. All components of inanimate nature are included. They are the landforms and rocks the sunlight, temperature, relative humidity and other components of the climate and the environment, such as soil aeration, soil fertility, natural radiation, etc.
Biotic environmental factors. This is the totality of the impact of the vital activity of some organisms on the existence and development of other organisms. Some organisms serve as food for other organisms. Plants (producers) serve as food for herbivores (first-order consumers). They, in turn, serve as food for predators (second-order consumers). Or some organisms are the habitat of other organisms (host – parasite).
Anthropogenic environmental factors. The set of human activities that cause a change in the environment. One of the consequences of the impact of anthropogenic factors is the change in the habitats of organisms, which threatens their existence. The history of mankind is the history of his labor. Its beginning is hunting followed by the emergence of agriculture, industry, transport, etc., which leads to a strong change in the nature of the Earth. These modifications have an impact on human health and economic activity. This raises the problem of environmental protection through the rationalization of human activity and, above all, the rational use of natural resources. The identification of anthropogenic factors as a kind of ecological factors makes sense of the connection of ecology with environmental protection and gives this science an applied character in various terms – geoecology, engineering geoecology, agroecology, medical ecology and others.
