Geography

Purpose and Structure

The study of Geography is a structured way of exploring, analysing and understanding the characteristics of places that make up our world. Geographers are interested in key questions concerning places and geographic phenomena: What is there? Where is it? Why is it there? What are the effects of it being there? How is it changing over time and how could, and should, it changes in the future? How is it different from other places and phenomena? How are places and phenomena connected?

Unit 1: Hazards and disasters 

Hazards represent the potential to cause harm to people and or the environment, whereas disasters are defined as serious disruptions of the functionality of a community at any scale, involving human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts. Hazards include a wide range of situations including those within local areas, such as fast-moving traffic or the likelihood of coastal erosion, to regional and global hazards such as drought and infectious disease. Students examine the processes involved with hazards and hazard events, considering their causes and impacts, human responses to hazard events and the interconnections between human activities and natural phenomena, including the impact of climate change.

Unit 2: Response to hazards and disasters 

Tourism involves the movement of people travelling away from and staying outside of their usual environment for more than 24 hours but not more than one consecutive year (United Nations World Tourism Organization definition). The scale of tourist movements since the 1950s and its predicted growth has had and continues to have a significant impact on local, regional and national environments, economies and cultures. The travel and tourism industry are directly responsible for a significant number of jobs globally and generates a considerable portion of global GDP.

The study of tourism at local, regional and global scales emphasises the interconnection within and between places as well as the impacts, issues and challenges that arise from various forms of tourism. For example, the interconnections of climate, landforms, culture and climate change help determine the characteristics of a place that can prove attractive to tourists. The growth of tourism at all scales requires appropriate management to ensure it is environmentally, socially, culturally and economically sustainable.

Unit 3: Changing the land

Two broad areas of geographical change include: change to land cover and change to land use. Land cover includes biomes such as forest, grassland, tundra, bare lands and wetlands, as well as land covered by ice and water. Land cover is the natural state of the biophysical environment developed over time as a result of the interconnection between climate, soils, landforms and flora and fauna and, increasingly, interconnections with human activity. Natural land cover is altered by many processes such as geomorphological events, plant succession and climate change. People have modified land cover to produce a range of land uses to satisfy needs such as housing, resource provision, communication and recreation. Land use change is a characteristic of both urban and rural environments and occurs at both spatial and temporal scales.

Unit 4: Human population: trends and issues 

The growth of the world’s population from 2.5 billion in 1950 to over 7 billion since 2010 has been on a scale without parallel in human history. Much of the current growth is occurring within developing countries while the populations in many developed countries are either growing slowly or are declining. Populations change through growth and decline in fertility and mortality, and by people moving to different places. 

The Demographic Transition Model and population structure diagrams provide frameworks for investigating the key dynamics of population. Population movements such as voluntary and forced movements over long or short terms add further complexity to population structures and to environmental, economic, social, and cultural conditions. Many factors influence population change, including the impact of government policies, economic conditions, wars and revolution, political boundary changes and hazard events.