National Year 13 Geography
Chapters: 7
1. 3.2.1 Global systems and global governance (compulsory)
Globalisation · Global systems · International trade and access to markets · Global governance · The 'global commons' · Globalisation critique · Quantitative and qualitative skills
- Globalisation and Global Governance – Globalisation is the growth of flows of goods, capital, information and labour that tie places together. Technology, transport and trade deals drive it. The flows are unequal: rich economies hold more power, poorer ones have weaker market access. TNCs spread production of one product across many places. Agencies like the UN, WTO, IMF and World Bank try to govern these flows, and treaties protect global commons such as Antarctica. Globalisation brings growth and cheaper goods but also inequality, conflict and environmental harm.
2. 3.2.2 Changing places (compulsory)
The nature and importance of places · Changing places - relationships, connections, meaning and representation · Quantitative and qualitative skills · Place studies
- Sense of Place: How Spaces Become Places – A space becomes a place when people give it meaning. Every place has a location (where it is), a locale (what it is like and what happens there) and a sense of place (how people feel about it). Insiders and outsiders see the same place differently. Places are shaped by endogenous (inside) factors like relief, land use and population, and by exogenous (outside) links: flows of people, money, goods and ideas. Places change over time and are represented in many ways, from census numbers to songs and films.
3. 3.2.3 Contemporary urban environments (Section C option: choose one of urban, population, resources)
Urbanisation · Urban forms · Social and economic issues associated with urbanisation · Urban climate · Urban drainage · Urban waste and its disposal · Other contemporary urban environmental issues · Sustainable urban development · Case studies
- Human Settlements: Rural and Urban Types, Evolution of Towns, Urbanisation and Smart Cities – A settlement is any group of homes where people live, from a single hut to a big city. Rural settlements depend on farming and other primary work; urban settlements depend on industry, trade and services. Villages can be clustered, semi-clustered, hamleted or dispersed. Indian towns grew in three periods: ancient, medieval and modern. The urban share rose from 11% in 1901 to 31% in 2011. Towns are grouped by their main job: administrative, industrial, transport, commercial, mining, garrison, educational, religious and tourist. The Smart Cities Mission (2015) aims to make 100 cities cleaner, safer and easier to live in.
- Urbanisation: Why Cities Grow and How to Make Them Work – Urbanisation is the rise in the share of a country's or the world's people who live in towns and cities. In 1950 about 30% of the world was urban; since 2007 more than half is, and about 68% is expected by 2050. Cities grow by rural–urban migration (push factors from the countryside, pull factors to the city) and by natural increase. Today the fastest growth is in lower-income and newly emerging countries of Asia and Africa, where megacities of 10 million or more are forming; in many rich countries growth is slow and people also move out to suburbs (suburbanisation and counter-urbanisation). Fast growth brings opportunities (jobs, services) and problems (informal housing, traffic, pollution, waste, flooding, the urban heat island). Sustainable urban development tries to fix these with public transport, green spaces, clean water, recycling, affordable housing and renewable energy.
4. 3.2.4 Population and the environment (Section C option)
Introduction · Environment and population · Environment, health and well-being · Population change · Principles of population ecology and their application to human populations · Global population futures · Case studies
- Population and the Environment – People live where the physical setting helps: flat land, water, fertile soil and a mild climate. Populations change through births, deaths and migration; the demographic transition model shows rates falling as countries develop, and age-sex pyramids show the result. Food supply depends on climate, soils and farming systems, and food security needs many strategies. Health shifts from infectious to non-communicable disease (the epidemiological transition), and environment shapes disease, as with malaria. Malthus feared population would outrun food; Boserup and Simon argued people innovate. Carrying capacity, ecological footprints and future projections help us judge whether growth is sustainable.
5. 3.2.5 Resource security (Section C option)
Resource development · Natural resource issues · Water security · Energy security · Mineral security · Resource futures · Case studies
- Resource Security and Sustainable Use of Land and Water – Natural resources are things from nature that people use: water, soil, forests, fish, minerals and energy. Non-renewable resources (coal, oil, metal ores) are stocks that run down; renewable ones (water, forests, fish) refill, but only at a limited speed. Resource security means having enough of a resource, reliably and at a fair price. Shared resources often suffer the tragedy of the commons: each user takes a little more and the resource collapses. Water security and energy security are the two biggest worries; farming uses about 70% of fresh water, and about 80% of world energy still comes from fossil fuels. Sustainable methods, such as drip irrigation, integrated pest management, selective forestry, careful aquaculture, fishing quotas, mine restoration and reducing urban runoff, let us use resources today while leaving enough for the future. The ecological footprint measures how much land and water our lifestyle needs.
- Mineral and Energy Resources of India (Class 12) – Minerals are natural substances with a fixed make-up. Most of India's minerals lie in old plateau rocks, in three belts: the north-eastern plateau, the south-western plateau and the north-western belt. Metallic minerals include iron ore, manganese, bauxite and copper; mica is a non-metallic mineral. Coal, petroleum and natural gas are conventional energy that will run out. Nuclear, solar, wind, tidal, geothermal and bio-energy are non-conventional and cleaner. Because minerals are non-renewable, we must use less, recycle scrap and use substitutes.
6. 3.3 Geography fieldwork investigation (NEA)
Individual investigation
- Geographical Enquiry and Fieldwork – A geographical enquiry is a small research project about a real place. It follows clear steps: ask a question and write a hypothesis; collect primary data (your own measurements and surveys) and secondary data (census, maps, websites) using a fair sampling method; process and present the data in suitable graphs and maps; analyse the pattern and reach a conclusion; then evaluate how reliable the results are. The same skills are used to make decisions: weigh options using evidence and justify the best one. Older students write a longer independent investigation with their own question, primary and secondary data, analysis and conclusions.
7. 3.4 Geographical skills
Core, cartographic and graphical skills · Statistical and ICT skills
- Graphical Representation of Data (Class 12 Geography Practical) – Graphs, diagrams and thematic maps turn tables into pictures, so patterns jump out. Line graphs and polygraphs show change over time. Bar diagrams (simple, multiple, compound) compare items. A pie diagram shows parts of a whole using angles. Flow maps show movement, with arrow width to scale. Thematic maps show one theme over an area: dot maps (1 dot = a fixed number), choropleth maps (areas shaded by value) and isopleth maps (lines joining equal values).
- Data Processing: Mean, Median and Mode (Class 12 Geography Practical) – Data processing turns a long list of numbers into a few useful numbers. The three measures of central tendency are the mean (share equally: total ÷ count), the median (the middle value when data are in order) and the mode (the value that comes most often). Each has a method for ungrouped and grouped data. When data are balanced the three are close; when one or two values are very large or small, the median is the fairer average.