Room 611: Monday, September 13. 2021

Today's schedule is ABCD

Of note... in Criminology there will be a Grade 11 meeting @ 9:10 am in the Gym and in Physical Geography there will be a Grade 12 meeting @ 10:45 am in the Gym...

A Block Criminology - Today we'll begin our look at the nature vs. nurture debate by focusing on the history of psychological and sociological criminology and our brief history of criminology (from B.C.E up to and including the current theories, which will help you with your first activity in the course).

B Block Physical Geography - Today we'll move on to systems. This is an important class as everything we look at in geography will be through the lens of systems science. We'll look at systems, feedback, equilibrium, and thresholds. You'll have four questions to work on today (What is a System; Define and give examples of Open and Closed Systems; Explain with examples what Positive and Negative Feedback is; and Explain in terms of systems what Dynamic Equilibrium, Thresholds, and Metastable Equilibrium are).

University of Twente System Theory
Principa Cybernetica Web What is Systems Theory
Fundamentals of Physical Geography Introduction to Systems Theory
Human Ecology Chapter 2 Populations and Feedback Systems

C/D Blocks Social and Environmental Sciences - Today, in room 115, you'll have the morning to work on your Towhee Creek Watershed map from your field work. You are representing data in a graphic format (encoding rather than decoding).

Okay, first let’s get this out of the way right now. I’m a cartophile. I love maps. When I was a kid I immediately took the maps out of my parent’s National Geographic subscription when the magazine arrived in the mail. I used to love the Canadian Automobile Association flip maps that my parents would get for our many road trips south into the United States. I always had an atlas in my room. And I read books about maps. Look at letters 2-3-and-4 of the word Cartography…there must be a reason why I’d point that out...Paul Hardy from ESRI (a massively influential GIS company) wrote “Cartography has been defined as the art, science, technology, and craft of making maps and is a discipline going back 30,000 years to cave paintings locating woolly mammoths”

Professor Michael Peterson from the University of Nebraska (Omaha) states that:

The purpose of a map is to show the world at a smaller scale so that we are able to get a sense of where things are located in relation to one another, and that we can have a better understanding of different patterns in geographical space. Maps are also valuable in that they are useful for gaining knowledge of patterns in geographic space and expanding our understanding of navigation. They are important to show trends in things as weather, population and growth. They are a visual source where spatial messages are transmitted from a cartographer to everyday people like you and me.

Maps don’t just help us get from place to place. They help us understand Earth and how its physical processes and features can shape human activity and vice versa. When data is organized by its locations, we can see geographic patterns that allow us to develop a better understanding of how systems work and interact with one another. But...

From City Lab’s “When Maps Lie” by Andrew Wiseman…

Maps are representations of the world where certain things are highlighted and certain things removed. This often is a good thing: if there’s a map for a specific purpose, it should only include things that are helpful (road types, names and cities on a road atlas, for example) or maybe for clarity’s sake you reduce how jagged or complicated something is, like the lines on a subway map. But it can be hard to tell when something has been manipulated or removed, so it’s important to think about the choices the cartographer could have made.

From National Geographic in an interview with Frank Jacobs…How to be a Critical Map Reader

“A map is always a bit of a lie because there is always something that is not on the map,” Jacobs says. “For instance, the typical map is flat while the world is round; there’s already one whole dimension that’s missing. When you read a map, you’re ingesting the point of view of the mapmaker. A map is not as blindly objective as a photograph; it’s an artifact that has been crafted to tell you a story”. The first step to becoming a critical map reader is to always question the intentions of the mapmaker.

The main question that you can ask with any map is, ‘Why?’ Why did someone make this? What’s the point? What’s the story and who is telling it?” Jacobs says. “Every map is an attempt to convince you of something; it’s like an argument. It’s in your best interest to know who is trying to convince you…Take any map that surprises you, that seems somehow ‘strange.’ Why does it stop you in your tracks? What is different about it? Can you relate why it attracts your attention to who made it, and to what purpose?” Jacobs says. “If cartography is the art of wrapping up a story in a map, then map reading is like a journey of discovery for that story.”

So maps are a Geographic media and all media has a bias. What you choose to put on a map shows your bias. Remember your purpose is to graphically depict scientific data (your observations) that will help answer the "big question" Is this creek healthy?

If you want to go Analogue...we'll have paper for you and if you'd like to go digital we'll have a mobicart of computers for you...in that vein

Use Story Map in Knight Lab and you can use Mapbox to help. You can also create a map in Google Earth online as well