Lesson video

Hello and welcome.

My name is Ms. Harrison.

I'm so excited to be learning with you today.

Today's lesson is called GIS: Visualising the Human and Physical Geography of India.

Grab everything you might need for today's lesson and let's begin our learning.

By the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to use geographic information systems, GIS, to visualise the human and physical geography of India.

Before we can begin this learning, we need to define the keywords that we'll be using throughout today's lesson.

The keywords in today's lesson are visualise, GIS, geographic information system, and layer.

Visualise, this is to form a mental or physical image of something making it easier to understand.

GIS, this is a computer mapping system that captures and displays geographic data to help understand spatial patterns and layer.

This is a visual representation of geographic data on a digital map such as population density, income levels, or land use.

Well done.

Now that we've defined these keywords, we can begin our learning.

The first learning cycle we are going to investigate in today's lesson is visualising the size and location of India.

All of these photographs you can see on the screen were taken in different parts of India.

Pretty amazing.

There's a snowy mountain in the north, busy city traffic, the famous Taj Mahal, desert scenes and even tea plantations on hills.

These shows us how varied India is.

Geographers use photographs like these to help them understand what a country is like.

By looking at pictures, they can learn about the landscape, climate and where people live.

For example, photos of crowded streets and tall buildings tell us that an area has a high population, a lots of people live there.

Meanwhile, if we see empty deserts or remote mountainous areas, we know the population is much lower.

Photographs can also help us visualise the size of a country.

India has so many different environments because it is a really big country, nearly 10 times bigger than the UK.

So when geographers study photographs, they not just look at how pretty pictures are, they're using them as clues to learn more about the size, population and what life is like in that country.

Photographs are one of the most useful tools for geographers to use to understand a place.

They show us what the land looks like, how people live, and even help us to spot clues about population or environment.

But photographs aren't the only way geographers visualise or picture information.

Can you think of any other methods we might use? Pause the video here whilst do you have a think and press play when you're ready to continue.

Excellent.

Yes, we can also use graphs to show numbers and trends like how population changes over time.

Diagrams can show processes like how far river forms or how monsoons affect India, and of course maps.

These help us to know where things are, like cities, mountains, or climate zones.

So while photographs give us a snapshot, we must combine them with graphs, diagrams and maps, and then we get a much clearer, fuller understanding of the world around us.

I would like you to name a method that can be used to visualise geographic information.

You may be able to think of four or more.

Pause the video here whilst you have a think and press play when you're ready to continue.

Excellent, you might have come up with graphs, diagrams, maps, and photographs.

Well done.

Now let's talk about GIS.

That stands for geographic information systems. A GIS is a digital tool that geographers use to place different types of data on top of map.

We call this overlaying data.

For example, you might start with a simple map of India, then using GIS, you can add a layer showing population, another for rainfall, and another showing where schools or hospitals are.

By looking at all these layers together, we can start to visualise patterns like where most people live or where the land is dry.

And because it's digital, GIS helps us to track how things change over time, like how a city has grown or how land has been used differently.

So GIS is like a superpowered map that helps us understand the world in more detail.

Now we are going to use a spatial online tool called ArcGIS Geography Visualizer.

This tool lets us explore India's geography in a really interactive way.

With just a few clicks, we can zoom in and out, switch between different types of maps and add layers of data.

Using this tool, we can see exactly where India is in the world and how big it really is, especially compared to other countries like the UK.

It's much more powerful than just looking at a flat map in a textbook.

We'll actually get to move around the map ourselves and discover patterns about India's land and people.

<v Instructor>In this recording, we're going to use</v> the ArcGIS Geography Visualizer, which is a GIS application to visualise the location and size of India.

Now on the visualizer, we can see at the bottom, this toolbar, we've got something called base maps and that can change the base map that you can see.

At the moment, this is a world imagery map, which is just physical geography and the problem with this is we can't see the country borders on it.

So I'm going to change this.

I've clicked on base maps in the bottom toolbar.

I'm going to change it to a chartered territory map.

There's different ones we can use, but I think this is going to be useful for us because we've got lots of geographical reference points like lines of latitude here.

I'm then going to cross this because we don't need that for now.

And if I wanted to and if I couldn't find India, I could use the magnifying glass in the top left hand corner and I could type in India.

However, I think we can see India, can't we? It's kind of in the middle of the screen.

And using this map, it allows us to describe the location of India.

And a good thing about this map is it's got lots of reference points we can use.

So here we can see the Equator.

So I can say that India is north of the Equator, is in the northern hemisphere.

I can see that the Tropic of Cancer runs through India.

So I can give geographical reference points using lines of latitude.

I can also, because the countries are on here, I can also talk about which country's board rates.

So we can see that Pakistan borders, India to the northwest.

If I zoom in, I can see that this is Nepal bordering it to the northeast.

We've got Bangladesh to the east here.

And actually if we look at India, we can see that it's actually got this territory right the way to the other side of Bangladesh.

So we can see that it India also borders with Myanmar, it has borders with China, it has borders with Bhutan.

Now you may think we can actually also think about the size or visualise the size of India by just looking at this chartered territory map and comparing it visually with other countries, maybe looking at it relative to the United Kingdom, or let's look at it compared to Greenland.

Well, maybe India looks like it fits into Greenland, you know, four times or something.

However, there's an issue with this.

And the issue comes with changing a spherical object like a globe and trying to project it onto a 2D surface, a flat map.

And we can do that in lots of different ways, but every way we do it, it slightly distorts the map.

Often it makes things bigger or smaller or changes the shape, and it depends on which projection we use as to how the map will look.

Now on this map, this is based on the Mercator Projection and we can see that Greenland looks absolutely huge on here.

India, it looks relatively small.

But a good way of checking that is to use this measuring tool.

And the measuring tool is in the bottom toolbar.

So I'm going to click on this and I'm going to click on measure.

And in this measuring pop-up, I'm going to click on where it says measure line.

And I now need to go over to Greenland.

So what I'm going to do is I need to pan over to Greenland.

So I'm going to hold the left button of the mouse, I'm gonna hold that down, I'm gonna drag the screen across and we can see Greenland's there and it looks absolutely huge, doesn't it? In comparison to India.

So because I've clicked this measuring line, I can click on the north of Greenland and what I'm going to do is I'm gonna change the unit to metric to keep it in kilometres, and I'm gonna take it to the south of Greenland.

And you can see there, it's about 2,616 kilometres.

If I want to double click, it keeps that there so I can then move the mouse and it'll stay there.

So, okay, I'll make a note of that.

It's just over 2,600 kilometres.

I'm now going to pan over and we're gonna compare that with India.

India looks so much smaller, doesn't it? So much so, I'm going to zoom in and I'm going to do the same here.

So I'm going to do a new measurement, which will take that old measuring line away.

I'm going to click on measure line.

Now a complication in India is, you can see these red dotted lines in the north.

This is disputed territory around Kashmir and different countries claim this land.

So we're just going to go just to the south of this dotted line here.

I'm going to click on it to start the measurement.

Again, we're back in Imperial, so I'm going to change that to metric.

I'm going to come to the south of India, I'm going to double click on it and what you can see, 2,765 kilometres.

Believe it's or not, India is actually longer north to south than Greenland.

And if I zoom out, then the measurement will have gone away because I've done a new measurement.

But you can see just the difference in how they look.

But the measuring tool allows us to actually focus on the reality by giving us a really clear distance in kilometres from north to south.

So that measuring tool is really useful for being able to compare the sizes of countries around the world.

<v ->The magnifying glass symbol allows you to A, zoom in,</v> B, change the base map, C, search for places.

Pause the video here whilst you attempt this task and press play when you're ready to continue.

Excellent, the magnifying glass symbol allows you to search for places, well done.

Each circle on the map has a diameter of 800 kilometres.

This shows that A, India is much bigger than Greenland, B, India is about the same size as Greenland, or C, India is much smaller than Greenland.

Pause the video here whilst you attempt this task and press play when you're ready to continue.

Excellent, the answer is B, India is about the same size as Greenland.

Well done.

I would now like you to open the link on your screen and I want you to complete the following tasks.

I would like you to click on base maps in the bottom toolbar and select chartered territory map from the options in the pop-up.

I would then like you to zoom in on India and look carefully at the countries it borders and its position was reference to the Equator and the Tropics of Cancer.

I would then like you to describe the location of India with reference to the Equator and other countries.

I would like you to use directional terms, such as north, east, south, and west.

Pause the video here whilst you attempt this task and play when you're ready to continue.

Excellent, well done in this task.

Before we go through our answers, I want you to complete another task.

I would like you to click on the measure tool from the bottom toolbar, measure the length of India from north to south and compare this with the UK and one other country.

I would then like you to describe how the size of India compares with that of the UK.

You may wish to experiment with the measure area tool in order to do this.

Pause the video here whilst you attempt this task and press play when you're ready to continue.

Excellent, let's check our answers.

For the first question, the chartered territory map that should be used to visualise India's location looks like this.

Your answer for the next question should be, India is located in the northern hemisphere, north of the Equator.

It is situated in South Asia and shares its borders with several countries.

To the north, India's bordered by China, Nepal, and Bhutan.

To the west, it shares a border with Pakistan.

To the east, India is boarded by Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Well done on this task.

Let's check our other answers.

For question two A, your screen should look like this when measuring India.

And for two B, the length of India from north to south is around 2,750 kilometres, whereas the UK is around 870 kilometres from north to south.

Well done on this task, you've done brilliantly.

The next learning cycle we're going to explore is visualising the human geography of India.

GIS isn't just for looking at the land, it also helps us explore human geography, which means learning about where people live and how they use the land.

What really important part of India's human geography is its population.

How many people live there? And how that population is spread out or distributed across the country.

With GIS, we can add layers to a digital map that shows exactly where the population is densest, like in big cities such as Mumbai or New Delhi and where it's more spread out like in rural or mountainous areas.

By using GIS to visualise this, we can start to understand why people live where they do and how that connects to things like jobs, transport and the environment.

Lucas has said, "There are over 1.

4 billion people living in India." What is the population of India? Pauses video here whilst you have a think and press play when you're ready to continue.

Excellent, the population of India is 1.

4 billion.

Well done.

One of the best things about using GIS is that we can add different layers to help us understand more about a place.

When we want to explore India's population, we don't just look at a plain map.

Instead we can add layers like population density, which shows us how crowded different areas are, a human footprint, which tells us how much impact people are having on the environment, or city size, using circles or colours to show how many people live in each city.

Each of these layers gives us a different piece of the puzzle.

When we combine them, we get a much clearer picture of where people live in India and why.

<v Instructor>In this video, we're going to use</v> ArcGIS's geography visualizer, which is a GIS, to visualise the population of India.

The way we're going to do that is we're going to add some layers onto this map.

So first of all, I'm going to zoom a little bit into India so we can see in a bit more detail.

And you can see at the moment, we're on this imagery hybrid map, which is fine, I could change it to a chartered territory map if I like.

I want to see India a little bit more clearly without physical geography on it.

And what I'm then going to do is I'm going to click on this open map and this has actually got some layers of data which are already, have already been created for us just to put on.

And there's three up here which can tell us something about the population of India.

So first of all, I'm going to click on the human footprint.

And I'm gonna come back to India here.

And what will happen is it will change the core of the map so that we can see it, see this data.

Now if I only click on the legend button at the bottom, it tells us what these colours actually mean.

And where we've got a darker colours, that means that there's a high human footprint.

That means there's lots of people living in there and there's lots of impact by humans.

So it might be lots of farming, lots of urban spaces, lots of roads, lots of infrastructure, and a high population density.

If I want to know a little bit more about that, if I click on map layers, I can then actually find out a touch more information by clicking on the description and that tells me exactly what this actually means.

So we can see here, we look at India relative to other countries, we can see it's got a, must have a lot of people who are living in India and changing the landscape to some degree it's quite similar, I suppose to the UK in that or certainly the southeast of the UK and these areas around Germany and northern France, maybe parts of eastern seaboard of the United States, but it's significantly more coloured in than lots of other countries around the world as you can see.

So that tells us something about the population.

We're going to look at a different map now.

I can look at light pollution and this is if you imagine lights at night lighting up the sky.

And if we zoom right out again, we can see where in the world has got lots of lights, which signifies lots of people and lots of buildings and roads being built and we can make out India very clearly on this map, can't we here? The third way on this JS is to look at the global cities and these circles that will come up show the different major cities around the world.

If I look at the legend here, it tells you the bigger the circle, the higher the population.

So we can see where the mega cities, the cities over 10 million, you now, these huge circles, they're all enormous mega cities where they are in the world.

And we can see that India has a huge number of really, really large cities.

Even the small circles are really looking at cities of over 250,000.

And we can see these areas of New Delhi here, the capital, Mumbai, the major cities of the world.

So that's three ways that we can visualise the population of India.

<v ->Which of these statements is correct?</v> Is it A, a high human footprint indicates a low population density, B, a low human footprint indicates a high population density, or C, a high human footprint indicates a high population density? Pause the video here whilst you decide and press play when you're ready to continue.

Excellent, the answer is C, a high human footprint indicates a high population density.

Well done.

When we use the cities of the world layer in ArcGIS, we can click on these big circles that represent major cities.

Each one opens up a pop-up box like the one you can see here for New Delhi.

That shows how the city's population has changed over time.

This graph shows us something really interesting.

New Delhi had around 2.

2 million people in 1960 and by 2020, it had grown to over 30 million.

That's an impressive increase.

By using this feature in GIS, we can clearly visualise population growth and compare different cities across India.

I would like you to open the link and then I would like you to complete the following tasks.

I'd like you to click on the base maps in the bottom toolbar and select chartered territory map from the options in the pop-up box.

I then want you to click on the add layer function in the bottom toolbar and select cities of the world in the pop-up box, I want you to locate New Delhi and Mumbai, click on their proportional circles and compare their growth rate.

I then want you to describe how much new Delhi has grown in population since 1960.

Use numbers in your answer.

Pause the video here whilst you attempt this task and press play when you're ready to continue.

Excellent, let's check our answers.

For your first question, your screen will look like this when you compare the population growth of New Delhi and Mumbai.

For your second question, New Delhi's population has grown rapidly from around 2.

2 million in 1960 to 30.

2 million in 2020.

Well done on this task.

We're now going to explore our final learning cycle of today's lesson, visualising the physical geography of India.

What physical landscapes come to mind when you think of India? Pause video here was do you have a think and press play when you're ready to continue.

Excellent, you may have had different landscapes from your classmates as India is very diverse, but we've got the Thar desert and Indian Himalayas.

Well done if you manage to identify those.

The ArcGIS visualizer doesn't just show us cities and population.

It also helps us to understand India's physical geography.

There are different layers we can turn on to see things like soil, what kind of soil is in different parts of India, precipitation, how much rainfall each area gets, temperature, how hot or cold it is across the country, and land cover, whether the land is covered by forests, farmland, desert, or something else.

Each of these layers helps geographers understand what the land is like and how people might live or use that land.

When we explore them together, we get a much deeper view of India's natural environment.

What different layers help visualise the physical geography of India on the ArcGIS visualizer? Pause the video here whilst you attempt this task and press play when you're ready to continue.

Excellent, they are soil, precipitation, temperature, and land cover.

Well done if you identified those correctly.

The ArcGIS visualizer has a range of tools that allow us to visualise India's physical geography.

We can use a measuring tool to help and a 3D view.

<v Instructor>In this video.

</v> we're going to use the geography visualizer to visualise the physical geography of India.

Now there's quite a number of layers of data that we can use to investigate the physical geography of India, but in this video, we're gonna focus on just making the most of the base maps.

So the base map I've got at the moment is the hybrid, imagery hybrid base map, which is essentially a hybrid, a combination of human geography, so some boundaries of countries, the names of countries and cities, and also some physical geography.

So you can see the satellite imagery of the landscape and it's gonna be really useful for us.

Now the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to use this magnifying glass button in the top left hand corner and I'm going to type in New Delhi, which is the capital of India.

So we're going to go there.

And you can see now it's taken us, zoomed quite into a place in New Delhi.

I'm going to zoom back out.

I'm using the scroll wheel of the mouse here.

And what we're going to do is we're going to investigate along a transect of India.

Now transect is basically a fancy way of saying line.

We're going to look along a line and we're going to see what we can find out about the physical geography at different points along that line.

So the line we're going to take is we're gonna take a line from New Delhi and we're going to take it to the Northeast.

And if I just scroll out a little bit, so lemme scroll in, we can see here, this Nanda Devi National Park.

Okay, now this transect, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to measure this transect.

So it'll give me an idea of kind of how far we're talking between these two points.

Okay, so if I use the measuring tool, I can click on this button here in the toolbar at the bottom, can click on measure and it will bring up, now you can see this little cross on the screen with an orange dot.

If I click at one point, I'm going to go just from the outskirts of New Delhi here and I'm gonna take it all the way up to the Nanda Devi National Park, I'm gonna find somewhere in it and you can see that that's, it's about 200 miles.

Perfect, so you can see if I just click on that, double click on that point here, it'll keep that point in place.

And oh, I've gone a little bit far there.

Now this line will disappear in a second, but now we know this distance is about 200 miles.

So what I'm going to do is I'm gonna draw this transect line on it so I know where we're talking about.

So I'm going to click on sketch and you can see that that measuring tool is now disappeared.

I'm going to, what appears is a box in the top right hand corner of the screen saying sketch.

And I'm going to choose the line.

So I'm going to click on line, I'm going to change the colour of this line to a nice blue.

I'm gonna make the size of the line slightly bigger so I can see it a little bit easier.

That makes it a four.

And I'm going to click on roughly, it doesn't matter exactly, but I'm going to click on the same transect line as I chose before.

So into this, between the outskirts of New Delhi to Nanda Devi National Park, and we know that that is about 200 miles here.

And again, I've done a double click.

If I click only once it, it starts making new lines or new segments of the line off it.

But if I double click, it keeps that line in place.

So I'm now going to add some points along this line.

I'm gonna choose five points along the line and we're gonna try and keep them about an equal distance apart.

So here's my first one and here's my second one.

And if I want to, I can actually just measure this if I'm unsure just to check.

So that would be about 50 miles.

So I can see that would be 50 miles here.

So I'm gonna put point about there.

100 miles would be about here, 150 miles would be about there.

So you can use that tool if you like, just to help yourself.

But as long as it's roughly equal points apart, that's absolutely fine.

So here's my five points.

I've put one on, two, three, four, five and that's just a visual reference for me to check these places.

And now what I can do is I can close this off and that will stay in place.

As long as I keep the 2D map on, it will stay in place.

And what I can do is I can find out a little bit of information about this transect.

The first thing I'm going to do is if I click on the measure button, you can see here it comes up with elevation profile.

Now if I click next to this line and scroll up and click the end of this line, so I just put it in parallel with my line, it gives me the elevation profile of my transect.

So if I zoom out now, I can suddenly see what the elevation and the relief, the shape of the land in many ways is at these points.

So we can see here, it's incredibly flat, flat here.

If I go to the first point, I can still see it's really flat.

If I move to the third point, you can see the little orange dot moving along the point, you can see that's next to my marker.

My point on the map.

It's starting to get a little bit hilly here, isn't it? So maybe we're getting into some foothills and 653 metres.

You know, like a small mountain in Britain.

I'll then go to the next point.

You can see this is now over 2,000 metres, which is higher than any mountain in Britain and much more sort of steep and more hills we can see here.

And if I'm coming all the way into here, we can see that it's actually going over 7,000 metres, which is an enormous mountain.

So the elevation profile's a really useful tool that we can use to find out the relief of the land and the height above sea level over a transect.

We're going to close that down now.

And what I'm going to do is just have a visual check of each of these points.

Now I've put this point in just as a reference point.

I can see this area, can maybe just use the 2D map here.

We know it's flat, it's a big city here, isn't it? Where we can see that, okay, it's mainly a city, maybe some farmland.

We can see the fields around this point here, which really clear and obvious.

So we know what we've got there.

Let's move to the second point and we're just going to do the same.

We're gonna have a look through and if I zoom in anywhere around this point, we know the markers just to see that we're in roughly the right place.

We can see it's all flat farmland, isn't it? We can see all these set lands sectioned off.

I'm now gonna come into the third point and we can see that the landscape changes all of a sudden.

We can see that there's forest here, can't we? Can see the trees there.

Now maybe at this point, it's a good point to do something slightly different because a 2D map doesn't really give us enough information here.

So if I click on the 3D map, it will suddenly bring that to life in a way.

And what I can do is I can do a number of things, I can zoom in and out, but if I come over to the left hand side, I can click on this toggle to pan or rotating in 3D.

What I can then do is I can zoom the map around to really understand this landscape.

I can come in and I can see that this landscape is forested.

I can see it's sort of quite gentle hills.

Some relatively wide river valleys there and it gives me a real understanding of that landscape.

Now our transect line will have disappeared now.

So I'm gonna come back onto 2D and zoom back out.

And what you'll see is the transect line comes back and I can see my point there.

I'm going to go back up to my final two points and I can do exactly the same thing again.

I can go in, I can have a look around, I can put it into 3D, toggle and pan, and we can start to describe the landscape again.

Slightly steeper hills, definitely here.

Yeah, steeper hills, deeper valleys, slightly more narrow valleys here.

And then if I go to the final point, it's much easier if I zoom back out, it would be much quicker for me to get there.

I know where they are because of my point that I put on the map.

And I can choose a location here, same again, 3D.

And all of a sudden we can see that the landscape changed again.

If I click on this toggle, this button at just above the toggle, the pan and rotate button, I can move around into different locations.

But if I want to sort of pan landscape, I can do that by just holding down the left mouse button and having a look and we can see now what we've got.

We've got these landscape with these huge valley systems. If I move this way maybe bit a little bit, you can see we've got these big U-shaped valleys.

Here, we can see these huge steep mountains, which are glaciated.

We can see the snow and ice on them, we can see these sharp ridges moving up to this peak up here.

And that's a really good way of understanding the physical landscape of India or any country.

<v ->True or false?</v> To find out information about physical geography in the ArcGIS visualizer, you have to add layers.

Pause the video here whilst you decide and press play when you're ready to continue.

Fantastic, the statement is false.

I would like you to explain why.

Pause here and press play when you're ready to continue.

Excellent, the reason why the statement is false is because you can investigate the physical geography by changing the base map to satellite imagery, zooming in and inspecting the biodiversity and relief.

Well done on this task.

I would like you to complete the following tasks.

Open the link on your screen, click on the base maps in the bottom toolbar and select imagery hybrid map from the options in the pop-up box, use the search tool, the magnifying glass to find New Deli, click on the sketch tool from the toolbar and select the line function from the pop-up box.

I would like you to draw a line from New Delhi northeast Nanda Devi region, select point from the sketch pop-up box, and mark on four points in equal distance apart along the transect line you have drawn.

I then want you to zoom into each point and investigate the physical geography using the 2D and 3D function tool on the toolbar.

Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to continue.

Fantastic, before we check our answers, let's complete another task.

I want you to describe the physical geography at each point along the transect.

Refer to the relief, shape of the land and the vegetation.

Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to continue.

Excellent, let's check our answers.

For the first question, your screen will look similar to this when you have drawn the points on your map.

For the second question, your answer may be similar to the following, the first point, flat land around New Delhi, mainly urban and farmland.

For the second point, flatland around Dhampur, third point, forested hilly land around the reserve forest, fourth point, high Glaciated mountains around the Nanda Devi National Park.

Well done on this task.

You've done brilliantly.

We've now come to the end of our learning on the physical geography of India and you've done fantastically.

Before we end this lesson, let's summarise everything we've learned today.

GIS can be used to visualise the human and physical geography of India.

India is located just north of the Equator in southern Asia.

India is similar in size to Greenland, although looks much smaller on some projections of the world map.

Different layers of data on a GIS show the population of India is very high.

Visualising the landscape using GIS shows that India is a very diverse country.

Well done on today's lesson.

I look forward to landing with you again very soon.