Lesson video

Hi, my name is Chloe and I'm a geography field studies tutor.

This lesson is called Using Atlases, and it forms part of the geographical skills unit of work.

Let's get started.

By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to read a variety of different types of atlas maps.

There's some key words to remind ourselves of here.

First of all, latitude.

This is an imaginary line running east to west around the Earth's surface that is used to show how far north or south a place is.

A longitude is an imaginary line running north to south across the Earth's surface.

And that's used to show how far east or west are places.

Then there's a thematic map.

This is a map that shows a particular geographical phenomenon, such as population density or air temperature.

This lesson is in three parts, so let's have a look at that now.

So first of all, what is an atlas? How do geographers describe global locations? And how do geographers read different global maps? Let's start with that first one.

What is an atlas? So, traditionally, an atlas is a published collection of maps that focus at country, continent, and world scales.

Now, one of the oldest atlases is a Tabula Rogeriana.

This was created in 1154 by an Arab geographer called Muhammad al-Idrisi.

As the world changes politically and physically, atlases are constantly updated.

You can see that there's a lot of difference between the 1154 atlas that you can see in the picture there to one of today.

And today geographers still use atlas books, but we also use digital and online atlases as well.

Atlas maps tell geographers far more than just where somewhere is.

They are more commonly used to present specific information or statistics about a place.

Atlases are unlikely to tell the reader much about what a town or city is like, and they instead focus at a much, much smaller scale.

This means they show us less detail, but they're really useful at showing patterns across larger areas of the world.

So let's check our understanding so far.

True or false, an atlas is only used to tell geographers where places are.

Pause the video, have a think, and I'll come back to you.

So is it true or false? It's false, but why is it false? Well done.

Yes, atlases are more commonly used to present specific information or statistics about a place.

You can of course use them to know where places are, but there's so much more to an atlas than that.

Now, scale could be quite a complicated feature to describe.

So let's have a look at that now.

A larger scale map is one that is more detailed, more accurate.

It will cover a smaller area of the Earth's surface, and therefore it will look like it's been kind of zoomed in, particularly if you're using a digital copy.

It will look very zoomed in.

It uses a lower scale ratio, so something like one to 25,000, which is what we've got in the picture here.

In contrast, a small scale map is less detailed and therefore less accurate.

It covers a larger area of the Earth's surface.

You can see that in the example that we've got here.

It looks like it has been zoomed out and it uses a higher scale ratio.

So something like 1 to 5 million is going to be more the case for a small scale map.

Now, atlases are the ones that use small scale maps, so that's what we're gonna focus on in this lesson.

Let's see if we've understood that.

So complete the sentences with the missing words.

Have a read of the paragraph without the words in it, and then come back to me with your answers.

Okay, so atlases use small scale maps.

These maps are less detailed and cover a larger area.

The maps look like the user has zoomed out.

Hope you got those right.

Our first practise task of the lesson.

So Izzy has a number of features to look up, but she doesn't know what scale map she should use for each.

Sort the features by writing the letter codes in their correct column in the table.

So let's take a look at the table, first of all.

You can see we've got two columns.

We've got small scale map, something like 1 to 5 million, and then large scale map, 1 to 25,000.

Our four different features that Izzy is trying to find, the area of Brazil that's covered in forest, the distance between Izzy's home and her school.

You can already see we're working at very different scales there.

The length of the Colorado River in the USA, and the number of car parks in Oxford City Centre.

Have a think about what those different scales of map mean.

Pause the video, and then I'll come back to you.

Okay, let's look and see if you've got the right answers.

Hopefully you realise that the small scale map, in other words, the ones that we'd be thinking about in terms of atlases is gonna be covering the area of Brazil that's covered in forest and it's also going to be able to tell us about the length of the Colorado River in USA.

A large scale map, something more like a 1 to 25,000 OS map, that will be able to tell us the distance between Izzy's home and her school.

It would also tell us the number of parks there are in Oxford City Centre.

We're moving on to the second part of the lesson now.

How do geographers describe global locations? If you look in the index of an atlas, that's the bit at the back, you will find that each place listed has a code assigned to it, and this code is a way of writing down the global position of a place according to its latitude and longitude.

And those codes will be the same, regardless of what atlas you are looking at.

So for example, something like Dar es Salaam, which is a city in Tanzania.

You can see it's there on the east coast of Tanzania.

It has the code six degrees, 50 minutes south, 39 degrees, and 12 minutes east.

Now, don't worry if that doesn't make sense now 'cause it will when we go through what the different parts of that are.

So Dar es Salaam had that first bit, six degrees and 50 minutes south, and that first part refers to the latitude.

It's always written first when you are writing longitudinal latitude coordinates.

The lines of latitude run horizontally around the Earth, and they tell geographers how far in degrees north or south of the Equator the place is.

So in this case we can see six degrees and it's six degrees south of the Equator.

Now, some lines of latitude have specific names.

You might already know some of these.

So things like the Tropic of Cancer, this lies at 23.

4 degrees north.

We've got the Equator at zero degrees, and then we've got the Tropic of Capricorn, and that lies in the same position as the Cancer line, but in the south, so 23.

4 degrees south.

Let's go back to Dar es Salaam for a moment and have another look at it more closely.

So I've zoomed in now on that particular part of the Tanzanian coast, and you can see the latitude lines have been marked on.

We've got five degrees south and 10 degrees south.

So we know immediately they were working in an area that is south of the Equator.

So Dar es Salaam has a latitude of six degrees and 50 minutes south.

So you can see the five degree line there and you can see that the line of Dar es Salaam is sitting below that.

So we note that it is between five degrees and 10 degrees.

What that means is the six degrees and 50 minutes, the minute part refers to a part of the degree, and there are 60 minutes in a degree.

It's just a way of being even more precise than just using the degrees.

Now based on that idea, what's the latitude in degrees of Lima in Peru? So we've moved across to South America now.

We've got our lines of latitude marked on there, 10 degrees south and 20 degrees south.

So we know it's a value between those two figures.

So which of our ideas here, A, B, C, D, is the correct answer? Pause the video, have a very close look at the map extract, and then come back to me.

So well done if you got that it is 12 degrees south.

You can see that we've got a 10 degrees to be playing with here between the 10 degrees south and the 20 degrees south lines.

We can see it's going to be in the first half of that.

So it's gonna be somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees south, so we're basically judging it basically by eye to see how far south it is.

We could get out a ruler.

We could measure it more precisely, but for the sake of this exercise, it is fine to do it by eye.

I'm sure you were pretty close to that answer.

Now let's look at the second part of the Dar es Salaam coordinates.

We've got 39 degrees and 12 minutes east.

This part refers to the longitude.

So lines of longitude run vertically across the Earth from pole to pole.

They tell geographers how far in degrees east or west of the Prime Meridian a place is.

So some lines of longitude have specific names.

The one I've just mentioned, the Prime Meridian, runs at zero degrees, and it runs through Greenwich in London.

The Anti Meridian is on the opposite side of the planet.

This runs at 180 degrees and most of it runs through the Pacific Ocean.

Let's go back to Dar es Salaam now and think about the longitude side of things.

You can see now that we're working between 35 and 40 degrees.

So our longitude, if you see the line, is much, much closer to the 40 degree line than it is to the 35, so we know that it's going to be a longitude of 39 degrees.

And in this case, it's 12 minutes east.

So let's check our understanding on this as well.

Coming back to Lima, we can now think about what the longitude in degrees is of that city.

We've got four options.

Pause the video, have a very close look at the map extract, and then come back to me.

Okay, so let's have a think about what's going on here.

We can see that it's going to be between 70 and 80 degrees west.

So immediately, we know it's not going to be answer B or D because these are talking about 83 degrees, so that's out of our scope.

So it's either going to be 77 degrees east or 77 degrees west.

And we can see that our lines of longitude are on the western part of the Earth's surface, so west of the Prime Meridian.

So our answer is C, 77 degrees west.

Hope you got that correct.

Our second task, now, let's have a look at this.

This is a map extract showing the position of Jakarta in Indonesia.

In degrees, what is the latitude and longitude of Jakarta? Now, you'll notice this map extract looks a little bit different from the previous ones.

The compass directions have been removed from the map.

Now you should still be able to work them out by looking at the direction the numbers are moving in.

Think about where your zero degree lines are in relation to these lines of latitude and longitude.

Then your second part of this, use an atlas to find the latitude and longitude in degrees of a city either close to where you live or one that you'd like to visit, or you can just choose one at random.

Make a note of the checks that you took to ensure that your answer was written down correctly.

So you'd find it in the atlas, work out its latitude, longitude.

And then what would you check about your answer to say, "Ah, have I got this absolutely right?" Pause the video, have a go at those two tasks, and I'll come back to you with my ideas.

Right, let's look at the first of those.

So here's our map extract of Jakarta and you might get ever so slightly different answer to me, but my answer is six degrees south and 106 degrees east.

You can see that it's definitely in the southern hemisphere because we've got our zero degree latitude in there.

In other words, our Equator is at the northern part of our grid square.

So we know it's gonna be between zero degrees and 10.

We can see it's more towards the southern part of that square, so it's going to be more like six degrees.

Though if you've put seven degrees, I'm happy with that.

Then we're looking at our longitude, and we can see that it's going to be between 100 and 110, and we know that it's going to be east because our numbers are increasing as they go to towards the eastern side.

Now again, we can see that it's just past the halfway point in that square.

So I'm saying 106 degrees east, but again, if you've said 107 degrees east, I think that's close enough.

You have to remember we are doing this by eye rather than with a ruler.

Then I asked you to find the latitude and longitude of a city of your choice.

But more importantly, I wanted you to think about the checks that you would make on that.

So here's some things which you should always check when you're writing down the coordinates using an atlas.

Make sure you put the latitude first before you put the longitude when you're writing it down.

Then make sure that your north and south are correct, depending on whether your place is north or south of the Equator.

Likewise, you need to make sure you've correctly used east or west, depending on whether your place is east or west of the Prime Meridian.

Make sure you use the degree symbol as well after each number.

Now let's move on to the third part of today's lesson, how do geographers read different global maps? So atlas maps show much more than just the situation of one place to another.

In most atlases, a map of a country will show its towns and its cities.

Certainly, the capital will be marked separately.

It will show its major roads, its rail lines, its airports.

It would also show any political boundaries within the country, such as state borders.

County borders might be shown as well.

It'll show the major rivers and any inland bodies of water, such as any large lakes, and it will also show relief and the height of the biggest peaks that there are in the country.

And this is called a physical map 'cause it shows a lot of the physical aspects of the country.

Now in contrast to that are political maps and these show much less detail than physical maps.

They're really important 'cause it really clearly shows how countries are positioned in relation to each other.

So the borders between countries are clearly outlined, and each country is shaded a single block of colour.

And you can see that in the example that we've got here.

Main cities are sometimes marked.

It depends on the scale of the map as are the major rivers.

And in large countries like Russia or USA, it will show the country borders, but it'll also show state and province borders as well.

Now, political and physical maps are easy for geographers to read because all the information is displayed on the map itself.

They might have a key attached to them, but really the beauty of using these maps is that everything is on the map.

You don't have to be cross-referencing to a key all the time.

Let's check our understanding of that.

Complete the sentences with the missing words.

So pause the video so you've got a chance to reflect on the paragraph, and I'll come back to you with the right answers.

So let's see what you came up with.

Physical maps in an atlas show relief through coloured shading.

Blocks of colour are used on political maps to distinguish one country from another and both physical and political maps might show cities and the major rivers.

Hope you got that correct.

Atlases also contains something called thematic maps.

Now, these are really, really useful for geographers.

They're specialist maps that show data connected with a particular theme.

Now there might be country, continent, or world maps.

In fact they're likely to be all of these common themes are things like the average temperature or precipitation across that area, population density, population change, measures of quality of life, and there could be lots of different ones, things like health and education levels.

Things like energy production might be mentioned on a thematic map as well as things like geology.

So they can cover really any topic that you're interested in.

Here's an example of four different ones around the UK.

You can see we've got rainfall, temperature, relief, and farming.

So there's just four different aspects of the UK.

You can imagine there are so many more different things that people could look at in terms of thematic maps.

Geographers need to use the specific keys found in thematic maps to read them effectively.

You can see very much things like the farming one, you wouldn't know just by looking at the map which type of farming is allocated to which area.

Now here's the really important bit.

They look for patterns in the maps themselves as well as patterns between thematic maps and this helps photographers to see how different variables might affect each other.

So in the examples we've got on the screen now, I can immediately see that there is a pattern between rainfall in the UK and relief in the rainfall.

The area that is highest in terms of land elevation is also the area that has the highest January rainfall.

I can then look across at farming and I notice the pattern is there again.

So the areas that are highest in land and have the highest rainfall tend to be where we do most sheep farming, whereas the areas which are lower elevation have less rainfall, tends to be where we have arable farming.

So looking for the patterns between thematic maps is what geographers are really interested in.

Atlases also contain thematic maps on themes that are specific to particular places.

So you won't find these maps necessarily for every country, but it'll take these ideas for a particular country because that's what's important there.

So for example, a map of the Caribbean may show areas that have been most affected by tropical storms. There wouldn't be much point in having that map from Northern Europe perhaps.

A map of Australia may show how the risk of drought varies across the country.

We know that Australia is somewhere that suffers greatly with drought.

A map of the Middle East may show the location of known oil reserves.

Again, there wouldn't be much point in having that map across the entire world.

Now, sometimes specific themes are combined together.

For example, a world map showing the relative size of country's manufacturing industries might also show the size of the country's GDP.

So rather than having those two maps sitting alongside each other on the page, geographers when they're designing atlases might actually put those two maps together so we can actually see the pattern much more easily.

Now when you're reading these maps as a geographer, you need to very carefully read the key so you can understand which set of symbols belongs to which of the map.

We've got an example here, which is to do with bananas.

It covers both the production of bananas and the consumption of them.

So I've got two different areas of the maps that I need to be looking at.

Let's check our understanding of that.

How might geographers use thematic maps? A, read the key to find data on a specific theme, B, compare one country to another in relation to a specific theme, C, measure the distance between particular physical features, or D, investigate where the borders between different countries are.

Have a think though about those four options, and pause the video, and then come back to me hopefully with the right answers.

Right.

Did you get this right? Yes, there are two right answers here.

First of all, the thematic maps, you need to read the key to find the data because it's talking about something quite specific.

And then thematic maps are brilliant because you can compare one country with another in relation to a specific theme.

Hope you got that right too.

Let's look at our final task for today's lesson.

Choose a thematic map that interests you from an atlas, and these are normally towards the back of the atlas.

So you can have a flick through and see if there's one that really grabs your attention.

What techniques has the cartographer.

That's the map creator.

What techniques have they used to show information clearly to readers? So make a note of all the little techniques that they've used which makes your job as a geographer that much easier.

Pause the video, have a really good look at some different styles of thematic map before you choose which one interests you.

Right, let's look at the kind of things that you noticed in your thematic maps.

So your answer may include that there are symbols to represent the theme of the map.

If there are symbols, there's likely to be a key to allow the reader to see patterns in the data.

Now, you might notice that other country details such as the position of roads and rivers, they will have been removed from the map to allow those themes to come through.

So if it's got a lot of symbols on it, you don't want to clutter up the map with things like roads, rivers, and towns, and so on.

And hopefully that would make it really clear to the reader what is going on and what the pattern is.

Hope you got some of those ideas.

So in summary, an atlas is a collection of maps that show not only where places are, but also a range of spatial data about those places.

Latitudes and longitudes help geographers to find places on atlas maps, physical, political, and thematic maps in atlases all have different purposes, and geographers read them in different ways.

Now, whilst I know that quite a lot of those concepts will be revision for you, it's still quite challenging to go over all of them all at once in one lesson.

So do have a look at the video again if you need to, but hopefully this will set you up for using atlases in your work from now on.