Lecture 2: The Evolution and Regionalization of Landscape 1

Lecture 2: The Evolution and Regionalization of Landscape Reading: Fellman Chapter 12 Why Geography Matters: The Role of Landscape Landscapes and places are settings for social interaction: • Structure routines of economic and social life • Provide both opportunities and constraints for people’s long- term social well being • Establish a context in which everyday knowledge and experience are gathered • Provide a setting fro processes of socialization • Provide and area for contesting social norms Some places acquire a strong symbolic value. • Important connotations and meanings Places and Regions are Extremely Interdependent Places, regions and landscapes pay particular roles in changing complex networks of interactions and change Locations are tied to larger processes of change that are reflected in large-scale geographical patterns. Can we recognize the wider processes and patterns? • How are they useful? • Do we control them, or are we controlled by them? • What are the financial, political, social, and geographic implications? • And so what? The Interdependence of Geographical Scale (get chart from web) But be careful of reductionism • Problems that exist at the largest level are not always solved at the molecular or atomic level Interdependence of Places Can we recognize and use such broad patterns without losing sight of the importance of localities? Process and Pattern • Interact to produce, modify, and reshape landscapes • Process and pattern then cope with change, by changing themselves à dynamic • Is there a discernable direction in the change of landscapes due to the interaction of pattern and process? Misreading the African Landscape • Landscape change à direction trajectory • Must look across scales Other Examples of Change Tree Species Distribution • Arizona, USA – mesquite and cattle ranching o To make room for the cattle ranchers, mesquite trees had to be removed and cleared o Mesquite moved up to the hilltops, where it wasn’t traditionally there o Mesquite moved into other species nat