Читать книгу Geography For Dummies - Jerry T. Mitchell - Страница 26

A region is an area of Earth, large or small, that has one or more things in common. So when you say “I’m going to the mountains” or “I’m heading for the shore,” you refer to an area — a region — that has a certain set of characteristics over a broad area.

Regions make it easier to comprehend our Earthly home. After all, Earth consists of gazillions of locations, each of which has its own particular and peculiar characteristics. Knowing every last one of them would be impossible. But we can simplify the challenge by grouping together contiguous locations that have one or more things in common — Gobi Desert, Islamic realm, tropical rainforest, Chinatown, the Great Lakes, suburbia — each of these is a region. Some are big and some are small. Some refer to physical characteristics. Some refer to human characteristics. Some do both. But each facilitates the task of understanding the world.

Lest you think that this categorization idea is unique to geography, consider history or geology. History uses eras to group together like periods of time. Geology uses the term epochs. Each of these also has unique geographic characteristics. If I use the historic era The Renaissance as an example, your mind races not only to a specific time, but probably also a place: Italy.

Features that characterize different locations on Earth and, therefore, epitomize the concept of place, will be the focus of several chapters. These include landforms (Chapters 6 and 7), climates (Chapter 10), population (Chapter 11), culture (Chapter 13), economic activity (Chapter 15), and urbanization (Chapter 17). Each of these characteristics, of course, pertains not only to particular locations, but also to large areas as well. Thus, they also serve to characterize and define regions.