Lesson video

Hi there! Welcome to today's geography lesson with me, Ms. Roberts.

This lesson is the start of a brand-new unit of work all about a country called the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which we'll shorten to the DRC.

This is a country in Africa, and we're going to begin by looking at the physical and human geography of this country.

By the end of the lesson today, you are going to be able to use a GIS, that's a geographic information system, and you're going to use that GIS to visualise the human and physical geography of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Let's begin by looking at some important geographical terminology that will be useful in this lesson.

Our first keyword, you've already heard, and that's visualise.

Visualise is when we form a mental or physical image of something, and that makes it easier for us to understand.

You've already heard the next keyword as well, and this is something we can shorten to three short letters, GIS, geographic information system.

Now, this is a type of digital computer mapping system.

It captures and displays geographic data to help us understand patterns across space.

You're going to be guided through how to use a specific GIS in this lesson.

Layer is our last keyword.

You may not have heard of this in a geographical context before.

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

So that data is layered over a map.

Today's lesson structure has three parts.

First, we're going to visualise the size and the location of the DRC, using a GIS.

Then we're going to move on to think about the human geography of the DRC.

And later, we will be looking at the physical geography of the DRC.

Are you ready to get started? Me too.

Let's go.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a very large and very diverse country in Central Africa.

You can see it highlighted orange on the map in the centre of the slide here.

The pictures around this are just some examples of the type of landscapes that we can see in the DRC, from beautiful forested areas, natural mountains and lakes, to large cities and human settlements, even to the slopes of a very active volcano, Mount Nyiragongo.

Let's find out some more about this beautiful, diverse nation.

Photographs are used by geographers as a helpful tool.

We can look at photographs, like the ones we've just seen, and they tell us what something looks like.

But what other methods do geographers use to find out about places? What can we use to help us visualise information? Have a think.

We can use graphs and charts to display data, can't we? We can use diagrams to show various processes.

And we can use maps to look at locations and spatial patterns.

Before we move along to explore how a GIS can help us visualise things, let's stop for a quick learning check.

What methods can you name that we can use as geographers to visualise information? You might be able to think of at least four or more that we have just mentioned in this lesson.

Ready? Did you think of any of these? Graphs.

Diagrams. Maps.

And photographs.

These are all tools that, as geographers, we can use.

We can also use a GIS.

GIS systems overlay data onto digital maps and that allows us to visualise the world and helps us to understand how things change across a space or area.

Today, we are going to be using a specific GIS called the ArcGIS Visualiser.

You are going to use this GIS yourself to help you to visualise the size and the location of the DRC.

So we're going to investigate really where this country is in the world and think about its size.

Mr. Schofield has prepared a short video to show you how to use the Visualiser.

So let's watch his short video together now.

<v Mr. Schofield>In this video,</v> we're going to use the ArcGIS Geography Visualiser to visualise the location and size of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Now, the first thing I'm going to do here is change the basemap.

This currently is an "Imagery Hybrid" basemap.

It essentially means that we've got the satellite imagery with the borders of the countries superimposed on top.

But I think this task's going to be a little bit easier if I change the basemap.

So I'm going to come to the bottom toolbar.

I'm going to click on "Basemaps" and I'm going to choose a "Charted Territory Map." And this is really clearly shows different countries because they use a colour system which makes it very easy to pick out countries against a different country.

So that's one really useful thing.

The other thing is, it's got important geographical reference points, like the Equator here.

So I think there's two good reasons to use this map.

So, we can see the continent of Africa in the centre of the screen at the moment.

And as you may know, the Democratic Republic of Congo is in the centre of Africa.

Now we could use the search tool in the top-left hand corner, but if you look carefully in the middle of the screen, we can see DR Congo, which stands for the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the centre of the screen.

So I'm going to zoom in a little bit to have a look at this.

So we can see straightaway that in terms of location, we can see that it's in Central Africa.

We can see these, a reference point of the Equator running right the way through the Democratic Republic of Congo.

So it is an Equatorial country.

The Equator runs through the centre of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

We can also see a series of countries that border the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Because it's a fairly big country, we can see quite a lot.

I'll leave you to have a look at which of these countries are.

The one that I will point out, though, is this where it says Congo, just to the west of the DRC.

I'll sometimes use DRC for short, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This is the Republic of Congo.

It's a separate country.

So it's important to distinguish between these two places.

So that's where the DRC is.

Now what about size? We can see it looks a fairly big country, doesn't it, in the centre of Africa.

But what we would like to do is to be a bit more specific than just saying it's quite big.

We want to be able to measure it and give some sort of a value.

So the way we're going to do this is we're going to come to the bottom toolbar and we're going to click on "Measure." And then a little pop-up will come up.

We can click "Measure" again.

And I'm going to go to the pop-up and click "Measure area." And what I can do here is I can do a very rough, and I'm going to make it quite rough.

I'm not going to do the border precisely, but I'm going to do a rough outline around the DRC just to give me an idea of its size for comparison.

So.

There we go.

You go down this border with Uganda, past Rwanda and Tanzania and Zambia, and we double click to finish the measurement.

You can see at the moment, it's got it in miles.

If I go to the pop-up, I can change that.

Where it says "Units," I can change it to "Metric." And then it will come up with kilometres.

So, 2,350,796.

55 kilometres square.

That gives you an idea of the size of the DRC.

Now, as a comparison, you might think we can just have a look at it and think about whether it's bigger or smaller than other countries on this map.

So, it's bigger than France, isn't it? France and maybe half of Germany together or something.

The problem with that, though, is that this is a map on a flat screen, so a 2D screen, and when we take a globe and we try and put it on a flat surface, we have to distort it to make it work.

And this is based on the Mercator version, Mercator projection, I should say.

And what it does is it stretches things in the north and south.

And so we've got to be really careful about this and make sure that we're not kind of assuming that this is a size that it's not.

So what I'm going to do instead of just assuming, I'm going to measure another country as a visual reference.

Now, we can see Greenland up here, which you would expect to be an awful lot bigger by the looks of this map.

But let's have a look to find out if that's correct.

So I'm going to click "Measure" and "Measure area." And I'm going to just very quickly go around Greenland.

Greenland's coastline comes in and out quite a lot, so we have to sort of take an average point of where we think the perimeter is.

But there we go.

That's the area of Greenland.

If I change it to "Metric," we've then got a comparison, and you may be surprised to learn that that, it's over 2 million kilometres square, but it's actually smaller than the DRC and this is simply because of the distortion on this map projection.

So what that shows us is the Democratic Republic of Congo is a really, really big country.

Often on these maps, it's made to look significantly smaller because it's at the Equator rather than at a high latitude in the north or south.

So it's important to realise that when we're thinking about the scale of this country and we're studying its geography.

<v ->Thanks, Mr. Schofield.

</v> I found that really interesting to discover all about that distortion effect and how some countries may appear a lot larger than they are on those types of maps.

Let's use all of that information and do some activities together now.

So let's begin with a learning check first.

How much attention were you paying to Mr. Schofield? Can you find the correct answer here? What does that magnifying symbol on the ArcGIS Visualiser allow you to do? Zoom in, change the basemap, or search for places? What do you think? It allows you to search, doesn't it? The magnifying glass is the search feature there.

Okay, next multiple-choice question.

Each circle, here, has a diameter of 800 kilometres.

Even though those circles are different sizes, they represent the same area.

So what does this show us? A, that the DRC is much larger than the UK.

B, that the DRC is about the same size as the UK.

Or C, that the DRC is much smaller than the UK.

Pause the video to take a closer look at the map and think about this carefully.

When you're ready, I will show you the answer.

Ready? Did you choose option A? Well done.

The correct answer is that the DRC is much larger than the UK.

Task A for this lesson, the first of three tasks that you're going to do.

In a moment, I want you to follow that link to open the Geography Visualiser yourself.

It's free to use.

You don't need any login to get in there.

You just need an internet connection.

When you're on the Visualiser, I would like you to complete these tasks.

First of all, you're going to click on "Basemaps" and you're going to select the "Charted Territory Map," the same one that Mr. Schofield was using.

Then I would like you to zoom in on the DRC and have a really good look around.

Have a look at the countries around it, the bodies of water, and its position in reference to specific points on Earth, like the Equator.

When you've looked, I would like you to use what you can see, what you can visualise, to write a description of the location of the DRC with reference to the Equator, to other countries, and to those bodies of water.

Try to use geographical terminology.

So real directional terms like compass directions, north, south, east, west.

After that description writing task, I would like you to try and use the "Measure" tool that Mr. Schofield showed us how to use.

Use that tool yourself to go roughly around the outline of the DRC and measure the area.

When you've done that, write down the area that you have found, and describe, then, how that compares with the size of the UK.

Now, the area of the UK is about 243,000 kilometres squared.

So there's your reference points.

And as Jacob points out and Mr. Schofield did say in the video, we can't measure things with 100% accuracy.

We're going to be quite rough going around, creating our outline with the "Measure" tool.

But this does give you a very close and very useful estimate of the area.

Pause the video now, complete those tasks, and when you come back, I will take you through some example answers.

All done? I hope you enjoyed using the Visualiser for the first time on those tasks.

Here's an example for 1a.

The first thing you should have done was go on to the Basemap and change it to the Charted Territory Map, which is the one that looks like this.

This is the one with the different colours of shading for the different countries.

Then I asked you to write a description of the location of the DRC.

So let's see an example description.

The DRC is located on the Equator and it extends into both the Northern and the Southern Hemisphere.

It is situated in the continent of Africa and it shares borders with nine countries, nine other countries.

They include, to the north, the Central African Republic and South Sudan.

To the east, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.

To the south, Angola and Zambia.

And to the west, the Republic of Congo.

We can also notice that largely the DRC is a landlocked country so it's mostly, so it shares borders on land, but there is a very small stretch of coastline in the west, and at that point, the DRC meets the Atlantic Ocean.

Part two.

You were using the measuring tool, so your screen should have looked something like this when you were clicking around the country to make that outline to use the tool.

And then a comparison between the size of the DRC and the UK.

My measurement of the area of the DRC was around 2.

3 million kilometres squared.

That is nearly 10 times the area of the UK.

Great work of day.

Let's move on to our next part of the lesson, and we're going to think more now about the human geography of the DRC.

I did mention earlier that the DRC has cities and human settlements.

The biggest city in the DRC is Kinshasa, which is the capital city.

The distribution and the size of the population is a very interesting aspect of the human geography of the DRC.

Lucas tells us that the total population of the DRC is about 106 million people.

That means that the DRC is actually one of the most highly-populated countries in Africa.

We can see this here on this map, which has different colours of shading according to the population.

So the darker the shading, the higher the population.

And you can see the DRC there really standing out in the centre of Africa, quite a different shade to the countries it borders.

Time for a quick learning check before we move on.

Were you listening closely? What is the population of the DRC? Is it around 10.

6 million people? Is it around 106 million people? Or is it around 10.

6 billion people? Did you choose option B? Well done.

It's around 106 million people.

And as Aisha quite rightly points out, that is a much larger population than the UK.

We are going to use the ArcGIS Visualiser again now and we're going to use it to analyse the growth and the distribution of some of the cities in the DRC.

Mr. Schofield has prepared us another video to take us through how to use that.

So let's watch that together now.

<v Mr. Schofield>In this video,</v> we're going to use the Geography Visualiser to visualise and do some analysis of some major cities and their growth in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

So to do this, we are going to add a layer of data.

So I'm going to come to the bottom toolbar and I'm going to click on "Add layer." So once I click this, well, you see at the bottom of the screen there, it talks about "Cities of the World." And if I click on the plus there, a little one's going to appear on the main screen where it says, "Map layers." And once I've done that, I can close this screen off.

And you can see on the map, I've got lots of different circles there.

Now, in order to understand what they mean, I can click on the legend and it tells you that the size of the circle is the size of the population essentially.

So that's a useful feature.

So it's worth always just clicking that legend button if you're ever not sure on the size of the city.

If I zoom in, and I'm using the scroll wheel of the mouse but I could use the zoom-in and zoom-out buttons on the left-hand side.

I'm going to zoom in to the DRC and we can see the major cities in the DRC and where they are.

Now, although we can use this basemap, I sometimes think it's a little bit easier to change the basemap if we're just wanting to look at where these cities are in the DRC, and that's because it's a little bit easier to see the boundaries, the border of the DRC, where other countries begin, just because of the use of colours here.

So now that we can see this, we can actually start to visualise and start analysing this pattern.

And we can see that most of the major cities are in this sort of southern central belt in the DRC.

And we can see maybe the north, there's not so many in the far north there, and we have a series of major cities in the south-east.

So it's just a good way of being able to visualise where they are.

There is a degree of spread, but certainly, this sort of central belt, and if we zoom in a little bit, we'll see that these cities are mainly around rivers, around this central belt.

The other thing we can do is we can find a little bit more about in cities in terms of the population growth.

So if I click on these cities, we can see how much the population has grown.

Can see here that the population from 1960 was 27,000.

And it's now 507,000.

So that's an incredible growth.

If we click on a different city, we're going to see the same sort of thing.

1960, 136,000.

And now we're into 2.

5 million.

That is an incredible growth and you can go through and analyse all these cities and look at them and you will see this rapid growth in the population of these cities.

Now it's worth comparing those with a different place, and for us, because of our familiarity with the UK, we can just click and see whether that's the same in the United Kingdom.

So if I click for example here on Birmingham, you'll see that actually that population is relatively stable.

So by comparing the growth of cities in the DRC versus the rest of the world, it starts to tell us a little bit about the country.

It starts to tell us about these cities have really grown very rapidly over the last 60 years.

There's clearly been a big change in the country and something you can investigate.

The other thing which is useful to do is to look at this big city over here.

And if we zoom right in, can see something strange is going on.

When we zoomed out, we seemed to look and it seemed to say Brazzaville, but actually, that's in the Republic of Congo next door.

And the city here is Kinshasa.

And we can see this rapid population growth over time and we're now at a population of over 40 million people.

So it is an enormous city.

If you notice, if we zoom in, you will find some quite strange things here because you can see that how close it is to Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo.

If I change the basemap, I'll just change it to an "Imagery Hybrid" map here.

And you may notice something strange that we can see the border runs through here, but there's actually no bridge.

There's no bridge between these two places at all.

So we've got two big cities, but Kinshasa is certainly by far the bigger city, but divided by the Congo River but without a bridge across.

If you want to go between these two places, you actually fly across.

It's a five-minute flight.

So, by using the Visualiser and using satellite imagery, it can lead us to ask some questions.

Why is there no bridge between these two places? What is the impact of this? Why have two cities developed here? Why is there a border running down the river? And that leads us into geographical questions but also historical questions as well.

<v ->Thanks, Mr. Schofield.

</v> I hope you enjoyed finding out about how we can use the Visualiser to discover more about cities as well.

And how interesting that people have to fly between Kinshasa and Brazzaville and it's a five-minute flight! Let's put all that information to use with a quick learning check before we move on to Task B, our second task for this lesson.

I would like to know, within the last 60 years, cities in the DRC, have they grown more slowly than cities in the UK, grown at a similar rate to cities in the UK, or grown more rapidly than cities in the UK? What do you think about that? They have indeed grown more rapidly than cities in the UK, much more rapidly.

We saw that in the Visualiser, didn't we? Task B then.

You're going to follow the link again and open the Visualiser.

Again, you don't need any login.

Just an internet connection.

For the first task, I want you to click on the "Basemap" again and change to the "Charted Territory Map." And then, from there, you can add the layer function and put the "Cities of the World" on that map.

I would like you then to write a description of the distribution of cities in the DRC.

That means write a description of where they are.

Where are they in the DRC? And try to use some real geographical terminology.

Compass directions, for example.

When you've done that, I would like you to choose one of those cities in the DRC and do some more research or investigation about it.

Find out about its population growth since around, say, 1950.

Then, choose a city near you in the UK.

Perhaps you live in a city.

And I would like you to compare the growth of that city with the growth of the city you have selected in the DRC.

It would be great if you can actually use some statistics in your answer.

Use some numbers for comparison.

Pause the video now whilst you do this.

And when you're ready, come back, unpause the video, and I'll share an example answer for this task with you.

Ready? I hope you enjoyed that investigation.

Let's look at some answers together.

So here's the "Charted Territory Map" with the "Cities" layer added to it.

And we can see those orange dots representing the cities that we find across the DRC.

It's interesting to note distribution of those cities shows us that there are most cities in the south-east, the south, and the south-west there where Kinshasa is.

There are some cities in the east as well around bodies of water on the country borders.

And the big arch-shaped river that runs through the country, that's the Congo River.

There are also cities that developed alongside the river.

1b.

You were then comparing one of the cities in the DRC of your choice with a city in the UK of your choice.

So for example, let's choose the city of Kinshasa and the city of Sheffield.

The population of Kinshasa has grown from around 200,000 in 1950 to nearly 18 million in 2025.

Wow! The population of Sheffield, on the other hand, has grown much more slowly, from around 645,000 in 1950 to around 757,000 in '25.

So I think we can say categorically without any doubt that the population of Kinshasa is much larger than the population of Sheffield, and that it has experienced greater levels of population growth over the same period of time.

Moving on then into our third and final part of today's lesson, we're going to use the Visualiser again, and this time, we're going to think about the physical geography of the DRC.

Here are some aspects of the physical geography of the DRC.

It has such a diverse range of beautiful landscapes.

The picture on the left there, the beautiful green hillsides and the valley that you can see is in the Virunga National Park in the DRC.

The photo of the lava there is lava from Mount Nyiragongo, which is actually situated in Virunga National Park as well.

The ArcGIS Visualiser has lots of different layers that we can add to the maps to tell us more about aspects of physical geography.

In the same way that we added a layer for cities before, we can also add layers that tell us about soil, about precipitation, about temperature, and about the land cover of any country.

You can see what each of those layers look like when we overlay them on a map here.

Let's have a quick learning check before we move along and look at another video of how to use the Visualiser.

Here are these four pictures of different layers that have been added to the digital map.

Can you remember what they each represent? Let's have a look.

We have soil, that's the first map there with the orange-colored layers.

Precipitation, which has blue layers.

Temperature there, we can see, is predominantly yellow.

And the land cover there is predominantly green.

You'll find out more about the different colours of shading on each layer and what they mean in a moment.

So, we are going to use a range of tools now from the Visualiser that we haven't used previously in the lesson, and they're going to help us look in greater depth at this amazing and diverse physical geography of the DRC.

So, I'm going to leave you with Mr. Schofield again for a few moments who's going to show you another video.

<v Mr. Schofield>In this video,</v> we're going to use the ArcGIS Geography Visualiser to investigate some physical geography patterns in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

So, the first thing I'm going to do here is I'm going to zoom in, I'm going to bring the DRC to the middle of the screen, and I'm going to zoom in.

And what I would like to do here is I would like to investigate a transect.

That's a line of study where I can pick points along this line and see if there are differences between them, or similarities.

So, the way I'm going to do this is I'm going to click on "Sketch" in the bottom toolbar, I'm going to click on "Line," and I'm just going to draw a line from the coast in the DRC over to and you can see this city Goma here.

So I'm going to take a point just to the north of Goma and I'm going to double click there and it gives me a line.

Now if it's difficult to see that line, I can come to the "Sketch" pop-up, I can click on the arrow, I can highlight it, and then I can make that line a little bit bigger.

I can always change the colour if I like as well.

But I think now I've got this line a bit thicker, it's a bit easier to see.

I can then add some little points and think, okay, I'm going to look at three points along this line.

One just close to the end.

I'm just going to choose three points.

I could investigate more.

I'm going to be systematic about it.

I'm going to try and keep them an equal distance apart.

And then, what we can do is we can go to each of these points, roughly speaking around these points, and then see if there are any differences.

Differences in the landscape and the relief of the land, whether it's mountains, whether it's flats, and also if there's any differences in the ecosystem as well.

There's lots of different ways I can do this, but I'm going to essentially do a visual check here.

So I'm going to take this first point and I'm going to zoom right in.

And I'm going to look at from above the satellite imagery here around this point.

It doesn't matter exactly where we go.

But I'm going to come in here.

And it looks to me like there's a lot of green sort of forested area, but if you look, there's a lot of kind of sections which look like the trees potentially have been chopped down and that would be unsurprising I suppose if that may have happened.

What I might want to do is come to the "3D" tool, and that will just allow me to get a real good view of the relief.

So if I zoom in to this area here and if I click on this button on the left-hand side, it says, "Toggle to pan or rotate in 3D." So at the moment, I'm panning around, but if I click on this, I can rotate the landscape and just have a look and we can see that, okay, this is pretty flat.

I can see these sort of browny areas where I think there's been forest that's been cleared.

And then I can see these other bits which maybe are kind of bits of forest around but, and then we can see the river over to the right-hand side of this map.

And it's worth having a good look around and making that visual check of the landscape.

If I come back to "2D" and zoom out, you can see my line's still there.

So I can check where I've been looking at here.

I'm close to this point on my map.

I can then come up to the second point and I can zoom right in.

Now, as I zoom in here, it looks like there's certainly, there's more forest cover, it looks pretty green, and I can zoom in here and I can really see the forest.

I can still see some cleared areas, for sure.

Again, if I come into "3D" and if I click on the "Rotate" there, well, at the moment, it's panning, but if I click again, it will rotate.

And again, this is a relatively flat landscape.

And I can see around.

I can go to different points.

I zoom in a little bit.

Slight hills about but not a lot.

It's relatively flat.

So that green and that forest cover looks to me like it's Equatorial rainforest is that dense.

And finally, I'll come to my third point.

And if I zoom out, it might make it a little bit easier.

And I'm going to zoom in.

And zoom in and we see Goma here.

And if I look around this area, it looks slightly different here.

It's something completely different there.

I can still see trees over there and can see what looks like a crater here.

So again, I'm going to turn it into 3D.

And we can suddenly see that this looks very much like a volcano.

And certainly, if I change that landscape around, we can see it definitely is a volcano.

And if I turn the landscape around, I can see more there as well.

So, just looking with the "2D" and "3D" tools using satellite imagery is a great way of checking that ecosystem and the relief of the land.

Another way of looking at how the relief changes over space is to do what we call an elevation profile.

So if I click on the "Measure" button in the bottom toolbar and click on "Elevation profile," I'm going to start this on the west of the map and I'm going to just follow my transect line up to the east and then I'm going to double click.

And it shows you how the relief of the land changes across the Democratic Republic of Congo.

If I put my mouse cursor on the elevation profile, an orange dot moves along the elevation profile on the map.

So it shows us exactly where the high mountains are.

Well, the volcanic region we can see over here.

It's over 2,000 metres.

And this area is hilly, volcanic.

And then all of a sudden, we get into this sort of flat basin, relatively flat basin which goes right the way across the country.

And then we have slightly more hills in the west again and then goes into the sea.

But it gives us a real understanding of some of the physical geography of the DRC.

Now, one important skill that we have to do as geographers is to analyse the data and also come up with reasons for patterns.

So we know this sort of mountain volcanoes in the east of the country.

And if we know our geography, we might think, well, is that something to do with tectonic plates? So, we could add a layer here.

And if I scroll right down, we can see that we can actually put the "Plate Boundaries" onto the map.

So if I add "Plate Boundaries" onto the map and then close this, we can see that there's a plate boundary that runs down the east of the DRC on the border with these other countries.

And that helps us explain why we have a volcanic region to the east of the DRC.

<v ->Thanks, Mr. Schofield.

</v> That was just brilliant.

I loved how we can change the landscape from 2D to 3D, and then all of a sudden, that volcanic crater will appear.

And then by adding the layers, we can see the plate boundaries and we can begin to make connections.

So let's use all of our new skills and do some activities together.

But before we do that, let's have a quick learning check with a true-or-false question for you.

So, is this true, or is this false? And can you think of a reason why you make the choice you do? To find out information about physical geography on the GIS Visualiser, you have to add layers.

It is actually false, isn't it? And the reason why it's false is that you can investigate physical geography by changing the basemap to satellite imagery or by zooming in, creating that transect line that Mr. Schofield did.

You can inspect a lot of things there without adding the extra layers.

The extra layers then enhance things even more.

So, Task C.

Open the Visualiser again and then we're going to follow through with these instructions.

1a.

First, click on "Basemaps" and select the "Imagery Hybrid" map from the options in the pop-up box.

Use the "Sketch" tool, just like Mr. Schofield showed you, and select the line function to draw your own transect line from the west to the east.

In around the same place, take your last point maybe just north of Goma, the city there in the east, and then in the west, you could start at the ocean.

Select "Point" from the "Sketch" pop-up box and mark your three points along your transect line.

Any three points of your choice across that space.

Then, zoom in on each of your chosen points and have a bit of a look around.

Do your own investigation.

Use the "2D" and "3D" functions.

What are those places in the DRC actually like? For Task 1b, make some notes and then write a description of the physical geography at those points along your transect.

Use geographical terminology.

Talk about things like the relief.

That's the shape of the land.

The vegetation that you can see.

The features of the landscape.

Is it volcanic? Is it rainforest? What type of landscape is it? Pause the video while you complete your investigation.

And then when you return, I'll share some example answers with you.

Hope you enjoy the task.

Ready? Good job! Okay, let's have a look together at some answers.

So, your screen will have looked like this when you were developing your own transect line across the DRC and adding those points.

So we can see the three points here that we have added.

Then you'll have been able to use all of the features of the Visualiser, zoom in on those areas, and have a good look around the landscape.

Then, you will have written your descriptions for Task 1b.

Perhaps your description was like this.

The first point is a flat land near the coast.

Much of the forest there has been cleared.

My second point was flat but densely covered in Equatorial rainforest.

And my third point was some elevated lands were still forested but it was volcanic.

There were volcanic craters and it was very near to the city of Goma.

Did you have some similar ideas? Well done.

You have learnt so much in today's lesson and you have been using this new tool, this GIS, to help you investigate the physical and human geography of the DRC.

In doing so, you've discovered that the DRC is a country in Central Africa and it's one of the largest countries in Africa.

The DRC is largely landlocked but for that very small stretch of coastline in the west which is bordering the Atlantic Ocean.

You then used the ArcGIS Visualiser, and you discovered through that, that adding different layers of data onto maps can help you to really visualise the human geography of the DRC, as well as help you to visualise the physical geography of the DRC.

I hope you enjoyed this lesson and I hope you are looking forward to finding out more about this diverse and interesting country as we work through this unit of work together.

I'll see you next time.

Bye for now!.