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Hello, my name is Miss Gilyeat.
And I'm your geography teacher for today.
Today, we are going to be learning about how to use GIS to analyse the human and physical geography of Russia.
Our lesson outcome for today is that you can use geographic information systems, or GIS, to analyse human and physical geographical features in Russia and explain how they are related.
So we've got three keywords for today's lesson.
The first one is physical landscape.
And these are landscapes made up of natural features created by Earth including mountains, rivers, deserts, coastlines, and climate.
Our second key word is a human landscape, which is the landscape made up of features that people have built or changed in the environment including cities, roads, and farmland.
And our final key word is interconnected, which is how things are linked and affect each other.
We've got two learning cycles.
So first of all, we're gonna learn visualising the size and location of Russia.
And we're gonna do this using GIS.
And secondly, we're gonna have a look at analysing Russia's physical and human geography.
Let's get started with our first learning cycle.
Now, Russia is a diverse country with a range of different physical and human landscapes.
So if you have a look at the slide here, we have got images which have all been taken in Russia.
What do you notice about some of the different photographs? Have a quick chat with your partner.
Now, there is a variety of unique aspects about the size and location of Russia.
Can you think what they may be? So we've got an answer from Andeep here.
So he has said, "I know that Russia is the largest country in the world." We've also got an an answer from Jun who's put, "I know that Russia is spread across two continents, Europe and Asia." Both correct, well done.
Okay, let's check.
So Russia is, A, spread across two continents, B, the largest country in the world, or C, a continent in its own right.
There could be more than one answer for this.
So the right answers are A, it's spread across two continents, and B, is the largest country in the world.
Well done if you've got those right.
Now, maps help us understand the location and relative size of countries.
Why does knowledge of Russia's size and location help us to understand physical and human geography of the country? Have a quick chat with your partner.
So Izzy has said, "Knowledge of Russia's location may help us understand its climate and biomes." Well done, Izzy, that's right.
And Jacob has said, "Knowledge of Russia's location and size may help us understand more about their government's relationship with other governments." Both, absolutely spot on answers there.
Now, we can use the ArcGIS Geography Visualizer to help us look at the location and the size of Russia in a variety of ways.
So we're gonna watch a little video explaining how we can use that visualizer to do so.
<v Narrator>In this video, we are going to use</v> the Teach with GIS resources from ArcGIS to visualise the size and location of Russia.
Now, there's two parts of this platform that we're going to use.
We're going to use the geography visualizer.
But we're also, if I scroll down, we're going to use this other application here where it says World Sizes.
But first we're going to go to the geography visualizer.
So I'm going to click on this.
And it's going to take me to a GIS map.
And here, we can see it's actually on the hybrid map.
So it shows the satellite imagery of the world.
But it's a hybrid map because it's also got the country borders on.
Now, I'm going to change this map.
I'm going to do that by coming to the base map button in the bottom toolbar.
So I'll click on this.
And I'm going to take it to a chartered territory map.
And once I've done that, I will load up.
And you will see that we have a map, which is really, really clear to be able to see the different countries and the different borders.
So it does have physical geography information on it.
You can see the rivers here and things.
But it's essentially a political geography map showing where different countries are.
Now, on the chartered territory map, we have a series of geographical reference points that we can use to be able to describe where Russia is.
So if I hold down my left button and I drag the map upwards, we can see where the equator is, which means Russia, which we can see in the middle of the screen here, is in the Northern Hemisphere.
If I zoom in a little bit, and I'm using the scroll wheel of the mouse to do that, we can see that this line is the 45 degree north latitude line.
And there is a little bit of Russia just south of this line.
But most of Russia is north of the 45 degree north latitude line.
So we can also see on here.
If we look, we can see where the Arctic circle is.
And we can see that that runs through Russian territory.
So a lot of northern part of Russia is within the Arctic Circle.
We can also see on this map the different countries which surround Russia, the different borders.
Now, you may think that knowing which countries border Russia is just something for a quiz question.
But that's not the case.
It really helps us understand the physical and human geography of the country.
And so, for example, we can see here Russia shares a long border with China.
And that might mean it affects Russia's trade policies with China.
It might affect how Russia spends its money on defences and the military.
So by knowing which countries border Russia helps our understanding, not just of Russia, but of the whole world.
So we can see how this can be very useful at understanding the location of Russia.
In terms of the size, I could go down to this toolbar and measure the size of Russia using this button on the toolbar.
But I'm not going to do that here.
I'm going to use a different tool.
So I've come back into the Teach with GIS homepage.
And I'm going to scroll down.
Rather than going into the geography visualizer, I'm going to go into where it says World Sizes.
And what this allows me to do is.
When it loads up, you will see the world like in globe form.
And if I hold down the left button of the mouse, I can move the globe around.
So I'm gonna move that around.
I'm going to find Russia here.
And what I can do, you can see the pink outline coming on countries there.
I can click on Russia there.
And when I do that, I can then hold the mouse button down.
Then I can move Russia to a different part of the world.
And if I can zoom in, I can move it round.
So I can bring it down, for example, and I can put it next to Australia.
And I might do here is.
Yep, it's moved around a little bit.
You can see Russia next to the outline of Australia.
And you can see it's around twice the size.
Now, this is a really useful tool because as you may be aware when we try and show maps on a flat surface, like a 2D surface, we have to distort it to make it fit.
And that often means that, certainly, that on Mercator maps, like in the geography visualizer, the far north and south parts of the world get stretched.
They really get elongated to make them look a lot bigger.
So it's really important to a tool like this to be able to compare different countries.
<v ->Okay, let's check what we've just learned.
</v> The magnifying glass symbol allows you to, A, zoom in, B, change the base map, or C, search for places.
The answer is C, search for places.
Well done if you got that right.
Okay, we'll check again.
So each circle on the map has a diameter of 800 kilometres.
This shows that, A, Russia is much larger than it looks on the map, B, Russia is smaller than it looks on the map, or C, Russia is about the same size as Australia.
What do you think? The answer is B, Russia is smaller than it looks on the map.
Well done if you got that right.
Okay, we're onto our first task for this lesson.
So you're gonna open the link there, which is for the geography visualizer, and complete these tasks.
So first of all, click on base maps in the bottom toolbar and select Charted Territory map from the options in the popup.
Then I'd like you to zoom in on Russia and look carefully at the countries it borders, and its position with reference to key lines of latitude.
And then I'd like you to describe the location of Russia with reference to lines of latitude in other countries.
Use directional terms, such as north, east, south, and west.
Pause the video and have a go at this task.
Okay, next, what I'd like to do is open this link, go into World Sizes, and move Russia, and compare with at least three other countries of your choice to see what the size is like compared to other countries.
Okay, so pause the video and have a look.
Okay, here we've got some answers.
So when you had a look at Russia's location, it should have looked something like this.
I've got on a screenshot of the slide, on the slide here.
And your description of the location of Russia could have included some information like this.
Russia is located in the Northern Hemisphere entirely north of the equator.
A significant proportion of the country lies within the Arctic Circle.
Geographically, Russia spans in Northern Asia and eastern Europe.
It shares land borders with many nations.
To the south, it borders China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan.
To the west, it borders countries including Finland and Ukraine.
And to the north, Russia has a long arctic coastline along the Arctic Ocean.
So hopefully, you've got something similar along those lines.
It might be worth pausing the video and improving your answer if you haven't.
Okay, so I compared the size of Russia with Australia, Brazil, and Greenland.
So we can see here that Russia is approximately twice the size of Australia and Brazil, and roughly four times the size of Greenland.
|Okay, we're on to our second learning cycle, which is analysing Russia's physical and human geography.
Now, the human and physical landscapes of Russia are interconnected in many different ways, okay? So if we're thinking about the human landscape and how people live, okay, so where people live, how they live, and what jobs people do will all be connected to the climate of the area, what biome it's in, and what natural resources are available within that area.
Okay, so we've got a photograph which has been taken in Russia here.
What I would like you to do is identify features of the physical and the human landscape from looking at that picture.
What physical and human features can you see? So some of the human features I found was there was settlement, communication networks, lots of trees, which suggests a temperate climate, and a river.
Well done if you spotted those too.
Now, GIS can also be used to analyse patterns in geography and show how the physical and human landscapes are interconnected.
So we're gonna watch this video to see how the visualizer can help us do that.
<v Narrator>In this video,</v> we are going to use the geography visualizer to investigate the relationships between some human and physical geography variables.
And to do this, I'm first going to bring Russia to the centre of the map so that we can see where it is.
And I'm going to to change the base map to the charted territory map.
But you can play around with different base maps when you are using the visualizer yourself.
And what I'm going do is I'm going to add some layers of data.
And you'll see in the toolbar at the bottom, we can see this Add Layer button.
I'm going to click on that.
And I'm wanting a human geography variable or something which is traditionally seen as human geography.
So I'm going to come up with this cities of the world.
And I'm going to add the plus.
We can see it's added to the map layer at the bottom.
And, and that's.
This saves the one.
Now, I just wanted to visualise where the cities were in Russia, I could leave it at that.
But what I want to do here is I want to analyse how this, how there is a relationship between these cities of the world and maybe a physical geography variable.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to add another variable onto the map.
So I'm gonna scroll down.
And we can see here it says Global Minimum Temperature.
So that's the average minimum surface temperature, so how cold it gets through the year.
And I'm going to add that as well.
And we can see the map layer has added a second one on here.
I'm then going to close this box.
And then we can see what the map looks like.
Now currently, we can see the cities in Russia.
If I zoom in a little bit more, we can see them all here.
If I click on a city, so I've clicked on this one, it gives me a little bit more information, so how that population has changed over time and a little bit, you know, a little bit of detailed statistics about it, okay? But what I want to do is I want to compare where these cities are with another variable that I've loaded, which is the global minimum temperature.
So if I click on global minimum temperature, what it does is it loads this data on the map.
And we can see now it's kind of changed into lots of different colours.
But we can see we can't really see the cities of the world anymore.
If I click on legend, it'll tell me what the temperature means.
So we can see the yellows are really, really cold.
Minus 55, that real yellow is there.
And if in the purples, it's incredibly warm.
So the, the closer it is to the redder colours, the the warmer it is.
Now, at the moment, the cities are obscured.
So the way we can deal with this is if I click onto the map layer again and I go up to where it says Global Minimum Temperature, I can click on where it says Adjust transparency.
And if I then pull the slider over, I can then suddenly be able to see where those cities are so I can have a look at them, so I can really analyse this by kind of bringing the slider over to check on the temperature.
And if I want to click on that temperature, it'll give me some details on that specific place.
We can see there it's very cold, minimum annual temperature, minus 49.
7 degrees C.
Now currently, the borders of the countries are not showing up.
If I click on the base map and turn it back to an imagery hybrid, what it will do is it'll actually show me the border of Russia, which could be quite useful.
Now, what I can do, what I might want to do here is add some sketches to this map to just annotate it to help me out.
So I'm going to add some lines on the map.
Let me put that as a black line at four.
And I'm just going to draw a line very, very, very roughly to just break up where I think these temperatures change.
And I can see there's a bit of an east to west split here.
The warmer temperatures are to the west of Russia.
And colder temperatures are to the east.
So now, east of this line, certainly between.
I need to add another line in there, over here, and probably about there.
So roughly speaking within this area here, we're talking very cold, you know, temperatures probably below 35, minus 30 degrees C within that area.
Within this area, we're looking at temperatures probably between about minus 15 and minus 30.
And in this area, most of this will be around minus 15 and above.
So we can see.
We can see these sort of, you know, how this looks now on the map.
And what I can do that helps me out a little bit because when I adjust the transparency, I can see where those cities sit.
And I've got some reference points.
So we can see that we have one, two, three, four cities in this really cold region.
And we then have, you know, maybe 10 cities in this sort of middle region here.
And then the majority of cities in Russia are west of this in the warmest region.
So maybe we're able to see a pattern between, you know, where is falls really, really low in terms of the minimum annual temperature and where the cities are.
The cities tend to be in the warmer region.
It's still pretty cold, but the warmer regions of Russia.
Now, a word of warning on this.
And that is we can't be too simplistic when we start analysing patterns.
We've analysed a pattern between a physical geography variable and human geography variable.
And it would be easy for us to say, oh, well, the cities are all in the warmer area because it's easier to live there.
It's easy to grow crops.
And I'm sure that there is a good degree of truth there.
But we've only really analysed one pattern there.
We could also say the cities are, the majority are just in the west close to these sort of the European borders.
And they get less.
There's less and less cities as you move eastwards.
And in a way, that's a stronger pattern because we know right in this far east, that's slightly warmer again.
And there's no cities over there.
So we do have to be really careful with these patterns.
And sometimes when we're trying to investigate a country, we need to look at lots of different variables.
We'd have to add lots of different map layers on to try and reach some conclusions.
So it's just a word of warning on not being too simplistic.
Useful information, yes.
Does it give us maybe a pattern that's worth investigating? Yeah, I think it probably does.
But is that the whole story? I very much doubt it.
So yeah, but that is how we can use GIS to analyse different variables and see how one affects the other.
<v ->Okay, let's check what we've learned.
</v> True or false, the minimum temperature of an area will determine whether a city is located there or not.
That is false.
And can you tell me why? This may be one reason, but it is not the only variable that affects where cities are located.
Well done if you've got something along those lines.
Now, next check, global temperature and cities of the world are examples of, A, base maps on the geography visualizer, B, layers on the geography visualizer, or C, tools on the geography visualizer.
Which one is it? The answer's B, you are adding a layer of information on.
Okay, well done if you've got that correct.
Okay, we're on to our final tasks for this lesson.
I'd like you to open the link to the visualizer and compare the cities in Russia with two different physical geography layers.
So you need to click on Base Maps in the bottom toolbar, and select Charted Territory Maps from the options in the popup box.
Then click on Add Layers and Add the Cities of the World layer.
And then I'd like you to add another physical geography layer.
So for example, it could be world biomes, global minimum temperature, or just global temperature could be an example as well.
Okay, so what patterns can you spot? Pause the video and have a go at that.
Then you're going to analyse whether any patterns exist between the layers of data.
Okay, so to do this, you're going to click on map layers and adjust the transparency of the physical layer, so you can see the cities underneath the layer.
Okay, so you've got two layers on top of each other.
You make the physical one transparent so you can see where the cities are.
To help you analyse the pattern, use the Sketch function to annotate your map, and then see what patterns you can spot between your different layers.
And then, finally, I'd like you to explain how you think the climate of an area may affect where cities are located.
Okay, so your answers may look like this.
So here we've got a comparison between world biomes and cities.
And we can see that the majority of cities in Russia are located in the grassland and temperate forest biome.
And for the final question, I've put, "Cities are often built in places with a mild climate where it's easier to live and grow food.
Harsh climates, like deserts or very cold areas, can make building and living in cities more difficult." Well done if you got something similar to what I have put.
Okay, we've got a summary for today's lesson.
So first, Russia is the largest country in the world.
And is spread over Europe and Asia.
Russia has a range of diverse physical and human landscapes.
GIS can be used to locate Russia and compare the size of it relative to other countries.
And GIS can be used to analyse the relationship between physical and human landscapes in Russia.
Now, good work today.
Good to work using that skill on the visualizer.
And that's it from me.
So I'll see you next time, bye!.