Lesson video

Hi geographers.

My name's Ms. Hoggett, and I'm really excited you're here to learn some geography with me today.

I'm sure if you try your best you'll be absolutely fantastic.

Don't worry too much if you haven't studied this topic before.

I'm here to help you every step of the way.

The title for today's lesson is GIS: Visualising the physical and human geography of the Middle East, and our unit is The Middle East: how have natural resources changed the Middle East? Our learning outcome for today's lesson is that I can use GIS to locate the Middle East and analyse how urban populations are related to rainfall totals.

To help us through today's lesson, there are a number of keywords that are going to be really useful to us: human landscape, physical landscape, and interconnected.

The human landscape is made up of features that people have built or changed in the environment, including cities, roads, and farmland.

The physical landscape is made up of natural features created by earth, including mountains, rivers, deserts, coastlines and climate.

And interconnected is how things are linked and affect each other.

So human landscape, physical landscape and interconnected are the terms that are going to really support us in understanding today's lesson.

This lesson is split into two learning cycles, the first visualising the location of the Middle East, and the second analysing physical and human geography patterns.

We're going to start with the first now, visualising the location of the Middle East.

Now, the Middle East is a region of the world that spans parts of Western Asia, North Africa and Southeastern Europe.

What questions do you have about the region? Pause the video and have a think.

What questions did you have? I'm sure they were really interesting.

Izzy says, "Why do we use the name the Middle East if it isn't a continent?" Jacob says, "Where did the name come from?" And Jun says, "What countries are in the Middle East?" So between Izzy, Jacob and Jun, we've already got some really key questions that we'll hopefully address in today's lesson.

So let's check your understanding.

The Middle East is a what? Is it A, a region in Western Asia, B, a region spread across three continents, or C, a continent to the east of Europe? Pause the video and have a go at answering this question.

Well done if you said B, a region spread across three continents.

That's absolutely spot on.

Now, the Middle East is a diverse region with a range of different physical and human landscapes, and we can see some of those in the images on the screen.

Geographic information systems or GIS can be used to visualise the countries in the Middle East.

Let's take a look at this video which explains in detail how we can go about this.

<v Instructor>In this video,</v> we're going to use the ArcGIS Geography Visualiser to visualise the location of the Middle East.

Now, to do this, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to change the base map.

We could use this imagery hybrid base map, but it's a little bit easier if we use a chartered territory map, just because it's a touch easier to see the countries.

I'm then going to drag the map.

So the middle is focused around Saudi Arabia and Iran and around this area here.

Now, there are some complications with visualising the location of the Middle East.

The first is that the Middle East is not like, is not a continent like Asia or Europe or North America.

It's a term used for a region of the world.

Now, that term, the Middle East, was actually given by Europeans a couple of hundred years ago to define a region of the world which was east of Europe, but not as far east as countries like China.

And therefore some people say it's a term that shouldn't be used because it's what people would define as Eurocentric.

It's been given by Europeans, and it's not necessarily a name given by people who are within this region themselves.

So that's one complication.

The second complication is it's not actually an agreed upon area.

Not everybody puts the same countries within that term, the Middle East.

So there are some countries which are always put into that bracket, and there are others which are often sometimes put in, but not always.

So what we're going to do here is I'm going to use the sketch tool in the bottom toolbar to just draw a line around areas that are commonly referred to as being part of the Middle East.

So I'm just going to, I've chosen this line at the top and I've changed the size to four, so it's a little bit easier to see.

I'm going to zoom in a little bit, so we can see the names of the countries.

And then I've lost that line.

There we go.

I've clicked the line again and I'll change the size to four.

And I'm now just going to draw a rough line around these countries.

So Oman in Yemen are usually regarded as part of the Middle East.

I'm then going to include Egypt.

Some people would include Sudan, south of Egypt, and they would include Libya as part of the definition of the Middle East.

I'm not, but I could have done.

Cyprus is a little bit complicated 'cause it's spread between Greece and Turkey.

But I'm going to include Turkey as part of the Middle East and it is usually regarded within this region.

And then going to, I might have to zoom in a little bit here.

Usually these countries here like Armenia and Azerbaijan and Georgia are not considered part of the Middle East, but some people do put them into that bracket.

And I'm going to very quickly include Iran, and Iran tends to be seen as on the eastern edge of the Middle East.

I'll just do this nice and quick.

However, some people would include countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan as being part of the Middle East.

But roughly speaking, this line that I've drawn is a reasonable definition of where people mean when they're talking about a region of the Middle East.

It's kind of centred around Iraq and Saudi Arabia, but it includes countries in three continents essentially.

It's mainly in Asia, but Egypt is in North Africa, and Turkey is actually split between Europe and Asia.

So an important thing for us to do as geographers when we describe a location of places is to use directional language, like north, east, south and west, but also geographical reference points.

So if we think about the Middle East, we can see, for example, if we look carefully at this map, that it's north of the equator, isn't it? So it's in the northern hemisphere.

We can see that the Tropic of Cancer runs through the centre of the Middle East.

We can see that the Indian Oceans to the southeast of the Middle East.

We can see the Mediterranean is seen as on the west, and the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea are to the north of the Middle East.

So it is important to look carefully at this map to pick out geographical reference points that are going to help you to describe carefully where the Middle East is.

<v ->So let's check your understanding from that video.

</v> Which of the following countries are considered to be part of the Middle East? Is it A, Greece, B, Iran, C, Egypt, or D, Morocco? Pause the video and have a go at answering this question.

Well done if you said B, Iran and C, Egypt.

Greece and Morocco were not included in the countries we outlined as the Middle East.

So let's challenge you again, I'd like you to identify and correct the two mistakes in Andeep's statement.

Andeep says, "The Middle East is a country that's spread across North Africa, Southeastern Europe and Eastern Asia," but he's made two mistakes.

Can you correct them? Pause the video and have a go.

Well done for giving that a good go.

Let's check your answers.

So what Andeep should have said is the Middle East is a region that is spread across North Africa, Southeastern Europe, and Western Asia.

Well done if you've got that spot on.

So we're now gonna practise what you've learned in this learning cycle, and to do this, I'd like you to open the link to the Geography Visualiser.

Once you've got to open, I'd firstly like you to draw around the countries in the Middle East.

You can do this by clicking on the base maps on the bottom tool bar and selecting chartered territory map from the options in the popup.

Then zoom into the map, so that you can read the name of the countries, and then click on the sketch tool, set it to the line function, and then draw around the countries typically considered part of the Middle East.

And then for part two, I would like you to describe the location of the Middle East.

Include the following words in your answer: Tropic of Cancer, Northern Hemisphere, Black Sea, Indian Ocean, and Mediterranean Sea.

Good luck, geographers.

I'm sure you're going to do brilliantly.

Well done for giving that a really good go.

So for part one of this practise task, you needed to draw around the countries in the Middle East.

So you should have a map that looks something like that from the Geography Visualiser.

And for part two, you needed to describe the location of the Middle East.

You had a number of keywords to include within your answer.

Let's take a look at what you could have written.

The Middle East is located in the northern hemisphere, north of the Equator.

It is situated at the crossroads of Southwest Asia, North Africa, and parts of Southeastern Europe.

To the north, the Middle East is bordered by the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.

To the south, it extends towards the Indian Ocean, with the Tropic of Cancer passing through its southern countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

To the east, it stretches towards Iran and the borders of South Asia, and to the west, the region reaches towards Northeast Africa, including Egypt and the Red Sea coast.

Well done if you managed to include all of those keyword, geographers.

You will have successfully described the location of the Middle East.

We've now reached the end of learning cycle one, and we're ready to move on to learning cycle two, analysing physical and human geography patterns.

Now, the human and physical landscapes of the Middle East are interconnected in many different ways.

So that means they're linked together.

So the human landscape such as whereas people live and how people live and what jobs people do are influenced by the climate, the biomes, and the natural resources, and they go back and forth with one another.

So the climate impacts how people live, biomes impact what jobs we can do, but where people live is impacted by things like natural resources, and how hot or how cold it is as well.

So they're very much interconnected.

What I would like you to do here is identify the features of the physical and human landscape in this image.

Pause the video and have a go at seeing what different elements you can identify.

What did you come up with? Let's take a look at what you could have said.

So in terms of human landscape, we've got a farm settlement there, and we can see that there's evidence of agriculture and communication networks.

But in terms of the physical landscape, we can see that there's mountains and a colder climate because they're snow capped.

We can see that there's also sparse vegetation representing an arid or a dry climate.

So GIS can be used to analyse patterns in geography and show how the physical and human landscape are interconnected.

So we are going to take a look at this video to understand how we can do that using the Geography Visualiser.

<v Instructor>In this video,</v> we're going to use the ArcGIS Geography Visualiser to analyse the relationship between different geographical variables.

So the first thing you'll notice is that we've still got this sketch around the region of the Middle East, and that's quite important, an important reference point, so we can see clearly where we're talking about.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to add some different layers of data.

I'm gonna add some what we think of as human geography layers, and also some physical geography layer.

So I'm gonna do this by clicking on this Add layer button in the toolbar.

I'm going to scroll down by using the scroll wheel of the mouse.

I'm going to click on add where it says Cities of the World.

Now, I could just look at this and visualise the cities of the world in the Middle East, so which cities are there and how big they are.

But what I want to do is I want to see if there is a relationship between this geographical variable to do with population and a different variable.

And I'm going to use a physical geography variable.

I'm going to click on the global rainfall total.

And what this is going to allow us to do is analyse whether there's a relationship between these two layers of data.

I'm going to close this now.

And you'll see that the rainfall precipitation totals are now on the map.

I can click on Legend to see what this means.

And you will see that the yellow areas are the driest with precipitation totals down to 50 millimetres, and where it's blue, it's a lot of precipitation.

I suppose in the Middle East, we're really looking at the yellows and the greens, so sort of very little precipitation if it's yellow, or the greens, which is a moderate amount.

And what you can see here is we've got a lot of yellow, and I can click on a certain area of the map and it's going to come up with a climate graph or a precipitation graph, I should say, because it doesn't have the temperature on, and it shows us the precipitation through the year.

53 millimetres annual precipitation is very, very low.

If you compare that with the UK, most places in the UK will have 800 millimetres a year and above, depending on where you are in the UK.

So that gives you an idea of what we're looking at here.

Now the green areas, if I go to Turkey here and click on this, we can see 712 millimetres.

That's much more precipitation.

I suppose equivalent to certain areas in the southeast of England.

So more of a moderate precipitation total there.

Now what we want to do is we wanna see if there's a relationship between these precipitation totals and where cities within the Middle East are located.

Now at the moment, the precipitation layer is obscuring the city layer.

So I'm going to click on Map layers, if finally go up to the global precipitate, global rainfall, it says, but it is really talking about precipitation.

I can pull the slider along and I can then see the cities, and I can really analyse with this in mind.

And what I'm looking for here is I'm looking for where the cities are, and these are these circles, and the size of the circle tells you how high, big the city is, and what the precipitation is like.

And maybe by sliding this across, I can start to see some patterns.

However, it's maybe worth being a little bit more accurate than this, and what I would recommend is that we add a sketch, so that we annotate the map, just so that we can see really clearly where the higher precipitation totals are.

So the way I'm going to do that is if I make sure the global rainfall layer is on, I'm going to go to this toolbar at the bottom and click Sketch.

I'm going to use a line for this, and I'm gonna keep it on a solid line.

I'm going to take it up to a four in size.

And I think I'm gonna have a blue sort of denotes precipitation.

And then I can draw a line.

And this is only for me and my analysis.

I'm not presenting this data, so I'm just going to draw a line very roughly where I would say the high precipitation totals are in the Middle East.

And when I say high, it's high for the Middle East.

It doesn't necessarily mean high relative to places in most of Europe, for example.

So I would say this area of the Middle East is fairly high.

There's a section down here in Yemen, which is a little bit higher precipitation total.

And look, if you realise that you've made a shape like this and it's a bit thinner line than I would like, I can click on the Edit button, choose the feature, and then I can change the colour here, and I can change the size quite easily.

So there we go, there's two areas here where I've drawn some lines, some sketches around the areas of high precipitation.

Now at the moment, the global precipitation layer, the global rainfall layer is obscuring that.

But now I can actually go to the layer and toggle that visibility, and you'll see that I've now drawn this area where high precipitation totals are.

So I don't actually need that for a second.

And what I can see is most of the cities within the Middle East do fall within this region.

They fall within the areas of the higher rainfall totals, and if they're not there, most are pretty close to the coastline.

So we can start analysing some patterns.

There are some really notable exceptions like Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, like this region of Baghdad to the west.

So we can investigate that.

Cairo, again, really low precipitation totals.

So we'd have to investigate to figure out why that might be.

If I change the base map to a chartered territory map, it does have the rivers on here, and it can show this really clearly.

And if you think about if an area doesn't have a lot of rainfall, maybe we're thinking it's an area where they're getting their rainfall from a river, which maybe has a source where there is higher rainfall.

So if I go into these regions, maybe around Baghdad, you'll see that, yes, there's some major river systems, and the Tigris that Baghdad sits on supplying these regions with water.

And again, Cairo over here, we know we've got the River Nile, we've got Lake Nasser further south, which is essentially a reservoir.

It's an artificial lake feeding these regions with water.

There are other exceptions, like Riyadh, where we don't have a major river system, and this is where we would maybe look into this city with more detail and work out where they're getting their water from.

You know, are they getting it from aquifers? Are they getting it from desalinization? And we Riyadh's a really good example of where that's the case.

We can see though how there seems to be a fairly good relationship between where these cities are and where the higher rainfall totals are.

So I would say this a good example of where we can use two variables and see the relationship between them.

Having said that, you can see already how I've had to go into certain areas and investigate in a bit more detail because our rainfall total didn't fully explain how there can be cities there.

We couldn't work out exactly where they were getting their water from.

And it's important to realise that when we're trying to investigate a place, there may not only be one factor.

In fact, there's not going to be just one factor influencing where cities are located.

So we have to look at multiple variables, multiple layers of data, and maybe the history of the region to really work out the story of all of these cities and try and work out the patterns.

However, we can see the use of GIS when we are comparing two geographical variables and trying to see these patterns over geographical space.

<v ->Welcome back, geographers.

</v> Let's check your understanding from that video.

So true or false, all major cities in the Middle East are in areas of higher rainfall? Pause the video and have a go answering that question.

Well done if you said false.

We know that although many cities in the Middle East are in areas of higher rainfall, others like Baghdad are located on rivers.

Some cities such as Riyadh in Saudi Arabia are neither in an area of high rainfall nor are they near a major river.

Another question for you then.

Global rainfall and cities of the world are examples of what? Is it A, basemaps on the Geography Visualiser, B, layers on the Geography Visualiser, or C, tools on the Geography Visualiser? Pause the video and have a go at answering that second question.

Well done for giving that a good go, geographers, and you'll be spot on if you put B, layers on the Geography Visualiser.

Well done.

So we're going to practise what that video has taught us, and for this learning cycle, you're going to open the link to the Geography Visualiser again.

And for part one, you're going to compare the cities of the world with a different layer, other than global rainfall.

You could pick temperature or tectonic plates, as these would be good examples of other layers to use.

So to do this, you're going to click on the Add Layer function.

You're going to select Cities of the World and then one other variable.

You're going to click on Legend to view what data is being displayed.

And then you're going to click on Map Layers and use the sliders to compare your two variables.

You can add a sketch to help you compare that data.

And then for part two, I would like you to analyse whether any patterns exist between the layers.

So pause the video now and have a go at completing this practise task.

I'm sure you're going to do brilliantly.

Well done for giving that a really good go.

Let's check your answers.

So for one, your comparison might look like this if looking at cities and global temperatures.

The purple outline shapes represent cooler areas of the Middle East.

And then for part two, you might have said something along these lines.

This map suggests a complex relationship between temperature and urban development.

Cities like Riyadh, Kuwait City and Dubai are located within the hottest areas of the Middle East.

On the other hand, some large cities like Cairo, Tehran and Ankara lie outside the hottest zones, where temperatures are more moderate.

While high temperatures don't prevent the growth of cities, most larger cities are found in slightly cooler areas, possibly because these conditions are more sustainable and comfortable for large populations.

Let's summarise what we've learnt in this lesson.

The Middle East is a region of the world that spans parts of Western Asia, North Africa, and Southeastern Europe.

The Middle East has diverse physical and human landscapes.

GIS can be used to identify countries within the Middle East, and GIS can be used to analyse the relationship between physical and human landscapes in the Middle East.

You've done brilliantly, geographers.

I wish you all the best and I look forward to seeing you in our next lesson.