Social Studies​​: Geography


The geography of a community influences the cultural development of the humans who inhabit the community. There are relationships between climate, natural resources, and other geographic characteristics and a community's cultural development. The unique characteristics of an area influence where and how communities develop, their relative wealth and power, and how they adapt to changes.

​Standard I: Students will understand how geography influences community location and development.

Objective 1: Determine the relationships between human settlement and geography.
  • Identify the geographic features common to areas where human settlements exist.
  • Use map features to make logical inferences and describe relationships between human settlement and physical geography (e.g. population density in relation to latitude, cities’ proximity to water, and utilization of natural resources).
  • Compare the shapes and purposes of natural and human-made boundaries of cities, counties and states.

Objective 2: Describe how various communities have adapted to existing environments and how other communities have  modified the environment.
  • Describe the major world ecosystems (i.e. desert, plain, tropic, tundra, grassland, mountain, forest, and wetland).
  • Identify important natural resources of world ecosystems.
  • Describe how communities have modified the environment to accommodate their needs (e.g. logging, storing water, building transportation systems).
  • Investigate ways different communities have adapted into an ecosystem. 
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Objective 3: Analyze ways cultures use, maintain, and preserve the physical environment.
  • Identify ways people use the physical environment (e.g. agriculture, recreation, energy, industry).
  • Compare changes in the availability and use of natural resources over time.
  • Describe ways to conserve and protect natural resources (e.g. reduce, reuse, recycle).
  • Compare perspectives of various communities toward the natural environment.
  • Make inferences about the positive and negative impacts of human-caused change to the physical environment.