Notes for the first week of class

Your reading assignment for the first week includes chapters 1 and 2 of the textbook. The major topics emphasized in the readings should be fairly straightforward, and are summarized both in the review material at the end of each chapter and in the review material at the textbook web site, which is linked directly to the online syllabus. In the following notes I highlight the topics that are of greatest concern and that we will focus on in class.

• Physical geography as a field of study: major themes
  
  
• Elements of the scientific method
  
  
• The systems concept:
• Input, output, storage, and transformation
• Open and closed systems
• System equilibrium
• Feedback loops, negative and positive feedbacks
• Cycling of energy and matter in the earth system
• Interactions among the major subsystems: atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, biosphere

• Some basic facts about the earth:
• Size and shape
• Rotation on axis and revolution around the sun
• Energy sources and energy cycling
• The role of gravity
• The role of water
• The importance of change over time
• The importance of spatial patterns
• The four "spheres"

• Geographic coordinates, maps, and the depiction of spatial patterns:
• Latitude and longitude, angle vs. distance measurements
• Latitudinal zones
• Meridians and parallels, great circles and small circles
• Time zones and international date line
• Map projections, map scale, and map distortion
• Technology for analyzing spatial pattern: maps, GPS, GIS and Remote Sensing
 
• Earth in the context of the solar system
• Dimensions and distances
• Earth's orbit
 
• Solar energy and the electromagnetic spectrum
• Wavelength ranges
• Blackbody radiation and basic rules for temperature vs. energy emission
• Shortwave vs. longwave radiation
• Solar constant
 
• Earth-sun relations and the seasons:
• Earth's orbit and the plane of the ecliptic
• Tilt of earth's axis and "significant" latitudes
• Solstices and equinoxes
• Sun angle and length of daylight as a function of latitude and season
• Varying intensity of solar radiation and spatial and temporal patterns of total insolation