That book about the trip to Alberta where we learned that the geography of the west has shaped who we are
By Keira Houlihan

This will be your cover. It should include a graphic(s), your name, and a title relating to the answer to the driving question.

PLP Alberta trip 2 (2022) AKA the superior trip

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Table of contents:
Five themes of geography comic life
What is geography?
What made and makes the west
The last spike
Downtown calgary
Calgary zoo
Frank slide
Head-smashed-in-buffalo-jump
Cave and basin national historic site
Columbia ice field and glacier skywalk
Golden skybridge

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When you think of geography, what comes to mind? Do you think of looking at a map or globe? Do you think of the world in general? Or do you think of the actual study of geography? What about the definition of geography? What is your definition of geography? Normally you’d think of the obvious such as mountains, rivers, cities and more. But what if you thought deeper?

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The five themes are:
1. Location
2. Place
3. Human-environment interaction
4. movement
5. Regions

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What is geography?

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The five themes of geography

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The five themes of geography.

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The five themes of geography are concepts that geographers use to study our world and the people that live in it. These themes help geographers gather, organize and analyze information about the world around us.

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The five themes of geography are concepts that geographers use to study our world and the people that live in it. These themes help geographers gather, organize and analyze information about the world around us.

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Throughout this project we used the five themes to make connections with the different places we went to on the Alberta trip, and what themes were being represented and how at each place.

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We also utilized these themes to answer the driving question “how has the geography of the west shaped us?”

5 themes comic

To inform people about the five themes of geography we had to create a comic using an app called comic life. You can see my completed one here.

In the next few pages you will be able to see the individual panels with more explanation about each theme and how the photo represents that theme.

Movement. The process of moving things from one place to another. When were talking about movement as one of the five themes, we are talking about the movement of goods, people and ideas. The reason that I chose this photo was because while we were at the last spike, a train just happened to go by, and it was likley transporting goods.

Location. A place on a map. A simple thing. But is it really? There are two types of location used when talking about the five themes, absolute and relative. Absolute location is the exact location on the Globe. To find the exact location, geographers will use latitude and longitude, as well as street addresses, GPS systems and map coordinates.relative location uses the position of a place in relation to another place, as well as things like landmarks, direction, time and distance. I chose this photo because I feel that it represents location well. It has a “landmark” that can be recognized when you see photos of it, and for me when I look at this photo tons of memories come up.

Place is defined as the description of the characteristics that make a certain location distinct. This photo is from the larch valley hike we did. Many people know this place for its stunning larch trees, wich makes it very easy to identify it. Note that these characteristics can be either physical or cultural.

There there are three types of regions; formal, functional and vernacular. Formal regions are defined by governmental boundaries for example the city of Calgary, shown above. Functional regions are defined by a function, eg. Port of Vancouver. The last is vernacular regions. Vernacular regions are loosely defined by similar characteristics (the Rockies) and peoples perception (Chinatown or Deep Cove).

Human-environment interaction. How do we interact interact with our environment? How do we modify it? How do we depend on it? In this photo you can see the ✨golden skybridge✨. We are using and modifying the environment in this photo because we build this massive suspension bridge across this canyon thing, as well as building a massive zip line. While we were there they were also constructing a roller coaster type thing through the forest/side of the mountain. They were modifying the environment to be able to put the track in.

My answer to the driving question

The geography of the west has shaped us by allowing us to have a thriving economy with multiple industries that have helped us settle and develop