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Geography Standards and Benchmarks
The World in Spatial Terms Standard 3:
Understands the characteristics and uses of spatial organization of Earth's surface
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Understands distributions of physical and human occurrences with respect to spatial patterns, arrangements, and associations (why some areas are more densely settled than others, relationships and patterns in the kind and number of links between settlements)
- Understands patterns of land use in urban, suburban, and rural areas (land uses that are frequently nearby and others not frequently adjacent to one another, dominant land-use patterns in city centers and peripheral areas)
- Understands how places are connected and how these connections demonstrate interdependence and accessibility (e.g., the role of changing transportation and communication technology, regions and countries Americans depend on for imported resources and manufactured goods)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Understands how concepts of spatial interaction (e.g., complementarity, intervening opportunity, distance decay, connections) account for patterns of movement in space (e.g., transportation routes, trade and migration patterns, commodity flows)
- Understands principles of location (e.g., optimum plant-location decisions based on labor costs, transportation costs, market locations, climate; advantages for retailers to locate in malls rather than in dispersed locations)
Places and Regions Standard 4:
Understands the physical and human characteristics of place
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Knows the human characteristics of places (e.g., cultural characteristics such as religion, language, politics, technology, family structure, gender; population characteristics; land uses; levels of development)
- Knows the physical characteristics of places (e.g., soils, land forms, vegetation, wildlife, climate, natural hazards)
- Knows the causes and effects of changes in a place over time (e.g., physical changes such as forest cover, water distribution, temperature fluctuations; human changes such as urban growth, the clearing of forests, development of transportation systems)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Knows how social, cultural, and economic processes shape the features of places (e.g., resource use, belief systems, modes of transportation and communication; major technological changes such as the agricultural and industrial revolutions; population growth and urbanization)
- Understands why places have specific physical and human characteristics in different parts of the world (e.g., the effects of climatic and tectonic processes, settlement and migration patterns, site and situation components)
- Knows the locational advantages and disadvantages of using places for different activities based on their physical characteristics (e.g., flood plain, forest, tundra, earthquake zone, river crossing, coastal flood zone)
Places and Regions Standard 5:
Understands the concept of regions
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Knows regions at various spatial scales (e.g., hemispheres, regions within continents, countries, cities)
- Understands criteria that give a region identity (e.g., its central focus, such as Amsterdam as a transportation center; relationships between physical and cultural characteristics, such as the Sunbelt's warm climate and popularity with retired people)
- Knows factors that contribute to changing regional characteristics (e.g., economic development, accessibility, migration, media image)
- Understands ways regional systems are interconnected (e.g., watersheds and river systems, regional connections through trade, cultural ties between regions)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Knows factors that contribute to the dynamic nature of regions (e.g., human influences such as migration, technology, and capital investment; physical influences such as long-term climate shifts and seismic activity)
- Knows ways in which the concept of a region can be used to simplify the complexity of Earth's space (e.g., by arranging an area into sections to help understand a particular topic or problem) Places and Regions Standard 6:
Understands that culture and experience influence people's perceptions of places and regions
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Knows how technology affects the ways in which culture groups perceive and use places and regions (e.g., impact of technology such as air conditioning and irrigation on the human use of arid lands; changes in perception of environment by culture groups, such as the snowmobile's impact on the lives of Inuit people or the swamp buggy's impact on tourist travel in the Everglades)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Understands how individuals view places and regions on the basis of their stage of life, sex, social class, ethnicity, values, and belief systems (e.g., perceptions of distance, impressions about what makes a place secure, views of public housing or wealthy urban neighborhoods)
Physical Systems Standard 7:
Knows the physical processes that shape patterns on Earth's surface
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Knows the major processes that shape patterns in the physical environment (e.g., the erosional agents such as water and ice, earthquake zones and volcanic activity, the ocean circulation system)
- Knows the processes that produce renewable and nonrenewable resources (e.g., fossil fuels, hydroelectric power, soil fertility)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Understands the distribution of different types of climate (e.g., marine climate or continental climate) that are produced by such processes as air-mass circulation, temperature, and moisture
- Understands the effects of different physical cycles (e.g., world atmospheric circulation, ocean circulation) on the physical environment of Earth
- Understands how physical systems are dynamic and interactive (e.g., the relationships between changes in land forms and the effects of climate such as the erosion of hill slopes by precipitation, deposition of sediments by floods, and shaping of land surfaces by wind)
Physical Systems Standard 8:
Understands the characteristics of ecosystems on Earth's surface
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Understands the distribution of ecosystems from local to global scales (e.g., the consequences of differences in soils, climates, and human and natural disturbances)
- Understands the functions and dynamics of ecosystems (e.g., interdependence of flora and fauna, the flow of energy and the cycling of energy, feeding levels and location of elements in the food chain)
- Understands ecosystems in terms of their characteristics and ability to withstand stress caused by physical events (e.g., a river system adjusting to the arrival of introduced plant species such as hydrilla; regrowth of a forest after a forest fire; effects of disease on specific populations)
- Knows the potential impact of human activities within a given ecosystem on the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen cycles (e.g., the role of air pollution in atmospheric warming or the growing of peas and other legumes, which supply their own nitrogen and do not deplete the soil)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Knows ecosystems in terms of their biodiversity and productivity (e.g., the low productivity of deserts and the high productivity of midlatitude forests and tropical forests) and their potential value to all living things (e.g., as a source of oxygen for life forms, as a source of food for indigenous peoples, as a source of raw materials for international trade)
- Knows the effects of biological magnification in ecosystems (e.g., the increase in contaminants in succeeding levels of the food chain and the consequences for different life forms)
- Knows the effects of both physical and human changes in ecosystems (e.g., the disruption of energy flows and chemical cycles and the reduction of species diversity, how acid rain resulting from air pollution affects water bodies and forests and how depletion of the atmosphere's ozone layer through the use of chemicals may affect the health of humans)
Human Systems Standard 9:
Understands the nature, distribution and migration of human populations on Earth's surface
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Knows the ways in which human movement and migration influence the character of a place (e.g., New Delhi before and after the partition of the Indian subcontinent in the 1940s and the massive realignment of the Hindu and Muslim populations; Boston before and after the large-scale influx of Irish immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century; the impact of Indians settling in South Africa, Algerians settling in France, Vietnamese settling in the United States)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Knows how human mobility and city/region interdependence can be increased and regional integration can be facilitated by improved transportation systems (e.g., the national interstate highway system in the United States, the network of global air routes)
- Understands the impact of human migration on physical and human systems (e.g., the impact of European settlers on the High Plains of North America in the nineteenth century, impact of rural-to-urban migration on suburban development and the resulting lack of adequate housing and stress on infrastructure, effects of population gains or losses on socioeconomic conditions)
Human Systems Standard 11:
Understands the patterns and networks of economic interdependence on Earth's surface
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Understands the spatial aspects of systems designed to deliver goods and services (e.g., the movement of a product from point of manufacture to point of use; imports, exports, and trading patterns of various countries; interruptions in world trade such as war, crop failures, and labor strikes)
- Understands factors that influence the location of industries in the United States (e.g., geographical factors, factors of production, spatial patterns)
- Understands the primary geographic causes for world trade (e.g., the theory of comparative advantage that explains trade advantages associated with Hong Kong-made consumer goods, Chinese textiles, or Jamaican sugar; countries that export mostly raw materials and import mostly fuels and manufactured goods)
- Understands historic and contemporary systems of transportation and communication in the development of economic activities (e.g., the effect of refrigerated railroad cars, air-freight services, pipelines, telephone services, facsimile transmission services, satellite-based communications systems)
- Knows primary, secondary, and tertiary activities in a geographic context (e.g., primary economic activities such as coal mining and salmon fishing; secondary economic activities such as the manufacture of shoes and the associated worldwide trade in raw materials; tertiary economic activity such as restaurants, theaters, and hotels)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Understands the historical movement patterns of people and goods and their relationships to economic activity (e.g., spatial patterns of early trade routes in the era of sailing ships, land-use patterns that resulted in a system of monoculture)
- Understands the relationships between various settlement patterns, their associated economic activities, and the relative land values (e.g., land values and prominent urban features, the zoned uses of land and the value of that land, economic factors and location of particular types of industries and businesses)
Environment and Society Standard 14:
Understands how human actions modify the physical environment
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Understands the environmental consequences of people changing the physical environment (e.g., the effects of ozone depletion, climate change, deforestation, land degradation, soil salinization and acidification, ocean pollution, groundwater-quality decline, using natural wetlands for recreational and housing development)
- Understands the ways in which human-induced changes in the physical environment in one place can cause changes in other places (e.g., the effect of a factory's airborne emissions on air quality in communities located downwind and, because of acid rain, on ecosystems located downwind; the effects of pesticides washed into river systems on water quality in communities located downstream; the effects of the construction of dams and levees on river systems in one region on places downstream)
- Understands the ways in which technology influences the human capacity to modify the physical environment (e.g., effects of the introduction of fire, steam power, diesel machinery, electricity, work animals, explosives, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, hybridization of crops)
- Understands the environmental consequences of both the unintended and intended outcomes of major technological changes in human history (e.g., the effects of automobiles using fossil fuels, nuclear power plants creating the problem of nuclear-waste storage, the use of steel-tipped plows or the expansion of the amount of land brought into agriculture)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Understands how the concepts of synergy, feedback loops, carrying capacity and thresholds relate to the limitations of the physical environment to absorb the impacts of human activity (e.g., levee construction on a flood plain, logging in an old-growth forest, construction of golf courses in arid areas)
- Understands the role of humans in decreasing the diversity of flora and fauna in a region (e.g., the impact of acid rain on rivers and forests in southern Ontario, the effects of toxic dumping on ocean ecosystems, the effects of overfishing along the coast of northeastern North America or the Philippine archipelago)
- Understands the global impacts of human changes in the physical environment (e.g., increases in runoff and sediment, tropical soil degradation, habitat destruction, air pollution; alterations in the hydrologic cycle; increases in world temperatures; groundwater reduction)
- Knows how people's changing attitudes toward the environment have led to landscape changes (e.g., pressure to replace farmlands with wetlands in flood plain areas, interest in preserving wilderness areas, support for the concept of historic preservation)
Environment and Society Standard 15:
Understands how physical systems affect human systems
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Knows the ways in which human systems develop in response to conditions in the physical environment (e.g., patterns of land use, economic livelihoods, architectural styles of buildings, building materials, flows of traffic, recreation activities)
- Knows how the physical environment affects life in different regions (e.g., how people in Siberia, Alaska, and other high-latitude places deal with the characteristics of tundra environments; limitations to coastline settlements as a result of tidal, storm, and erosional processes)
- Knows the ways people take aspects of the environment into account when deciding on locations for human activities (e.g., early American industrial development along streams and rivers at the fall line to take advantage of water-generated power)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Knows changes in the physical environment that have reduced the capacity of the environment to support human activity (e.g., the drought-plagued Sahel, the depleted rain forests of central Africa, the Great Plains Dust Bowl, the impact of the economic exploitation of Siberia's resources on a fragile sub-Arctic environment)
- Knows how humans overcome "limits to growth" imposed by physical systems (e.g., technology, human adaptation)
- Understands how people who live in naturally hazardous regions adapt to their environments (e.g., the use of sea walls to protect coastal areas subject to severe storms, the use of earthquake-resistant construction techniques in different regions within the Ring of Fire)
Environment and Society Standard 16:
Understands the changes that occur in the meaning, use, distribution and importance of resources
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Understands the reasons for conflicting viewpoints regarding how resources should be used (e.g., attitudes toward electric cars, water-rationing, urban public transportation, use of fossil fuels, excessive timber cutting in old growth forests, buffalo in the western United States, soil conservation in semiarid areas)
- Knows strategies for wise management and use of renewable, flow, and nonrenewable resources (e.g., wise management of agricultural soils, fossil fuels, and alternative energy sources; community programs for recycling or reusing materials)
- Knows world patterns of resource distribution and utilization (e.g., petroleum, coal, iron ore, diamonds, silver, gold, molybdenum)
- Understands the consequences of the use of resources in the contemporary world (e.g., the relationship between a country's standard of living and its accessibility to resources, the competition for resources demonstrated by events such as the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the 1930s or the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991)
- Understands the role of technology in resource acquisition and use, and its impact on the environment (e.g., the use of giant earth-moving machinery in strip-mining, the use of satellite imagery technology in the search for petroleum, rates of resource consumption among countries of high or low levels of technological development)
- Understands how energy resources contribute to the development and functioning of human societies (e.g., by providing power for transportation, manufacturing, the heating and cooling of buildings)
- Understands how the development and widespread use of alternative energy sources (e.g., solar, wind, thermal) might have an impact on societies (in terms of, e.g., air and water quality, existing energy industries, and current manufacturing practices)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Understands the relationships between resources and exploration, colonization, and settlement of different regions of the world (e.g., the development of mercantilism and imperialism and the consequent settlement of Latin America and other regions of the world by the Spanish and Portuguese; the abundance of fur, fish, timber, and gold in Siberia, Alaska, and California and the settlement of these areas by the Russians)
- Understands programs and positions related to the use of resources on a local to global scale (e.g., community regulations for water usage during drought periods; local recycling programs for glass, metal, plastic, and paper products; different points of view regarding uses of the Malaysian rain forests)
- Understands the impact of policy decisions regarding the use of resources in different regions of the world (e.g., the long-term impact on the economy of Nauru when its phosphate reserves are exhausted, the economic and social problems related to the overcutting of pine forests in Nova Scotia, the impact of petroleum consumption in the United States and Japan)
- Knows issues related to the reuse and recycling of resources (e.g., changing relocation strategies of industries seeking access to recyclable material, such as paper factories, container and can companies, glass, plastic, and bottle manufacturers; issues involved with the movement, handling, processing, and storing of toxic and hazardous waste materials; fully enforced vs. consistently neglected approaches to resource management)
Uses of Geography Standard 17:
Understands how geography is used to interpret the past
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Knows historic and current conflicts and competition regarding the use and allocation of resources (e.g., the conflicts between Native Americans and colonists; conflicts between the Inuit and migrants to Alaska since 1950)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Understands how people's changing perceptions of geographic features have led to changes in human societies (e.g., the effects of religion on world economic development patterns, cultural conflict, social integration, resource use; the effects of technology on human control over nature, such as large-scale agriculture in Ukraine and northern China, strip-mining in Russia, and center-pivot irrigation in the southwestern United States)
- Understands the ways in which physical and human features have influenced the evolution of significant historic events and movements (e.g., the effects of imperialism, colonization, and decolonization on the economic and political developments of the 19th and 20th centuries; the geographical forces responsible for the industrial revolution in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; physical and human factors that have led to famines and large-scale refugee movements)
Uses of Geography Standard 18:
Understands global development and environmental issues
Level III (Grade 6-8)
- Understands how the interaction between physical and human systems affects current conditions on Earth (e.g., relationships involved in economic, political, social, and environmental changes; geographic impact of using petroleum, coal, nuclear power, and solar power as major energy sources)
- Understands the possible impact that present conditions and patterns of consumption, production and population growth might have on the future spatial organization of Earth
- Understands why different points of view exist regarding contemporary geographic issues (e.g., a forester and a conservationist debating the use of a national forest, a man and a woman discussing gender-based divisions of labor in a developing nation)
Level IV (Grade 9-12)
- Understands the concept of sustainable development and its effects in a variety of situations (e.g., toward cutting the rain forests in Indonesia in response to a demand for lumber in foreign markets, or mining the rutile sands along the coast of eastern Australia near the Great Barrier Reef)
- Understands why policies should be designed to guide the use and management of Earth's resources and to reflect multiple points of view (e.g., the inequities of access to resources, political and economic power in developing countries, the impact of a natural disaster on a developed country vs. a developing country)
- Understands contemporary issues in terms of Earth's physical and human systems (e.g., the processes of land degradation and desertification, the consequences of population growth or decline in a developed economy, the consequences of a world temperature increase)
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Selected Standards and Benchmarks
used by permission:
Copyright
2003 McRel
Mid-continent Research for
Education and Learning
2550 S. Parker Road, Suite 500
Aurora, CO 80014
Telephone: (303) 337-0990
www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks
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