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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
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)
Level IV (Grade
9-12)
- Understands
how characteristics such as age, sex, employment, and income level
affect the way people perceive and use space (e.g., school-age
children traveling to and from school, employed people commuting
by public transit, high-income people traveling long distances
for vacations)
- 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 how
technology shapes the human and physical characteristics of places
(e.g., satellite dishes, computers, road construction)
- 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)
- 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)
- Understands
connections within and among the parts of a regional system (e.g.,
links involving neighborhoods within a city, municipalities within
a metropolitan area, or power blocs within a defense or economic
alliance)
- 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)
- Knows the
ways in which culture influences the perception of places and
regions (e.g., religion and other belief systems, language and
tradition; perceptions of "beautiful" or "valuable")
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)
- Knows the
consequences of a specific physical process operating on Earth's
surface (e.g., effects of an extreme weather phenomenon such as
a hurricane's impact on a coastal ecosystem, effects of heavy
rainfall on hill slopes, effects of the continued movement of
Earth's tectonic plates)
Level IV (Grade
9-12)
- 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)
- Understands
how physical processes affect different regions of the United
States and the world (e.g., effects of hurricanes in the Caribbean
Basin and the eastern United States or of earthquakes in Turkey,
Japan, and Nicaragua; effects of desertification and soil degradation,
flash floods, dust storms, sand movement, soil erosion and salt
accumulation in dry environments)
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 changes
that have occurred over time in ecosystems in the local region
(e.g., natural wetlands on a floodplain being replaced by farms,
farmlands on a floodplain being replaced by housing developments)
- 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)
- Understands
the life cycle of a lake ecosystem from birth to death (including
the process of eutrophication)
Level IV (Grade
9-12)
- Understands
how relationships between soil, climate, and plant and animal
life affect the distribution of ecosystems (e.g., effects of solar
energy and water supply on the nature of plant communities)
- 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 12:
Understands the patterns of human settlement and their causes
Level III (Grade
6-8)
- Knows ways
in which both the landscape and society change as a consequence
of shifting from a dispersed to a concentrated settlement form
(e.g., a larger marketplace, the need for an agricultural surplus
to provide for the urban population, the loss of some rural workers
as people decide to move into the city, changes in the transportation
system)
Level IV (Grade
9-12)
- Knows the
consequences of factors such as population changes or the arrival/departure
of a major industry or business on the settlement patterns of
an area (e.g., stress on infrastructure, problems of public safety
and fire protection, crisis in delivering school and medical services)
- Understands
the physical and human impact of emerging urban forms in the present-day
world (e.g., the rise of megalopoli edge cities, and metropolitan
corridors; increasing numbers of ethnic enclaves in urban areas
and the development of legislation to protect the rights of ethnic
and racial minorities; improved light-rail systems within cities
providing ease of access to ex-urban areas)
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)
3. 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)
- Understands
relationships between population density and environmental quality
(e.g., resource distribution, rainfall, temperature, soil fertility,
land form relief, carrying capacity)
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)
- Knows conditions
and locations that place limits on plant growth and therefore
on the expansion of human settlement (e.g., soils with limited
nutrients, high salt content, shallow depth; extremely cold, arid
or humid tropical climates; mountainous and coastal environments)
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)
- 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)
Level IV (Grade
9-12)
- 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 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
- Knows how
the quality of environments in large cities can be improved (e.g.,
greenways, transportation corridors, pedestrian walkways, bicycle
lanes)
- 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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