Grade 9 - Thinking Geographically W2L1

​By the end of this lesson you will:

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• be able to identify different types of maps

• ​understand spatial patterns represented on maps

• ​understand all maps are selective in information

• ​The main purpose of a reference map is to show locations of many types of features (e.g. cities in relation to highways and rivers or campgrounds  in relation to parks and highways).

• Reference maps often use conventional colors and symbols to represent a great variety of topics.

• This is also called a 'Special Purpose Map'.

• Unlike a reference map, a thematic map usually presents only one topic

• ​The map on this page is a map of Europe, but only represents the forest areas in Europe.

• Thematic maps tell you the purpose in their title.

​A choropleth map is a thematic map in which your area of research (ie population) are colored or shaded according to the range in which the statistic of interest falls.

A choropleth map is a kind of thematic map in which the colours or shades are not random like in the images on the previous slides but have a chromatic sequence that is proportional to what it is that you are researching on your map.

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For example, from dark to light colours or from dense shading to light shading.

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​See the image on the next slide as an example.

• ​You can tell that this is a choropleth map as the colours are a graduating scale from brown to pink.

• ​The colours are not a range of different colours - that would make it more of a thematic map.

​¨Shows the values of one or more numeric data fields. Each dot on a dot-density map represents some amount of data.

​This map represents how many people have been killed by a lightning strike in the US between 2007 and 2017.

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​You can see by the scale how many people the dots represent.

Isoline maps help the reader to recognize patterns and relationships between the geography of an area and data that might have been collected, such as air temperature.​

​Cartogram is a map in which the geometry of regions is distorted in order to convey the information you are looking for. The area on the map will be inflated (bigger) or deflated (smaller) according to its numeric value.

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​Look at the image on the next page of a 'world population cartogram' and in particular look at how big India is. This is because it has a big population.