Political vs Physical Maps

​Physical maps focus on landforms and elevation. They show mountains, plateaus, rivers, deserts, and any other types of geographical features. Cartographers often use brown, green, or gray color schemes to represent the various physical features and elevations. 

​Many physical maps have a key showing color changes and elevation. On this map, the darker blue represents deeper water and the darker brown represents higher elevations.

​Political maps focus on boundaries between places such as countries, counties, states, provinces, or regions. They may also show major cities, towns, and settlements depending on the purpose of the map.

​Although political maps do not focus on landforms, they may show some lakes, rivers, and oceans. These physical features are only used to show locations of these landforms. The focus is still on political borders. Like physical maps, political maps also use different colors for different places. The different colors on this map show different states in the USA.