Geography A/T
Geography draws on students’ curiosity about the diversity of the world’s places and their people, cultures and environments. It enables students to appreciate the complexity of our world and the diversity of its environments, economies and cultures. Students can use this knowledge to promote a more sustainable way of life and awareness of social and spatial inequalities.
Students apply geographical inquiry through a more advanced study of geo-graphical methods and skills in the senior years. They learn how to collect in-formation from primary and secondary sources such as field observation and data collection, mapping, monitoring, remote sensing, case studies and re-ports. Fieldwork, in all its various forms, is central to such inquiries as it enables students to develop their understanding of the world through direct experience.
Course Patterns - Geography is made of standard units (1.0 points). Examples of some units are shown Some of these can also be taken as half units (0.5 points).
- Minor: 2 to 3 units
- Major: 3.5 or 4 units
UNITS
Unit 1 : Natural and Ecological Hazards
Natural and ecological hazards represent potential sources of harm to human life, health, income and property, and may affect elements of the biophysical, man-aged and constructed elements of environments.
This unit focuses on identifying risks and managing those risks to eliminate or minimise harm to people and the environment. Building on their existing geo-graphical knowledge and understandings, students examine natural hazards including atmospheric, hydrological and geomorphic hazards, for example, storms, cyclones, tornadoes, frosts, droughts, bushfires, flooding, earth-quakes, volcanoes and landslides. They also explore ecological hazards, for example, environmental diseases/pandemics (toxin-based respiratory ailments, infectious diseases, animal-transmitted dis-eases and water-borne diseases) and plant and animal invasions.
Unit 2: Sustainable Places
This unit examines the economic, social and environmental sustainability of places. While all places are subject to changes produced by economic, demographic, social, political and environmental pro-cesses, the outcomes of these processes vary depending on local responses and adaptations.
At a global scale, the process of urbanisation is not only affecting the rate of world population growth and human wellbeing, it has created a range of challenges for both urban and rural places. How people respond to these challenges, individually and collectively, will determine the sustainability and liveability of places into the future. Students examine how governments, planners, communities, interest groups and individuals try to address these challenges to ensure that places are sustainable. They also investigate the ways that geographical knowledge and skills can be applied to identify and address these challenges
Unit 3: Land Cover Transformations
This unit focuses on the changing bio-physical cover of the earth’s surface, its impact on global climate and biodiversity, and the creation of anthropogenic biomes. In doing so, it examines the pro-cesses causing change in the earth’s land cover. These processes may include: de-forestation, the expansion and intensification of agriculture, rangeland modification, land and soil degradation, irrigation, land drainage, land reclamation, urban expansion and mining.
Unit 4: Global Transformations
This unit focuses on the process of inter-national integration (globalisation) as a conceptual ‘lens’ through which to investigate issues in human geography. In doing so, it integrates the sub disciplines of economic and cultural geography, and political geography.
The topic provides students with an understanding of the economic and cultural transformations taking place in the world today, the spatial outcomes of these pro-cesses, and their political and social con-sequences. It will better enable them to make sense of the dynamic world in which they will live and work. It will also allow them to be active participants in the public discourses and debate related to such matters. The unit is based on the reality that we live in an increasingly interconnected world. This is a world in which advances in transport and telecommunications technologies have not only transformed global patterns of production and consumption but also facilitated the diffusion of ideas and cultures. Of particular interest is the ways in which people adapt and respond to these changes.