Exam 2 Review
Exam 2 Review
Exam 2 Review
• Worth 80 pts.
• The same structure as before: 18 multiple- Urban Area: town or city (including adjacent suburbs)
choice Qs & 3 short answer questions with population of more than 2500
• Topics: Urbanization, Water, Soil + discussion 3
• Use the study guide as a guideline for the Degree of Urbanization: percentage of a region’s
topics/concepts that can be on the exam population that lives in urban areas
• Study buddies?
• Don’t forget to complete HW#3 and the two Urban Growth: rate of increase of urban
dynamic study modules populations
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Pop growth = births - deaths + immigration - emigration Over the recent years, urbanization has
slowed in MDCs and growing rapidly in
natural increase net migration LDCs.
Causes (for net migration):
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Other characteristics
• single family housing - high cost of insulation
• limited (or non-existent) public transportation -
residents must drive to work, services, & recreational
facilities
Consequences
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• increased congestion, loss of open-space, pollution,
global warming, & nonrenewable resource use
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Urban Sprawl & Its Characteristics Urban Sprawl & Its Characteristics
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Mass transit
• includes subways, trains, buses, airplanes
• constitutes 5% of travel in U.S., 15% in Germany, 47%
in Japan
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Some government tax policies that favor cars Regional Planning – broader geographic scale,
may coordinate work with multiple municipal
• 70% of federal gas tax goes to highways
governments
• parking expenses incurred by employers are tax
deductible • Zoning – a key tool for planning
Classifying areas for different types of
Possible ways of favoring mass transit development and land use – residential,
• higher taxes on cars (or gasoline) commercial
• road-pricing (see Economist article “Living with the • Setting urban growth boundaries (UGBs) – reduce the
Car”) costs of infrastructure compared with sprawl –
estimated 20% savings for taxpayers; preserving
• greater subsidies for mass transit, less for cars farms and forests (increased urban density)
• more public investment in mass transit
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• Create walkable neighborhoods (“new urbanism”) • Efficiency – concentration of people allows for more
efficiency
Nearly 600 such communities in the US – transit-oriented
development, bicycle transportation • Consumption – cities take only 2% of the world’s land but
consume over 75% of its resources (might be related to
• Provide variety of transportation choices wealth)
• Preserve open spaces, farmland, natural beauty • Land use – preserves land
• Strengthen and develop existing communities • Pollution – air , water, noise, light, urban island heat effect
• Encourage shared decision-making
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United States
• 41% agriculture
• 38% energy production (power plant cooling) & 11%
industry (49% total)
• 10% domestic & municipal use
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Aquifer Depletion
Human Activities Affect Waterways
• Aquifer depletion (or groundwater overdraft) occurs when
• Water is crucial for human health as well as farms and water withdrawals exceed recharge
factories
• Water is a limited but renewable resource • Groundwater in southern Great Plains and southwestern U.S.
• Withdrawal of water in most of the world is unsustainable is being withdrawn much faster than its replacement rate
– We are depleting many sources of surface water (e.g.
Aral Sea) and groundwater • Aquifer depletion is also a serious concern in other parts of the
world - e.g., southern Europe, Middle East, northern Africa,
– One-third of the world’s people are affected by water
India, northern China
shortages
• Fresh water and human populations are unevenly • Examples: Ogallala aquifer - withdrawals from the world’s
distributed across Earth largest aquifer exceed recharge rates by 8-10 times in many
• Fresh water is also unevenly distributed in time places
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• Reservoir storage capacity has decreased over • Our use of fresh water has doubled over the last 50 years.
time due to sedimentation We can either increase supply or reduce demand
• Consequences: less reliable water and power • Increasing supply through intensive extraction is only a
supply, shorter life of dams, lower economic temporary fix
benefits (hydropower, irrigation, flood control, – Diversions increase supply in one area but decrease it
municipal water supply) elsewhere
• Solutions: • Reducing demand is harder politically in the short term
• Prevention – International aid agencies are funding demand-based
• Removal (flushing, dredging, hydrosuction, solutions over supply-based solutions
trucking) – Offers better economic returns
• Structural accommodation (sediment traps, – Causes less ecological and social damage
expansion of storage) (see your lecture notes for more details)
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• B horizon (subsoil) & C horizon (weathered parent • Uptake of soil nutrients by plants is reduced in
material) - mostly inorganic matter, with varying acidic soils (pH value below 5.5)
mixture of silt, sand, clay, and gravel
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Soil Erosion & Its Consequences Types of Soil Erosion Caused by Water
• Soil erosion is the movement of soil components, • Sheet erosion - uniform layers (sheets) of soil are
especially litter & topsoil, from one place to another peeled off across a field
• The agents of erosion are wind and/or flowing
• Rill erosion - fast flowing water cuts small
water channels in soil
• Losing topsoil makes soil less fertile & less able to
hold water • Gully erosion - extreme form of rill erosion in
• Sediment is also a major water pollutant which small channels merge and become deeper to
form gullies and ditches
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• Soil salinization -
irrigation water carries
salts which may build
up to levels that
decrease yields or
prevent cultivation
• Waterlogging -
excessive irrigation
water raises the water
table & lowers crop
productivity
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