TASC Geography Level 3 cheat sheet

Latitude measures distance north or south of the Equator (0° to 90°); longitude measures distance east or west of the Prime Meridian (0° to 180°).

The five themes of geography are location, place, human-environment interaction, movement, and region; each theme answers a different question about a place.

Climate zones follow latitude: tropical near the Equator, temperate in mid-latitudes, and polar near the poles, driven mainly by the angle of incoming sunlight.

Tectonic plate boundaries are divergent (plates separate), convergent (plates collide), and transform (plates slide past); each produces a characteristic landform or hazard.

Population density equals total population divided by land area; it is usually expressed as people per square kilometer.

Push factors drive people away from a place (war, famine, unemployment); pull factors attract them (jobs, safety, better services).

The demographic transition model moves from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates as a country industrializes, with rapid growth in the middle stages.

A region is defined by shared traits: formal regions share measurable features, functional regions are organized around a node, and perceptual regions exist in people's mental maps.

Map scale expresses the ratio of map distance to ground distance; a large-scale map shows a small area in more detail, and a small-scale map shows a large area with less detail.

To measure real distance, multiply the measured map distance by the scale factor, keeping units consistent before converting.

Grid references use latitude and longitude or alphanumeric grids; eastings are read before northings in a standard grid reference.

Contour lines connect points of equal elevation; closely spaced contours indicate steep slopes, and widely spaced contours indicate gentle slopes.

A cross-section is built by transferring elevation values along a line on a map onto a graph to show the shape of the terrain.

Maps distort area, shape, distance, or direction because a curved surface is flattened; map projections choose which properties to preserve.

Geographic Information Systems layer spatial data, letting analysts overlay, query, and compare patterns such as population and land use.

Correlation between two mapped variables does not prove causation; a third factor may drive both patterns.