IB Geography HL study guide
IB Geography HL · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
IB Geography HL is the higher-level route through the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme's geography course, taken by students who want a social science with a strong spatial and environmental edge. It suits candidates who enjoy linking physical processes to human decisions - migration flows to labour markets, flood risk to land-use planning, commodity chains to uneven development - and who are willing to handle data as well as argument. The IB Geography HL study guide has 5 sections and about 1,613 words.
01Core Geographic Themes: Population, Climate and Resources
The core is compulsory content: population distribution and change, global climate vulnerability and resilience, and global resource consumption and security. Questions typically ask you to describe a pattern from data, explain the process behind it, then evaluate a response - so every theme needs mechanism plus a located example.
345 words, about 2 min02Optional Themes: Freshwater, Oceans, Extreme Environments, Food and Urban
SL candidates study two optional themes and HL candidates three, chosen from freshwater, oceans and coastal margins, extreme environments, geophysical hazards, leisure/tourism/sport, food and health, and urban environments. Each theme is examined through processes, spatial patterns, impacts and management, so answers must use that theme's own vocabulary rather than generic 'sustainability' language.
342 words, about 2 min03Global Interactions (HL Extension): Power, Flows, Development, Risk
The HL extension has four units: global interactions and global power; global networks and flows; human development and diversity; global risks and resilience. It rewards precise theory and the ability to trace a flow from origin to beneficiary.
316 words, about 2 min04Geographic Skills, Fieldwork and the Internal Assessment
The IA is a 2,500-word fieldwork report worth 25% at SL and 20% at HL. It is marked on research question, method, data presentation, analysis, and conclusion/evaluation, and it must be tied to syllabus content - a physical or human theme you have studied.
300 words, about 2 min05Geographic Inquiry and Critical Thinking
The course is built on six concepts - place, process, power, possibility, scale and system - and examiners reward candidates who use them to organise an argument rather than to decorate it. Deconstruct the command term: 'describe' needs a pattern; 'explain' needs mechanism; 'evaluate' needs criteria, evidence on both sides and a judgment.
310 words, about 2 min