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Exploring Africa's Physical and Cultural Geography Using GIS
This project contains 7 activities in physical and cultural geography, including climate, population density, relief, mining, manufacturing, earthquakes, faults, volcanoes, tsunamis, and fires. Each activity builds on the data, skills, and concepts learned in the previous activity, and all are based on ArcView Geographic Information System (GIS) software from ESRI, Inc.
Project Creators:
Steve Wanner - Geography Instructor - Boulder High School
Joseph Kerski - Geographer - USGS
Paula Dunbar - Colorado State University
Grade Level:
These lessons were created for Grade 9 students (age 14-15) but can be adapted for students at other levels.
Discipline: Geography
Download the Data for the first 3 activities of the Africa Project in .zip format, 3.2 MB.
Goal: Understand the interrelationships among characteristics of the physical environment of Africa.
Don't have a GIS? Here is a non-GIS version of the same activity, using published maps.
Goal: Under the interrelationships among characteristics of the physical and human environment of Africa.
Don't have a GIS? Here is a non-GIS version of the same activity, using published maps.
Goal: Understand the interrelationships among resources, the human environment, and the physical environment of Africa.
Don't have a GIS? Here is a non-GIS version of the same activity, using published maps.
Goal: Understand the pattern of natural hazards in Africa.
Don't have a GIS? Here is a non-GIS version of the same activity, using published maps.
Download the data for Activity 4 in .zip format, 5.4 MB.
Goal: Understand the human dimension of natural hazards in Africa.
Don't have a GIS? Here is a non-GIS version of the same activity, using published maps.
Download the data for Activity 5 in .zip format, 50KB.
Goal: Understand the physical and human dimensions of tsunamis in Africa.
Don't have a GIS? Here is a non-GIS version of the same activity, using published maps.
Download the data for Activity 6 in .zip format, 3 KB.
Goal: Understand the physical and human dimensions of fires in Africa.
Don't have a GIS? Here is a non-GIS version of the same activity, using published maps.
Download the data for Activity 7 in .zip format, 626 KB.
| Activity | Data Required | Views Created |
| 1 Physical | 30deg.shp (30 degree grid) | Relief. |
| lakes.shp | Climate. | |
| country.shp | Precip. | |
| relief.shp | Vegetation. | |
| rivers.shp | ||
| belt.shp (climate belts) | ||
| veget.shp | ||
| precipyr.shp | ||
| 2 Physical and Human | All of the above , plus: | Use above views |
| cities.shp | ||
| 3 Resources | All of the above, plus: | Use above views |
| manuf.shp | ||
| minerals.shp | ||
| mining.shp | ||
| pipeline.shp | ||
| popden.shp | ||
| 4 Volcanoes and Earthquakes | All of the above, plus: | Plate boundaries, earthquakes, and volcanoes. |
| earthquakes.shp | ||
| volcanoes.shp | ||
| plates.shp | ||
| continent.shp | ||
| 5 Human Dimension of Natural Hazards | All of the above, plus: | Faults, Earthquakes, and Volcanoes in Africa. |
| afr_eq.shp | ||
| volrecen.shp | ||
| volafr.shp | ||
| faults.shp | ||
| 6 Tsunamis | All of the above, plus: | Tsunami effects in Africa. |
| t_source.shp | ||
| t_effect.shp | ||
| 7 Fires | All of the above, plus: | Fires in Africa. |
| landuse.shp | ||
| firept.shp | ||
| firept.avl |
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://education.usgs.gov/common/lessons/africa.html
Page Contact Information: USGS Education Web Team
Page Last Modified: Wednesday, 29-Aug-2007 12:00:55 EDT
