Map Skills - Recognizing Physical Features

you've probably seen many kinds of maps Maps using different patterns of colors and lines to show physical features of the Earth do they look complicated maybe when you're first learning to read them let's make it a bit easier on this map of North America we'll take out the words the boundary lines between countries make the land all one color and one more more step there that leaves just the continent with its Coastline looking at the coastline we notice a large narrow arm of the land which reaches out into the water a peninsula the Florida Peninsula here's a photograph of the Florida Peninsula taken from a weather satellite see the shape of the peninsula jutting into the sea it's almost surrounded by water bodies of water take their shape from the land a large part of an ocean almost surrounded by land is usually referred to as a gulf this is the Gulf of Mexico Gulfs and peninsulas are the most noticeable features of a continent's coastline and give it an irregular shape moving in closer we can locate smaller features of the coastline here's an arm of the land extending into the ocean not nearly so large as a peninsula a cape Cape Cod from the air we see how Cape Cod hooks around an area of the ocean a curved area of water smaller than a gulf is a bay this is Cape Cod Bay over here is Buzzard's Bay Buzzard's Bay is a sizable area of water partially surrounded by land but not nearly so large as the Gulfs we have seen perhaps you can recognize other features of the coastline notice that some portions of the land don't quite touch one another such a body of land surrounded by water is an island offshore Islands such as nant Tucket Island and Martha's Vineyard Island are found off the Atlantic coast the Pacific coast has a vast network of islands the largest of these is Vancouver Island in Canada looking more closely at some of these islands we we find a number of water passages separating the land masses such waterways are referred to as Straits sounds and channels here we are viewing a sound How Sound in British Columbia a sound is an inlet of the sea jutting into the mainland or into a large island a channel in contrast is generally a rather narrow waterway between the mainland and an island or between two islands a straight is generally a wider deeper water passage separating two large masses of land now let's investigate other physical features shown on maps interior water ways of these the ones you're likely to pick out first are large lakes such as the Great Lakes Lake Michigan looks like a part of the ocean it's so large you can't see across to the other side on the other hand you can see to the other side of smaller Lakes such as Fox Lake Fox Lake appears much smaller on the map than one of the great lakes nearby we can learn about different Lakes by looking at a map there is also much we can learn about rivers each of the major rivers is joined by several others emptying into the Mississippi for instance are the Missouri the Illinois and the Ohio these are all tributaries of the Mississippi the Mississippi begins hundreds of feet above the ocean and thousands of miles from it its water comes at first from Lake itasa which is the source of the River Lakes provide the sources for many rivers you can locate the source of a River on a map maps help us learn about rivers lakes and coastlines what else can a map tell us about physical features mountains are physical features how do you show a mountain on a map to demonstrate let's begin not with real mountains but with a model of a mountain range on a map we would not see the mountains from the side but rather from directly overhead from this position it's difficult to judge the height of the mountains we can get more of an idea of the height by moving our lights to the side casting more Shadows on a map we can use Shadows or shading to indicate mountain ranges this is used on many simple Maps it tells us that here there are mountains and here there are mountains but the map doesn't tell us which mountains are higher another problem with shadows is that they don't tell us the height of different areas of level land as we can show with these blocks from the side we can easily see which blocks are higher but from directly above it's not so easy to tell let's look from the side again and see if we can improve our method suppose we color the blocks we'll use three colors to indicate the different heights now keeping in mind what the colors stand for when we look down we can tell which blocks are the highest which are the lowest and which are in between doing this with a map using one color for the highest areas another color for the lowest areas and a third color for the areas in between we get an idea of the elevation of the land we can get a more complete idea by using instead of three colors four five or six using this many colors we can give a very precise picture of various elevations this is why most physical maps use several colors to show elevations on each map you'll find a legend or key which tells what elevation each color stands for on this Legend one color stands for elevations over 10,000 ft while another color stands for elevations from 5,000 up to 10,000 ft on the map we see that the Rockies are colored to show the highest elevation while while the Appalachians are colored to show the next to highest elevation so we expect the Appalachians to be somewhat different in appearance from the Rockies which are several thousand feet higher looking at the map once again we see that there are large areas of still another color this color stands for one of the lower elevations so we know that these regions are lowlands referred to as Plains some Plains are located along coastal areas as along the Atlantic coast of North America coastal plains make up only a small portion of the total Plains area of North America other Plains are the central plains west of the Appalachians here we find mile after mile of level crop land cattle are more likely to be raised on the Great Plains which are quite level but somewhat higher in elevation High Plains are marked on the map with a different color from the low Plains other level areas are found farther to the west but these are not Plains note the color of these areas on the map this color remember stands for the second highest elevation such high level lands are known as plateaus plateaus are generally drier less fertile areas than Plains so this is yet another physical feature we can learn to recognize with a map a map can help us gain knowledge about elevation about interior waterways and coastlines so practice reading the colors lines and other symbols as well as the words on a physical [Music] map