THE PACIFIC REALM

AND

ANTARCTICA

Study Guide

Unit 10

Chapters 30, 31, 32

Pre-AP World Geography

Spring 2004

Mrs. L. Hammon

Forward To the Student:

This study guide has been designed to enhance your learning of world regional geography, building upon the experiences in the classroom and in reading the chapters in your textbook. It is recommended that you have an atlas handy; the base maps in the textbook will suffice if no other atlas is available. One of the main purposes of this study guide is to get you to become more familiar with maps. For this geographic realm, I have provided outline maps on which you can locate and enter important geographic information as you read your textbook and prepare for the test. Of course, you will be doing sketch maps and you can use the outline map as a guide. There is also information about each geographic realm that needs to be read and will be useful in developing background information for essays and writing assignments on tests. Other reading assignments will use SQR3 and AP PARTS strategies to understand the information about this area of the world.

Web Sites for the Pacific Realm and Antarctica:

Readings for the Pacific Realm and Antarctica

Textbook:

Chapter 30 – Physical Geography of Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Antarctica

Chapter 31 – Human Geography of Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Antarctica

Chapter 32 – Today’s Issues Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Antarctica

Supplemental Readings:

Australia – Country Report

Tribes Under the Microscope – Vida Foubister

New Zealand – Country Report

A Continental Divide: Who Owns Aboriginal Lands? – Lindsey Arkley

The Pacific Islands: Opportunities and Limits

Readings on Reserve in Library:

“Cracking the Ice” – J Madeleine Nash/McMurdo Station –

Time – February 3, 2003

Supplemental Reading Book:

Walkabout – James Vance Marshall

Urbanization Study: “Among the Realm’s Great Cities…”

Sydney, Australia

Videos:

Introduction to AustraliaAustralia’s Aborigines

Introduction to AntarcticaIMAX - Antarctica

Whale Rider (study of Maori culture)

MAP OF OCEANIA

□ Australia/New Zealand □ Polynesia

□ Micronesia□ Melanesia
Australia, Oceania, and Antarctica

Using the Five Themes

Location

Many of the countries of the Australia, Oceania, and Antarctica culture region are spread out across 70 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean.

Place

The culture region of Australia, Oceania, and Antarctic is very unevenly populated.

Human/Environment Interaction

Most people in the Australia, Oceania, and Antarctica region live in urban areas that have developed in fertile coastal areas.

Movement

Long distances and rugged terrain have isolated many South Pacific cultures.

Region

The Australia, Oceania, and Antarctica culture region contains animals and vegetation found nowhere else in the world.

Australia and Oceania

Did You Know?

Every piece of land in this world region has been a colony at one time or another. In effect, some remain colonies today.

Australia is a major producer of coal, copper, iron ore, nickel, manganese, tin, titanium, tungsten, zinc, and zircon. Its mines bring up large quantities of gold, silver, and diamonds. Australian mines also produce most of the world’s high-quality opals.

About 1 percent of Australia’s population is Aborigines, descendants of Australia’s first settlers. Ancestors of the Aborigines migrated from Asia thousands of years ago.

The island of Tahiti is one of an island group called the Society Islands. The Society Islands, in turn, are part of the island groups that comprise French Polynesia.

Australia was once part of Antarctica but sailed free long ago when the tectonic plates spread apart.

The interior of Australia includes occasional “billabongs”– slang for ponds in otherwise dry streambeds.

“Kiwis” is a nickname for New Zealanders.

Even in the cities of New Zealand, crime is rare.

Although independent, Australia belongs to the Commonwealth of Nations, an association of countries formerly under Britishrule.

Although French is the official language of Tahiti, Tahitians prefer their own language and their own alphabet of only 13 letters.

Unlike some Pacific islands, Tahiti has a literacy rate almost equal to Australia’s 98.5 percent.

One coconut product in Tonga is not eaten but worn. Tongans use coconut-fiber ropes to secure ta’oavalas – traditional garments made from the leaves of a Pandanus tree-around their waist.

Captain Cook and his botanists did not find all the new species in the South Pacific. Fiji’s crested iguana, one of the rarest reptiles, was not discovered until 1979.

Australia ranks fifth in theworld in the number of automobiles per capita.

Coral reefs harbor more species of fish than any other marine environment.

Australia and Oceania

Ways of the World

Australians are famous for their home entertaining. One of their favoritefamily-and-friends festivitiesis the backyard Barby, or barbecue. Like their American counterparts, Australian barbecuers grill a variety of meats, fish, and vegetables for delectable dining.

Aboriginal Religion: The Aborigines’ religion links them closely to the land and nature through ancestralbeings. According to Aboriginal beliefs, these beings created the world during ancient time called the Dreamtime. The beings never died but merged with nature. The beings live again in sacred beliefsand rituals, through which the Aborigines can renew their ties with the Dreamtime.

Dinner guests in New Zealand always take a gift; flowers, a potted plant, a box of chocolates. Houseguests also leave a gift with their host family.

A bure, the traditional Fiji home, is one large room built of local hardwoods, a tightly thatched roof, and woven floor coverings. The four doors, one in each wall, are usually kept open for circulation. A bure has little, if any furniture; Fijians don’t consider it necessary.

In Samoa, it is impolite to speak to someone in a home while standing.

When visiting the homes of any of the islands’ ethnic groups, a guest expresses general admiration and appreciation of the host’s home or family. Guests avoid admiring a specific item, however, the host will be made to feel duty-bound to offer the item as a gift.

MAJOR GEOGRAPHIC QUALITIES OF THE AUSTRAL REALM

  1. Australia and New Zealand constitute a geographic realm by virtue of territorial dimension, relative location, and dominant cultural landscape.
  1. Despite their inclusion is a single geographic realm; Australia and New Zealand differ physiographically. Australia is marked by a vast, dry, low-relief interior; New Zealand is mountainous.
  1. Australia and New Zealand are marked by peripheral development – Australia because of its aridity, New Zealand because of its topography.
  1. The populations of Australia and New Zealand are not only peripherally distributed by also highly clustered in urban centers.
  1. The realm’s human geography is changing – in Australia because of Aboriginal activism and Asian immigration, and in New Zealand because of Maori activism and Pacific-Islander immigration.
  1. The economic geography of Australia and New Zealand is dominated by the export of livestock products (and in Australia by wheat production and mining).
  1. Australia and New Zealand are being integrated into the economic framework of the western Pacific Rim, principally as suppliers of raw materials.

MAJOR GEOGRAPHIC QUALITIES OF THE PACIFIC REALM

  1. The Pacific Realm’s total area is the largest of all geographic realms. Its land area, however, is the smallest, as its population.
  1. The island of New Guinea, with 7.2 million people, alone contains over 80 percent of the Pacific Realm’s population.
  1. The Pacific Realm, with its wide expanses of water and numerous islands, has been strongly affected by United Nations Law of the Sea provisions regarding states’ rights over economic asserts in their adjacent waters.
  1. The highly fragmented Pacific Realm consists of three regions: Melanesia (including New Guinea), Micronesia, and Polynesia.
  1. Melanesia forms the link between Papuan and Melanesian cultures in the Pacific.
  1. The Pacific Realm’s islands an cultures may be divided into volcanic high-island cultures and coral-based low-island cultures.
  1. In Micronesia, U.S. influence has been particularly strong and continues to affect local societies.
  1. In Polynesia, local cultures are nearly everywhere severely strained by external influences. In Hawaii, as in New Zealand, indigenous culture has been largely submerged by Westernization.
  1. Indigenous Polynesian culture continues to exhibit a remarkable consistency and uniformity throughout the Polynesian region, its enormous dimensions and dispersal notwithstanding.



AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

Unit 10
Map Skills

Physical regions of Australia – Use pp. 678, 679, 680, 681, 693, 704, 713, 729, A24.

Label the following places on your physical map of Australia. You may develop a key.

Remember to shade mountains in brown, deserts in yellow, and use blue for water features.

Tasman SeaPacific OceanCoral Sea

Gibson DesertGulf of CarpentariaTasmania

Torres StraitIndian OceanMt. Kosciusko

Bass StraitGreat Australian BightAustralian Alps

Murray RiverDarling RiverGreat Artesian Basin

Great Dividing RangeGreat Barrier ReefFlinders Range

Great Victoria DesertMacDonnell RangesAyers Rock (Uluru)

Kimberly PlateauGreat Sandy DesertCape York Peninsula

Political Places of Australia – Label the following places on your political map of Australia. Show capitals with a star and circle, cities with dots, remember to underline your capital.

Capital Territory – (Canberra*)

Western Australia – (Perth), Derby

South Australia – (Adelaide), Kangaroo Island

New South Wales – (Sydney)

Victoria – (Melbourne)

Northern Territory – (Darwin), Alice Springs, Melville Island

Queensland – (Brisbane), Cairns, Cooktown

Tasmania – (Hobart)

*National Capital

New Zealand

Physical regions of New Zealand – Label the following places on your physical map of New Zealand.

Southern AlpsMt. CookCanterbury Plain

Cook StraitPacific Ocean

Political Places of New Zealand – Label the following places on your political map of New Zealand. Show the capital with a star and circle, cities with dots, remember to underline your capital.

North Island – (Wellington), Auckland

South Island - Christchurch

The information on Australia and New Zealand will be shown on the same map. One physical map and one political map.


ANTARCTICA

Unit 10

Map Skills

Physical regions of Antarctica – Use pp. 681, 720, A25. Label these on the physical side of your map. Shade the water around the continent of Antarctica with blue map color.

Indian OceanWeddell Sea

Atlantic OceanAntarctic Peninsula

Pacific OceanAmundsen Sea

South PoleSouth Magnetic Pole (show with a +)

Transantarctic Mountain RangeEllsworth Land

West AntarcticaEast Antarctica

Ross SeaDrake Passage

Scotia SeaBellingshausen Sea

Ross Ice ShelfMt. Erebus

Ronne Ice ShelfAntarctic Circle

Political Places of Antarctica – Use page 720 in your textbook to label the claims that different countries have made in Antarctica. Use the same key and colors (as close as you can get them) for your map. Also label the following physical features on this map.

Indian OceanPacific Ocean

Atlantic OceanRoss Sea

Weddell SeaQueen Maud Land

Wilkes LandMarie Byrd Land

McMurdo SoundSouth Pole

Antarctic PeninsulaBellingshausen Sea

Amundesen SeaEnderby Land

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