Observing the Global

Using Mapmaker, I found that certain regions of the United States is not densely poulated as others. For example, the Midwest was not as dense as the Northeast. In the world China and India had lagre areas of density while Africa had regions that were not dense. If you look at both maps, areas where there is a water source and have a climate that can grow permanent crops have a larger population. So climates that seem to be warm or seasonal attract people.

I was really fascinated by both these new web resources. Before today I had not used Google Earth or the National Geographic website. I enjoyed the detail found on Google Earth, especially the searches for global interest news stories and pictures. National Geographic also had some interesting search aspects, and I enjoyed experimenting with the different themed maps. I found Google Earth to be a little easier to navigate and provided more 3-D detail. I found that in general humans congregate near resources such as water. If we compare the biome themed map with the population density map, we can see that humans also congregate in areas in which life is most sustainable. For instance, there are very few people living in biomes where weather, soil conditions, or precipitation are not favorable for human beings (ex: deserts, tundra, taiga). Certainly other factors such as history come into play, but in general, humans settle where life can be sustained easily and where resources are able to be attained. As a general population trend, the United States still has many areas that are less densely inhabited than some of the other heavily populated nations of the world.