Young Geographer toolkit

layers; vector; raster

HintThree GIS words: what you stack, what is drawn from points and lines, and what arrives as a grid of pixels.

The whyGIS is geography done in slices. Put population on one slice, the river on another and the flood defences on a third, and you can ask a question no single map answers: who lives inside the danger zone? Ordnance Survey and Esri UK both back the Young Geographer competition, and a poster that shows a real place through two or three layers reads as geography rather than decoration.

Scale

HintGeographers move up and down this ladder, from a single doorstep to a whole continent.

The whyIt is one of geography’s big organising ideas, and it is what stops an entry becoming a list of facts. A flood is a wet carpet at one level, a failed river management plan at another, and a warming atmosphere at a third — all three are true at once. A strong entry names a real place, then shows how the local picture fits the national or global one.

A choropleth map

HintDarker shading usually means more of whatever is being measured.

The whyIt needs sensible classes and a clear key: too many shades and the reader cannot tell them apart, too few and real differences vanish. Judges reward a map that answers a question rather than one that simply fills space.

A line graph

HintThe readings are continuous, so joining the points is honest — each month runs straight into the next.

The whyOn a climate graph the convention is bars for rainfall and a joined-up plot for temperature, drawn against two vertical axes. Bars suit separate categories, a joined plot suits change over time, and a pie shows parts of one whole. Pick the shape that matches the data and the graph half-explains itself.

basin

HintIts edge is the watershed — the high ridge where water starts running the other way instead.

The whyWater enters at the source, gathers through tributaries that join at confluences, and leaves at the mouth. Everything that falls inside the boundary ends up in the same river, which is why flooding in a town is often caused by rain that fell many miles upstream on land nobody there can see.

vertical

HintThe camera points at the ground rather than out across it, so nothing is seen side-on.

The whyThis kind can be laid beside a map and compared square for square, which makes it the useful one for measuring. An oblique photograph is taken at an angle: it shows the sides of buildings and is far easier to recognise a place from, but it hides whatever sits behind them and distorts distance.

It is naturally replaced

HintSunshine and wind keep arriving; a lump of coal, once burnt, has gone for good.

The whyWind, solar, hydro, tidal and geothermal all draw on flows that keep coming. Coal, oil and gas draw on a stock laid down over millions of years, so every tonne burnt is a tonne fewer. That difference is why energy turns up in almost every year’s competition theme, whatever the wording.

Sustainable development

HintThe wording comes from a 1987 report to the United Nations, written by a commission led by a Norwegian politician.

The whyThe phrase comes from Our Common Future, the 1987 Brundtland report. It sets a fair test for any scheme in an entry: does it hold up environmentally, socially and economically at the same time? A project that is kind to a river but puts every local job at risk has failed one leg of that test.

HDI

HintIt adds how long people live, and how long they stay in school, to the money measure.

The whyThe Human Development Index scores each country between 0 and 1 from life expectancy at birth, years of schooling and income per person. Income on its own hides how the money is shared, so two countries with the same average can be very different places to grow up in.

megacity

HintThe threshold is ten million people, and one word covers any settlement above it.

The whyThe United Nations counts ten million or more. In 1950 only New York and Tokyo qualified; today there are more than thirty, and most are in Asia.

Labels naming the features

HintAn artist draws what is pretty; a geographer draws what needs explaining, then writes on it.

The whyKeep it simple — a horizon, the main landforms, and a note beside each saying what it is and why it is there. Add the date, the place, the direction you were facing and a rough sense of size, and the sketch becomes evidence you can still use months later. A camera records everything; a sketch records what you decided mattered.

Key Stage 3

HintThe band running from age eleven to fourteen, before GCSE choices begin.

The whyThe Royal Geographical Society runs it with Geographical magazine in four categories, from Key Stage 2 up to Key Stage 5. Entrants below sixth form submit a single A3 piece — hand-drawn and scanned, or made on a computer — while the oldest group builds an Esri StoryMap. Entries must be the work of one student, any images used have to be permissioned and credited, and the theme changes every year, so the geography is what you prepare, not the topic.