Lab 8 South Asia


 
This week's discussion was on the geography of South Asia, the area made up of the countries of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh.  Most of the physical geography is the result of tectonic activity with the Inda Plate still pushing against the Eurasia Plate.  This collision resulted in the formation of the Himalaya Mountain Range and the two largest mountains in the world, Mount Everest and K2.  Even though K2 is the smaller of the two, it has fewer people successfully make it to the summit and has a death rate of 25%.  The lowland region is formed by the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra rivers where they provide the necessary water for agricultural irrigation and an abundance of fish.  These rivers have had significant environmental concerns, and the Ganges is ranked as the most polluted river in the world. The most important climatic feature of the region is the monsoon, which our lab covers the destruction of one of these events. In 1947, Britian withdrew from India resulting in a partitioning of the country due to political and religious differences. Geographers have also studied the disparity of males and females in the Indian population, with males greatly outnumbering females.

For Lab 8 we created a dot density map in GIS that shows the damage and fatalities caused by the Indian Monsoons.  A dot density is a type of thematic map that uses point symbols to visualize the geographic distribution of a large number of related phenomena.  Our map shows a dot density for the number of cattle and humans lost in the monsoon, 1 dot represents 3 deaths for both human and cattle.  The Northeast and Northwest regions along with the Southwest region experienced the most flood casualties in this event.  More cattle than human deaths were experienced in much of the providences with the exception Kolkata which saw more human deaths. We used the measure tool to estimate the area of one of the providences.  I chose Kamataka State which is 76,685 square miles, there is a picture attached below showing the area on the map.   The North and Southwestern states experienced the most total damage.  These areas also saw many human and cattle deaths.  The Northeastern states had little total damage but saw a large number of cattle deaths possibly suggesting the area is not agricultural but instead pastoral.  

Using the measuring tool to find the area of Kamataka State.  


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