• The nature of human-induced environmental change
• The forces driving human-induced changes
• Opportunities to mitigate or adapt to such changes
• The theory and methods of integrated assessment

NASA has selected your county as one of its three study areas and they have hired you to work on the "economic and social forces" segment of the project. They want a short report that will introduce them to the economic and social geography of your county. The emphasis is to be on "economic and social structure" as opposed to "economic and social aspects ." This distinction is important. An emphasis on "structure" helps reveal the spatial and social organization of your county, whereas an emphasis on "aspects" leads toward random, disconnected observations.

Your report will have three parts

Part 1. Introduction and preliminary interpretation of income patterns (requirement: 2 paragraphs)

1. Begin by stating what the purpose of your report is. Describe where your county is and try to briefly capture the significance of this location. Mention some of your county's striking features--remember that NASA knows nothing about your county. As for which features to include or exclude, it's best to mention things that could be developed in greater detail in later parts of your paper.
2. Discuss how your county compares to your state as a whole, in terms of per capita income (is the region where your county is located within the state high or low?)
3. Interpret the spatial distribution of income in your county. Provide a sense of the overall pattern, i.e., describe what the pattern looks like (are county subdivisions with high values or low values clustered or dispersed? Where are the clusters?) You should address these issues for each of the 6 maps you make.
4. Integrate relevant pieces of statistical information (from your text box) into the first or especially the second paragraph.

1. Your commentary on these four pairs of maps will include two themes.
1. One is an interpretation of your variable's spatial distribution, and the other is a discussion of the connections between the per capita income map and the map of the variable you selected.
2. Integrate relevant pieces of statistical information (from your text box) into each paragraph.

1. Interpret the geography of income in your county by looking at income distribution in your county, the reasons for the distribution, and what some of the consequences are of this distribution of income. What do the other variables you mapped tell you about these things?
2. Discuss the variation, i.e., what factors can be associated with the pattern of low, medium, or high values for the variables that you have depicted?
1. e.g., the role of spatial interaction, i.e., a region's or county's connections or linkages to other locations or geographic areas
2. e.g., the role of the environment (topography, resources)
3. e.g., the sectoral structure (primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary) of the county or region
3. Discuss long term and short term historical factors that affect the spatial patterns
1. economic
1. what is the type and scale of economic change for the county as a whole or for different parts or subregions of the county?
1. is the county in an upward or downward trajectory?
2. recent unemployment figures can provide useful short term historical information .
2. social
1. what is the type and scale of demographic change for the county as a whole or for different parts or subregions of the county?
1. is the county in an upward or downward trajectory?
2. recent population figures can provide useful short term historical information.
4. You must do some further research on your county in order to understand historical trends on employment, education, population and income, and to look in more detail at county information.
1. For Colorado counties, some information is available from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment .
2. You should definitely visit the Government Information Sharing Project (click here) . Scroll to the USA map and click on a state, then scroll to the state map and click on a county; scroll to summary report. Then scroll back up to choose different reports (such as education, manufacturers, service industries, povert, agriculture), then click "Get the above Selected report," then scroll down to view it. These reports will give you trends over several decades. You will be able to see the number of firms and employees in various kinds of manufacturing, the changing size of farms, the unemployment rates, the changing numbers of high school graduates and so forth. Include some of these figures in your report.
3. Another good sources is the US Bureau of the Census including the Bureau's: American Factfinder (with links to maps) ( http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/BasicFactsServlet ); Mapping and Cartographic Resources ( http://www.census.gov/geo/www/maps/ ); and the TIGER Mapping Service: ( http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapbrowse-tbl ).
   

The maps and the report should be in one Microsoft Word file. Tip: use the spellchecker.

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Created 30 November 1997 by Jim Hathaway, last revised 11 March 1999 by Patrick McGreevy and Marianna Kissell.
The original URL for this page is http://wwwalet.clarion.edu/mcgreevy/income/mapcompare.htm
Last revised 2000.9.10. k.foote@colorado.edu