Interrelationships exist all around us. Many are easily identified and supported by common sense, like the relationship between hours spent practicing a sport or instrument and success in that area. Even simpler, there is a relationship between the speed a ball rolls down a ramp and the steepness of the ramp. Few would argue that those variables are unrelated. However, what is important to us are the interrelationships we discover between seemingly unrelated geographic phenomena. Geographic interrelationships follow a few simple patterns. Features studied by geographers can be either created by humans or naturally occurring. When identifying interrelationships they can be:

• Human - Human (e.g., The wealth of a country determines how quickly it recovers and rebuilds after a natural disaster.)
• Human - Natural (e.g., Forestry operations destabilize mountain slopes that can lead to landslides.)
• Natural - Human (e.g., The location where hurricanes make landfall affects the cost of home insurance.)
• Natural - Natural (e.g., Volcanoes occur along tectonic plate boundaries.)

To explore interrelationships we will start by using graphs.

Long Description

Interpret the graphs below and see if you can determine the interrelationship and its type.

Long Description

You just observed the most popular and scientifically important Natural-Natural interrelationship ever discovered. It has implications for the survival of humans on planet Earth but, surprisingly, it wasn’t fully understood until 1987. Hypothesized in 1896 by a Swedish scientist, it was believed that the burning of fossil fuels and release of CO2 (carbon dioxide) could increase global temperatures. Unfortunately, at the time there wasn't enough evidence to support this wild claim. So, this significant interrelationship went unproven until temperature and CO2 data were extracted from 400 000 year old ice cores in Antarctica during the 1980s. Interrelationships like this are just waiting to be discovered, so let’s go and find them!

Long Description

Once you believe that an interrelationship exists, you must follow the five steps that every geographer uses to complete an interrelationship study. An example study has been completed for this topic in the learning object below. Following this framework will help you to think like a geographer by identifying and analysing interrelationships.

Long Description

As you can tell from this study, interrelationships are not proposed as wild guesses or without sufficient evidence. Proving their existence involves using the geographic inquiry process that you have already learned about in the first activities.

Steps In the Geographic Inquiry Process	Studying Interrelationships
1. Formulate questions.	Propose a link between Feature A and B.
2. Gather information about its features.	Observe each layer in ArcGIS online.
Activity 3 will focus on the third and fourth stages of the inquiry process which involve:
3. Interpret and analyse this information.	Compare the layers showing Feature A and B.
4. Evaluate and verify the relationship.	Decide if Feature A causes/has an impact on Feature B.
5. Communicate your findings and conclusions.

Long Description

 

While we learn to study interrelationships, it is convenient to also cover two steps in the geographic inquiry model. You have already interpreted (definition:explained the meaning of) and analysed (definition:discovered or revealed) two interrelationships in this activity when we looked at CO2 and Global Temperatures, and then again, when we studied plate boundaries and earthquakes. The fourth and fifth steps of the geographic inquiry model involve evaluating and drawing conclusions from the information we collect or study. In order to practice this, we will introduce a new pair of features that might represent an interrelationship.

• Feature A : The Risk Level of a Natural Disaster in the United States
• Feature B: The Cost of Home Insurance in the United States

Could these be interrelated to one another? Answering this question is our goal, and the geographic inquiry model will help us achieve it.

Information about Feature A and B are available below. You can also download this information if you prefer.

Read Home Insurance and Disaster Risk.

If you want to view any links in this pdf, right click and select "Open Link in New Tab" to avoid leaving this page.

Interpret the information as best you can from either your downloaded file or the pdf above. Make jot notes of your interpretation.

Reading Data

So far in this activity, you have looked at data represented in graphs, maps, and tables. What if this information presented in the table or spreadsheet you are looking at now were displayed in another form, like a graph or a series of maps? How might reading each form for the interrelationships change? What are some benefits of each of the different forms to represent the interrelationships?

Presenting Data and Interrelationships in a Graph

The third and fourth step of the inquiry model involve taking our data and visualizing it in a way to maximize our understanding. In order to do that we will graph Feature A against Feature B, in a similar way that we compared existing graphs of CO2 and Global Temperatures. Use the following steps to create a double line graph comparing the cost of home insurance and the risk for natural disasters in the United States. This activity focuses on the learning skill, “initiative,” as you may have never created a graph like this before. Take the time to learn how to do it correctly, and you will have shown the initiative to learn new spreadsheet skills.

Read How to Make a Graph from Data.

If you want to view any links in this pdf, right click and select "Open Link in New Tab" to avoid leaving this page.

 Interrelationships Study

Take a screenshot of your graph and your interrelationships study generated in the learning object below and submit them to your teacher who will provide feedback on the accuracy and completion of the graph as well as the quality of your interrelationship explanation.

InterrelationshipBlank

Long Description

 

 

Submit Your Work

 

 

This activity has taught us all about interrelationships and the importance of visualizing information in order to interpret, evaluate, and draw conclusions. There are countless interrelationships that exist when studying natural disasters. To consolidate your understanding, you will try to identify how the occurrence of one type of natural hazard might influence the risk of another type of hazard. An example has been provided for you, but you will submit your own version with different hazards to the class discussion. Remember to use the blank Interrelationships learning object to fill in and organize your information.

Example