Identifying physical and cultural features on a map

Introduction

It is an important skill to be able to recognise physical and cultural features on a map. This is not always a simple task, however, since these features are represented differently depending on the type of map. This chapter defines physical and cultural features, and provides several examples of how to identify them.

What are physical and cultural features?

In geography, a physical feature is something which has been made by nature. Physical features are commonly divided according to which of the four 'spheres' they are found in. Features such as air pressure (weight of the air) and temperature are part of the atmosphere (air surrounding the Earth). Oceans and rivers are part of the hydrosphere (all water in and around the Earth). Landforms including mountains and valleys are considered part of the lithosphere (solid levels of the Earth's outer layers), while vegetation and wild animals are found in the biosphere (living organisms and their environment).

It is important to remember that a feature can only be classified as being physical if it is not created by humans. This means that features such as agricultural crops and man-made dams, are considered to be cultural features.

Cultural features are those which have been made by humans. The most obvious examples are settlements (towns and cities), transportation systems (road, rail, sea and air) and industry (mining and agriculture etc). Since cultural features have often been constructed by humans using resources from the physical environment, it is not always easy to distinguish between the two. A park, for example, is classified as a cultural feature. Despite often comprising natural vegetation and wild animals, a park is constructed (or set aside) by humans for the purpose of recreation.

Physical and cultural features on maps

Most maps include some basic physical and/ or cultural features. These features, however, are depicted differently on each type of map. Cartographers (people who construct maps) use a wide variety of techniques to represent well-known features, such as capital cities and major mountain ranges. It is important to understand these techniques in order to identify features on different types of maps.

Identifying physical features

Physical features are a central part of topographic maps. These maps show the height, slope and size of surface features using contour lines. Contour lines connect points of the same height above sea level (altitude). When familiar with the patterns created by these contours, it is easy to identify common features such as plateaus and cliffs.

Physical maps are similar to topographic maps, since they also show the terrain and topography of the Earth's surface. Physical maps, however, display this information in a different way to topographic maps. To show the different heights, shapes and slope of the landscape, physical maps use a scientific form of shading. Shaded relief relies on the use of a sunlight and shadow effect, which makes the map appear almost three dimensional.

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Surface features can be difficult to identify, as they are often represented by different techniques depending on the type of map. Aqueous (relating to water) features are simpler to identify, since they are often depicted according to certain conventions which apply to most maps. Whether in political, physical, or topographic maps, aqueous landforms such as lakes and rivers are commonly coloured blue.

Identifying cultural features

On political maps, the most important cultural features are country or state borders and major cities. To assist in identifying borders, a bold line is usually drawn between the two countries or states. If this boundary is disputed, then this line is often interrupted (dotted). The area of each country or state is also a different colour from those beside it. To avoid confusion with lakes and rivers, landmasses and borders are not coloured in blue.

To identify places on political maps, the name of a country is usually in upper case and the capital city is made bold, to distinguish it from other major cities. To further differentiate between the cities, capital cities are marked by a certain point symbol (a star, square, dot etc.) and the other major cities are represented by a different point symbol.

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One way that maps show information about cultural features such as industry and agriculture, is through symbols. These symbols are often small and resemble the thing which they are representing in the real world. The symbol for an oil refinery site, for example, might be a petrol bowser. Or the symbol for the agricultural product maize might be a simplified image of a cob of corn. The meanings of symbols used on a map are always explained in the legend. Maps which show information in this way are called simple distribution maps.

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