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About The Physical Environment

The Physical Environment is one of the first, totally online physical geography learning environments. The Physical Environment combines text, images, audio and video programs to deliver the subject matter content. A multimedia online environment enables new and different ways to interact with textbook content. The potential of the World Wide Web to bring remote places to our desktops, and its ability to interlink bits of information, breathes life into physical geography. No longer is one tied to a static image in a book, or the graphics available on a CD-ROM. The interconnectivity of the Web engages us in new ways of learning. Hyperlinked resources lets us stay abreast of the latest developments. The reader can explore in greater depth than ever before the physical world from their desktop.

Philosophy

The Physical Environment is an introduction to physical geography through the lense of environmental change. Every physical geography book talks about the role of time in eart systems processes, but thisusually means investigating events in the past to explain the current physical geography of earth.TPE explains earth processes in order to understand past, present, and just as importantly, the future physical geography of earth. Predicting future geographies is a difficult task, and so TPE relies heavily collective wisdom of the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC), Union of Concerned Scientists, and reputable government resources.

House damaged by melting permafrost.
(Source: Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming)

Like many educators, I have a hard time finding a textbook that is to my liking. Publishers have been rather slow to embrace online textbooks. Most textbooks these days include a CD-ROM and companion web site. Having three distinct modes of information delivery makes it difficult to effectively integrate the material. A student must jump from their textbook to a CD-ROM and then to the web. The Physical Environment seamlessly integrates all learning resources together. Those digital textbooks that are available tend to be print versions simply converted to digital. Most lack the interactivity and utilization of the rich resources available online.

I prefer my basic text to serve as a skeleton upon which I will "flesh out". That's what The Physical Environment tries to do, provide a foundation upon which an instructor can build.  Special topics which are often found as focus boxes interspersed throughout the pages of a textbook are context embedded links. For instance, rather than explaining the phenomenon of El Niņo here, links are provided to professional sites that provide a rich array of information relevant to the topic.

Since I embraced the Web as a platform for teaching and learning, I have always needed a source for copyright-free materials. So, most of the images found here are from public domain sources, or from those who have generously permitted their use for this textbook. I've created several textbook diagrams and though quite simple and frankly, not what you'd get from a commercial publisher, they get the point across.

I originally put this material online for my introductory physical geography course, The Physical Environment. Several sections began as learning modules employed while I was away at conferences or other business activities. I continued to expand on the material such that it now forms the basis of the online version of my course. I decided to package the material in the form of an online textbook, or learning environment to be more precise.

Potential users are free to link to any page of The Physical Environment. Please credit the source and provide a link (http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/ritter/geog101/textbook/title_page.html) back to the title page if you decide to use this material. You should contact me before downloading any image as some are not in the public domain.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated as well.

Features

The Physical Environment is different from most learning materials like a printed book. Being written in hypertext one can navigate through materials either linearly or nonlinearly. That is, links to more information about a topic are embedded in the text for you to explore and gain a better grasp.  Because of the nonlinearity of hypermedia, we no longer have the conventional, sequential numbered chapters. That is, we don't have to have a chapter 1, chapter 2, and so on. The chapter format with letter codes is used instead. As a result, figure numbering uses a combination of letters from the title of the chapter and numbers. For example. the first chapter is "The Essentials of Geography" and figures and tables are coded with "EG". That is, figure one is coded "Figure EG.1" instead of the more conventional "Figure 1.1". In this way one can arrange the order of chapters to suit an individual instructor's style and approach to physical geography.

Many features are built into The Physical Environment to enhance learning. Scattered throughout the text are icons that link to multimedia and maps that bring added dimension to learning. Look for these icons:

 - video

- audio

- still image

- map

- visualization

- notable people (mostly geographers)

At important junctures, Self Assessment & Critical Thinking questions are posed to assess learning. These provide immediate feedback as one moves through the material. An online glossary is linked to terms and a distributed atlas is helpful for locating features and places discussed in the text.

Being a new technology that is constantly in a state of flux brings some annoyances. Digital publishing relies on servers which can fail and make materials inaccessible. Web authors move their sites without a forwarding address making them unavailable. It's therefore important to have the utmost patience as this brilliant new technology sorts itself out. Once it does, it will have a significant impact on modern culture.

Contents of The Physical Environment

On the "Contents" page you will find links to the various resources made available through The Physical Environment. The first link is to the text materials for the subject covered in a particular chapter. The text material is profusely illustrated with diagrams, graphs, photographs, and animations. Most of the photographs are from public domain sources so you are free to download these images. Contact me if you are unsure which ones are public domain before downloading.

Each chapter has a link to a Focus on the Physical Environment. These links are to materials located outside The Physical Environment web site. They are text, audio, or video materials that provide additional detail concerning the subject of a chapter. Connections are web-based resources that provide a connection between the subject of a chapter to other areas of physical geography, or to human - environment interactions. Several of the chapters have a Physical Geography Today links to real, or near real-time data concerning the subject of the chapter. Many of the chapters have a How To ... section that demonstrates how to undertake a particular activity like interpreting weather maps, constructing topographic profiles, or calculating noon sun angles. The Active Learning links are activities that use web-based sources of information and data to explore the physical environment. Geographers at Work links you to biographies and articles about people who practice geography to solve issues that confront science and society. This section may include links to news articles or personal web sites that describe how people got interested in geography and what they do. Special Topics pages are organized links added as unique events relative to physical geography unfold (hurricanes, earthquake, volcanic events). Finally, the Review and Resources link takes you to a web page with links to important terms and concepts, review questions, a self-assessment quiz, and web resources concerning the chapter topic.

A companion blog provides links to current events related to the textbook content and ways to improve studying physical geography. A companion video podcast illustrates common lab procedures and concepts addressed in most physical geography courses.

Accessing The Physical Environment

The Physical Environment was originally designed for use in Microsoft Internet Explorer. However, due to security concerns with Internet Explorer I highly encourage you to try the free, open source browsers Firefox or the full-featured Mozilla. Macromedia Shockwave Flash is used for several animations. If you need the browser plug-in download it from Macromedia for free. To watch videos and listen to some programs you must have Windows Media Player, RealPlayer and QuickTime installed on your computer. All are available as free downloads. The web site has been formatted to be viewed full-screen at 800 X 600 resolution. The Physical Environment is formatted to be read online and is not meant to be printed. Therefore, I can't guarantee that the web text will print correctly if you wish to do so. Though access to most of the materials is fine with a dial-up connection to the Internet, a broadband connection of at least 512Kbs is best.

I've tried my best to make navigation through The Physical Environment as easy as possible. Links to the contents, glossary, atlas, and index are at the top of each page. A link to the chapter outline is provided in the upper right corner of a chapter web page. The outline link is formatted as bold and italicized text. Use the link to go to the outline and then jump to a specific section within a chapter.  Links that take you outside of The Physical Environment  will open in a new, pop-up browser window.  Those using pop-up blockers need to configure them to take full advantage of these outside resources.

I hope you find The Physical Environment of use in learning physical geography.  

~ Michael E. Ritter ~

    Professor of Geography
University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point