Main Focus

• The landforms associated with river channels, river valleys and drainage basins, and the processes that form them.
• The causes and effects of river floods and how people respond to and try to control the flood hazard.
• How vegetation is related to climate, soil and human activity.
• How attempts are made to plan and manage environments, and how these can have unintended effects.

Secondary Focus

• Geographical questions such as: What is it? Where is it? What is it like? How did it get like this? How is it changing? Why? What are the implications?
• Issues arising from people’s interaction with their environments.
• The physical and human features that give rise to the country’s distinctive characteristics and regional variety.
• The ways in which the degree of development of the country may be judged.
• How population and resources are interrelated.
• The causes and effects of migration.
• The reasons for the location, growth and nature of individual settlements.
• The differences between primary, secondary and tertiary industries.
• How the distribution of economic activity has changed and is changing, and the effects of such changes.
• Differences in development and their effect on the quality of life of different groups of people.
• How conflicting demands on the areas of natural beauty can arise.
• How considerations of sustainable development, stewardship and conservation affect environmental planning and management.

Main Focus

• Understand the significance and effects of the different ways in which decisions are made about the use and management of environments.
• Develop awareness of the ways in which people interact with their environments and appreciate the opportunities, challenges and constraints that face people in different places.

Secondary Focus

• Acquire knowledge and understanding of a range of places, environments, spatial patterns and distributions at a range of scales from local to global, and understand the physical and human processes that affect their development.
• 'Develop a sense of place and appraciate a sensitive awareness of the environment; the significance of the attitudes and values of decision-makers in the management of the environment and human activities on the planet earth and an empathy with people in our own and other societies through an awareness of the contrasting opportunities and constraints facing people living in different places under different physical and human conditions.'
• Managing Natural Environments: landscape systems; drainage basin systems; managing the living world; people and ecosystems; causes, effects and consequences of hazardous natural events and human responses to them; industry and the environment.
• The Impact of Economic Change: changes in the location of economic activity; economic growth and decline.

Intermediate Geography:

• People and the Environment (Global Issues): development and health; environmental hazards.

Higher Geography:

• Atmosphere: climatic maps, diagrams and graphs.
• Hydrosphere: river flow data.
• Lithosphere: main landscape features.
• Biosphere: vegetation surveys and distribution.
• Population geography: population data; migration.
• Rural geography: land use data and crop yields.
• Industrial geography: old and new industries; employment surveys.
• Applications: rural land resources; rural land degradation; river basin management.