Initial Publication Date: November 22, 2010

Lab 3: A Bird's Eye View: Exploring Your Region

Part B: Defining Your Region

Your local study site is just one small piece of the entire Earth system. It's a great place to study details up close, but it's too small an area to give you a thorough understanding of the bigger picture. Before you start to think about the Earth as a whole, consider the region surrounding your local study site. A region is larger in scale than your local study site and is generally characterized by some common feature or features that differentiate it from neighboring areas. Regional boundaries are where those features or characteristics change. Regions can be defined in different ways. They can have natural boundaries, human-made boundaries, or political/social boundaries. Here are some examples of regions with different types of boundaries:

Natural Boundaries

  • a watershed (area of land where all of the water that is under it or drains off of it, goes into the same place)
  • a mountain range
  • a river basin
  • a desert
  • a plain
  • a peninsula


Human-made Boundaries

  • a watershed in which a boundary is a dam
  • an area larger than a local study site bounded by highways, railroads, and bridges
  • a natural area surrounded by populated regions or a populated region surrounded by a natural area
  • a park or game preserve


Political/Social Boundaries

  • a state or province
  • a country


Checking In

  • Based on what you know about the area around your local study site, what characteristics or features do you think you might use to define the region surrounding it? Why?



Google Earth is a virtual globe program that displays satellite images of Earth's surface, allowing you to see things like countries, cities, and even houses from a bird's-eye view. It's a great tool for expanding your view of the world and gaining some perspective on the relative size and scale of Earth's features.

1. Install Google Earth. NOTE: If you already have Google Earth installed on your computer, skip to Step 2.

2. Adjust your latitude/longitude setting to decimal degrees.

  • Choose Tools > Options(PC) or Google Earth > Preferences...(Mac)
  • In the Preferences window, choose Decimal Degrees for the Show Lat/Long option.

3. Fly to your local study site location.

  • Type the address or latitude/longitude coordinates for your local study site in the Search box and click theSearch button. NOTE: For best results, type in addresses just like you would address a letter. Use spaces instead of returns between the street address and the city, state, and zip code. Capitalization and punctuation don't matter much, but spelling counts. It's particularly important to include the state or zip code, since cities with the same name can be found in many states.
  • Google Earth should zoom into your study site. Depending on your Internet connection, there may be a delay as the high-resolution images load.

4. Mark the location of your study site with a placemark.

5. Zoom out using one of the following methods. NOTE: If you zoom out too far and need to zoom back in, just do the opposite of what you did to zoom out.

  • If your mouse has a scroll wheel or trackball: move your mouse over the map and roll the wheel or ball DOWN (toward yourself).
  • If you don't have a scroll wheel: move your mouse over the map, right-click (CTRL + click on a Mac), and move your mouse DOWN (toward yourself).
  • Use the navigation controls: The navigation controls are in the top right corner of the 3D Viewer window. They offer the same navigation actions as mouse navigation, plus some additional features. The navigation controls disappear when you aren't using them, but re-appear when you move your mouse over them. To zoom out, click and hold the Zoom Out button (at the bottom of the Zoom Slider) to zoom out.

6. Look for boundaries to define your region. Here are some things you might consider using as boundaries:

  • bodies of water such as streams, canals, rivers, ponds, lakes, or an ocean
  • topographic features such as mountains, plateaus, or valleys
  • vegetation types such as forest, meadow, wetland, or desert
  • roads, bridges, and other areas of human development (homes, office buildings, factories, and shopping centers)
  • political boundaries such as county or state lines
  • parks

Stop and Think

1: What features or characteristics are you using to identify your region? Why?

2: How will you describe your region to the class? List the geographic landmarks that will help you identify the full circumference of the region's boundaries — north, south, east, and west. You can use latitude and longitude lines, if necessary.

7. Share your choice of region with the rest of the class (print out an image if necessary). Explain to your classmates how you chose your regional boundaries.

8. As a class, discuss the merits of the different regional boundaries each group selected. Come to a consensus about the region you will use to study as a system.