Selecting the right skill and the right evidence
Working from a given environment
- Here you work on an environment you have never seen, described in a set of resources — maps, tables, graphs, photographs and quotations from the people who live there.
- The settings are overseas and can be anything: a mining region, a flood-prone delta, a capital city being relocated.
- Nothing about the environment can be prepared in advance. What you prepare is method — knowing which skill fits which job, and how to read evidence you have just met.
- The worked environment on these pages is invented: the Sarupa delta in Kalindra province, with the city of Teluk (1.9 million people), aquaculture ponds, a mangrove fringe and an embankment, subsiding by up to 2.3 m since 1990.
Selection: the thing that changes at this level
- Earlier on, you are told which skill to use. Complete the précis map. Give the six-figure grid reference. Calculate the distance.
- Here nobody tells you. The question asks about the environment, and you decide that a distance calculation, a median rather than a mean, or a photograph's camera direction is what supports your point.
- So the skill is fitting the tool to the job, and it is worth practising as its own thing.
- Three decisions you will make in every paper:
- which resource answers this part — often two of the six do, and one does it better
- which measure describes the data honestly — mean, median, mode, range, percentage, rate
- which concept the evidence actually demonstrates, rather than which one you like best
- Say you selected. The median is the fairer measure here because one site is extreme earns more than a correct median with no reason given.
Reading a set of resources
- Read every resource before writing anything. The commonest waste is answering from the first resource and never noticing that a later one holds the figures that would have made the answer precise.
- Number your evidence as you read. A quick list — B: population 1990–2025; C: subsidence map; D: two quotations — turns six resources into a menu.
- Evidence comes from the resources. Wider geographic knowledge is for explaining a mechanism; it does not substitute for evidence about this environment.
- Watch for a resource that disagrees with another. The disagreement is usually the most interesting thing in the set, and it is what any evaluation turns on.
Conventions, units and working
- The mapping conventions are all required: title, north arrow, scale, key, correct symbols.
- Round sensibly and state units. 6.2 km, not 6.2. A number without a unit is not an answer.
- Show your working for any calculation, even a one-line one — a wrong final figure with correct method still earns something.
Worked Example
A resource booklet on the invented Sarupa delta contains six resources: (A) a location map, (B) a table of Teluk's population 1990–2025, (C) a subsidence map, (D) two quotations from residents, (E) a climate graph, and (F) a photograph of the embankment.
Part (a) asks: Describe the location and extent of the Sarupa delta.
Which resources would you select, and why? Then write the answer.
Step 1 — decide what the verb needs. Describe location and extent needs where it is (absolute and relative), how big it is, and what it consists of. It does not need causes.
Step 2 — select. Resource A (the location map) carries all three, provided a scale bar is present. Resource C adds extent, because a subsidence map covers the same area and gives a second measure of it. Resources B, D, E and F answer later parts — do not use them here just because they are there.
Step 3 — decide which skills you need. Two, and neither is announced by the question: reading direction and distance from a map, and using the scale to quantify extent.
Step 4 — write it.
The Sarupa delta lies on the northern coast of Kalindra province, where the Sarupa River enters Teluk Bay (resource A). Its absolute location on the booklet map is between the 34 and 65 eastings and the 48 and 74 northings; its relative location is about 14 km north of the hill country visible in resource F, and immediately south-west of the bay.
Measured from resource A with the scale bar, the delta is about 31 km from its landward apex to the coast and about 26 km along the shoreline, giving an area in the order of 600 km2. Within that extent it contains three main distributary channels, the built-up area of Teluk on the western side, a block of aquaculture ponds covering roughly the central third, and a mangrove fringe along most of the seaward edge.
Resource C shows the same extent again from a different angle: the area affected by subsidence of 1 m or more covers most of the delta but stops at the landward apex, which confirms that the delta and the subsiding ground are effectively the same area.