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EnglandGeographyQuick questions
Component 1 and 2: Geographical Skills and Fieldwork
Quick questions on Cartographic and graphical skills: maps, GIS and graphs - OCR A-Level Geography
4short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What are cartographic skills?Show answer
OS map skills underpin fieldwork and many resource questions: locating features with grid references, measuring straight-line and route distance using the scale, interpreting contours and spot heights to read relief and gradient, and identifying land use and settlement patterns. GIS extends this by overlaying datasets (for example deprivation, flood risk and infrastructure) to reveal spatial relationships, and is increasingly central to professional and academic geography. Competence means not just reading a map but extracting evidence from it to support an argument.
What are thematic maps?Show answer
OCR expects fluency with several thematic maps, each suited to a particular kind of data. Choropleth maps shade areas by value class and are ideal for rates and densities (population density, deprivation), but can imply false uniformity within each area and are sensitive to the class boundaries chosen. Isoline maps join points of equal value (contours, isobars, isohyets) and suit continuous data. Proportional-symbol maps scale symbol size to value and show absolute quantities at points (city populations), though symbols can overlap.
What is q1?Show answer
State the most suitable map type for showing (a) population density by region and (b) trade flows between countries. [2 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
Explain one advantage and one limitation of a choropleth map. [2 marks]
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