GeographyQ&A by dot point

Environmental challenges and sustainability: rising consumerism and its environmental impact, climate change as an environmental challenge (mitigation and adaptation), ecosystem degradation and restoration, and sustainable tourism and resource use.

Globalisation, trade, aid and tourism: the processes of globalisation and the role of transnational corporations, the patterns of world trade and the difference between free and fair trade, the types and value of aid, and tourism as a development strategy.

Measuring global inequalities: economic and social development indicators (GDP per capita, GNI, HDI, life expectancy, literacy, infant mortality), the strengths and limitations of single and composite indicators, and the global pattern of development.

The causes and consequences of uneven development: the physical, historical, economic and political causes of uneven development, the consequences at the global scale and within an LIC and an NIC, and strategies to reduce the development gap.

Resource issues with a focus on water: the global pattern of water supply and demand, the causes and consequences of water insecurity, and strategies for the sustainable management of water at different scales.

Applied decision making: using a resource booklet to analyse an unfamiliar UK place or issue, weighing the options against geographical concepts and stakeholder views, and reaching and justifying a decision in the high-tariff Component 3 question.

Cartographic and graphical skills: reading Ordnance Survey maps (grid references, scale, distance, direction, relief), interpreting atlas, choropleth and other thematic maps, and choosing and interpreting the appropriate graph for a data set.

Fieldwork enquiry methods: forming aims and hypotheses, choosing locations and sampling, collecting primary and secondary data with physical and human methods, presenting and analysing the data, and evaluating the enquiry.

Numerical and statistical skills: calculating and interpreting measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode) and spread (range, interquartile range), percentages and percentage change, ratios and proportions, and reading data from tables and graphs.

Coastal landforms and processes: waves, marine and sub-aerial processes, erosional landforms (headlands and bays, caves, arches, stacks, stumps, wave-cut platforms) and depositional landforms (beaches, spits, bars), and a UK coastal landscape.

The distinctive landscapes of the UK: the distribution and characteristics of upland and lowland landscapes, the role of geology, climate and human activity, and one distinctive landscape where humans have created environmental challenges.

Drainage basins and flooding: the drainage basin as an open system (inputs, stores, transfers, outputs), the storm hydrograph, the physical and human causes of river flooding, the impacts of flooding, and a UK flood event.

Managing river and coastal landscapes: hard and soft engineering for river flooding and coastal erosion, the costs and benefits of each, the conflicts between stakeholders, and the evaluation of management strategies.

River landforms and processes: weathering, mass movement, erosion, transport and deposition; the long profile and changing valley cross-profile; upper-course landforms (V-shaped valleys, waterfalls, gorges) and lower-course landforms (meanders, ox-bow lakes, floodplains, levees); and a UK river landscape.

Urban issues in contrasting global cities: rapid urbanisation and megacity growth in an LIC or NIC, the causes of rural-urban migration, the growth of informal settlements (slums), the social, economic and environmental challenges, and strategies to manage them.

Population and urban change in the UK: population change (natural change, ageing, migration), urban land-use patterns, the causes of inner-city change and counterurbanisation, and the impacts of urban change on people and places.

Retail and service change: the decentralisation of retailing to out-of-town sites, the growth of online shopping, the impact on the high street and town centres, and changing service provision in rural and urban areas.

Sustainable urban communities: the features of a sustainable city (transport, housing, energy, water, waste and green space), the challenges of making UK cities sustainable, and a UK example of a sustainable urban initiative.

The urban-rural continuum: the definitions of rural, suburban and urban, the spectrum of settlement from remote rural to inner city, the processes of urbanisation, suburbanisation, counterurbanisation and re-urbanisation, and rural depopulation and deprivation.

Managing and reducing tectonic hazards: prediction and monitoring, protection through building design and planning, preparation and education, the immediate and long-term responses to an event, and the evaluation of these strategies.

Plate tectonic theory and the global distribution of hazards: the structure of the Earth, convection and plate movement, the types of plate boundary (constructive, destructive, conservative, collision), and the global distribution of earthquakes and volcanoes.

Tectonic processes and landforms: the features of volcanoes (shield and composite) and lava types, the characteristics of earthquakes (focus, epicentre, magnitude), primary and secondary hazards, and the landforms of constructive, destructive and collision boundaries.

Vulnerability and the impacts of tectonic hazards: why people live in hazardous areas, the factors that affect vulnerability, and the contrasting social, economic and environmental impacts of a tectonic event in places at different levels of development.

Ecosystems and biomes: how ecosystems work (food chains and webs, nutrient cycling, energy flows), the distribution and characteristics of the global biomes, and the structure and adaptations of one biome such as the tropical rainforest.

The human impact on ecosystems: the causes and effects of deforestation in the tropical rainforest, the wider human pressures on ecosystems, and the strategies for the sustainable management of a biome.

Climate change through the Quaternary period: the evidence for past climate change, the natural causes of climate change, the enhanced greenhouse effect and the human causes of recent warming, and the consequences of contemporary climate change.

Global weather hazards: the formation, structure and distribution of tropical storms, the causes of drought, the impacts of these hazards, and how they are managed, with a case study of each.

Weather and climate in the UK: the factors that influence the UK climate, the air masses and the difference between depressions and anticyclones, and the causes, impacts and management of a recent extreme UK weather event.