food shortages that would result in the deaths of “hundreds of millions” of people in
the ensuing decades. Many of these deaths would not be confined to the developing
world, but would occur in North America and Europe as well. He forecast a
dramatic decline in life expectancy in the United States, as well as an overall drop
in the total American population. Other catastrophic predictions were a severe water
crisis in the western United States and pervasive shortages of certain resources,
particularly metallic ores. None of Ehrlich’s predicted calamities came to pass,
and in the developed world, one of the greatest health challenges to emerge in recent
decades is widespread obesity, along with an overabundance of food consumption.Map
The most important analytical tool of the geographer. A map illustrates some char-
acteristic or set of characteristics of a specified space; frequently, that space is a
regionor some other delineated area. Maps are the most direct means of display-
ing and analyzing geographic information, although a map is only a representation
of spatial reality, and all maps contain some element of distortion or inaccuracy.
This is primarily due to the fact that a map is typically a two-dimensional repre-
sentation of a three-dimensional surface, and therefore it is impossible to repro-
duce the latter without introducing some level of error. Moreover, a printed map
shows spatial relationships for only a specific point in history, and therefore the
accuracy of the information illustrated may be degraded as time passes. The past
20 years have seen the advent of maps that are stored as computer files, and such
maps may be interactive and readily updated, but nevertheless these maps, just like
their “hard copy” counterparts, must be periodically revised, because the features
associated with any place on theEarth’ssurface never remain static. Of course
geographers are not the only users of maps—tourists, travelers, and anyone
attempting to find an unfamiliar place has probably employed a map. Virtually
everyone carries with them a series ofmental mapsthat enable them to visualize
spatial information that they frequently require. The art of making maps is called
cartography, and has been practiced since the prehistoric era. In 2009, a team of
scholars revealed the discovery in a cave in northern Spain of a map etched on a
piece of stone that was approximately 14,000 years old.
A map contains three components that affect its utility, accuracy, and the degree
of detail it may illustrate. These are thescale,legend,andthemap projection.
The scale of a map indicates the spatial ratio between distance represented on
the map and the actual distance. Such a ratio is necessary, because in almost all
cases a map reduces the mapped area to a more compact format. As a general rule,216 Map