Page 40 - Geography_n_Environment

like houses and schools, and rivers and oceans to represent water
bodies. Also, maps can show mountains and valleys to represent
higher and lower land, green areas like national parks and forests,

city or country boundaries, and sports fields.
However, not everything on the earth’s surface will be shown on a
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map. The features included on a map are those which are important
to the map users. The cartographer decides what to include on the
map based on the needs of the map users. Therefore, maps show

only the key features necessary to make them easy to read and
understand.

Activity 1

Visit the areas around your school, then list the important
features that you would include if you were to draw a map of
the school.

Map symbols

A map cannot show things exactly as they are in reality; instead, it
uses map symbols. Map symbols are small drawings used on a map

to represent real objects. When you want to show real objects on
a map, you should use symbols to represent those objects. These
symbols help to describe those features simply and

understandably. All symbols used on a map are shown in the
map key, which explains all the symbols used. Figure 1 shows
some of the symbols used in maps.

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