In this final exercise you are to demonstrate a basic command of spatial or geographic data collection, data presentation, and data analysis building upon skills practiced in the first 6 assignments. Choose a topic of your choice that incorporates changing distribution patterns in some aspect of the cultural or environmental geography of Virginia. You may, for example, select some current issue in Virginia (check the newspaper) present its geographic background.

The scale of your study may be local, regional, statewide, national or global as appropriate to the topic.

The time period may or may not extend to the present, but should include a minimum of two distinctly different periods (sort of a "before" and an "after").

Data sources: Map be existing maps of various types, census data (there are economic and agricultural censuses as well as the housing and population ones we have used previously), County and City Databooks, historical descriptions, photographs, and so forth.

REQUIREMENTS:

Your task is to prepare a 5-10 page illustrated report discussing the changes in spatial patterns of the aspect of the cultural or environmental geography of Virginia you have chosen.

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The paper should be formatted to having clearly distinct sections as follows. (Use of subheadings is encouraged.)

1. Introduction. This sets up the problem and provides some context. Any background information the reader needs to understand your problem belongs here.
2. The main body of the Paper. This section describes what you found out about your topic in two or more different time periods—that is, the results of your research. You may want separate sections (and separate subheadings) for each period.
3. Discussion. This section is where you try to explain the changes that have occurred and relate them to general historic and/or environmental processes affecting your study area. The scale of these processes will vary topic by topic; they may be global, national, or regional (including state-wide).
4. Summary. The summary should tie together the whole paper by restating the research question or problem in its general context (introduction), relating most basic patterns revealed by your research (body of paper), and finally providing explanations or hypothesis as to why the patterns developed as they did. New questions or continuing questions could be stated here as well.

Illustrations must include at least one reference map and one thematic map (either qualitative or quantitative (by any method: isolines, flowlines, dots, or choropleth). Sketch maps may be used if appropriate.

You may photocopy or scan existing maps, but try to enhance them to directly work with your data. For example, you may need to add your "study area" or certain place names that you use to a reference map. You may want to delete information that is not directly relevant to your paper. Most manual cartography is a matter to tracing existing maps and either adding or deleting information as appropriate to the message of the new map.

Additional maps, charts, tables, graphs, and photos—if directly related to your narrative—will serve to enhance the report and probably the grade.

Each illustration should be referenced in the text as Figure 1, Figure 2, etc. If tables are used, identify them as Table 1, Table 2, etc. Each illustration and table should be placed in the text as close to its first mention in the text as possible. Use standard word processing techniques for inserting pictures if at all possible. As a last resort, cut and paste—literally. You may acquire illustrations from the web, by scanning, or by drafting them yourself. Be sure to credit all sources.

Internal citations. Use internal footnotes to cite sources of information, ideas, maps, and other graphics. The required format is: (Author's last name, date.) All specific or not commonly known information, not just direct quotations, must be cited or you are stealing others' intellectual property, i.e., plagiarizing. If you are citing a direct quotation you need to indicate the page or pages on which it appears after the date of publication: (Author's last name, date, pages.)

References cited: Finally, your report should include a bibliographic section that identifies your sources of information. Use the following format:

For books:

Author's last name, initials. Date. Title. (Place of publication: Publisher), specific pages, as appropriate.

For articles in journals:

Author's last name, initials. Date. "Title of article," Journal , vol. X: pp. XX-YY.

For chapters in books:

Author's last name, initials. Date. "Title of chapter," in Title of Book, by [or edited by] Author of book (Place of publication: Publisher), pp. XX-YY.

[Some people would require you to list the book again as a separate entry, but this is not necessary here.]

For web pages:

Author's last name, initials. Date. "Title of page" (URL).

Sometimes it is not possible to discover the author and date of a web page. If this happens, begin your entry as "Anonymous, no date." It may well be that an institution or agency is the author of a page. If so, identify them as such. For example: U.S. Bureau of the Census, or USGS, 1976.

For maps:

If the map comes from a book or article or web page, simply cite that book or article as the source.

If you are dealing with independent sheets, such as topographic quadrangles or DEMs, you need to identify the author (USGS, in the case of US topo quads), date, name of quadrangle, and scale.