National Geography Education Standards
addressed in
Student Activities for the Maps of the Truckee-Carson-Walker 
and the Humboldt River Systems

Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology Educational Series E-29 and E-32

National Geography Standards addressed:

  1. The World in Spatial Terms
    1. Standard 1: How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technology to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective.
      1. By the end of fourth grade the student knows and understands:
        1. The characteristics and purposes of geographic representations such as maps, globes, graphs, diagrams, aerial and other photographs, and satellite-produced images.
        2. How to display spatial information on maps and other geographic representations.
      2. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The characteristics, functions, and applications of maps, globes, aerial and other photographs, satellite-produced images, and models.
        2. How to make and use maps, globes, graphs, charts, models, and databases to analyze spatial distributions and patterns.
        3. The relative advantages and disadvantages of using maps, globes, aerial and other photographs, satellite-produced images, and models to solve geographic problems.
      3. By the end of twelfth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. How to use maps and other graphic representations to depict geographic problems.
        2. How to use geographic representations and tools to analyze, explain, and solve geographic problems.
    2. Standard 2: How to use mental maps to organize information about people, places and environments in a spatial context
      1. By the end of fourth grade the student knows and understands:
        1. The locations of places within the local community and in nearby communities.
        2. The location of major physical and human features in the United States and on Earth.
      2. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The distribution of major physical and human features at different scales (local to global).
    3. Standard 3: How to analyze the spatial organization of people, places, and environments on Earth's surface.
      1. By the end of fourth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The spatial elements of point, line, area, and volume, i.e., the student can use a map to identify physical and human features in terms of the four spatial elements (e.g., locations [point], transportation and communication routes [line], regions [area], lakes filled with water [volume].
        2. That places and features are distributed spatially across the Earth's surface i.e., the student is able to analyze the locations of places and suggest why particular locations are used for certain human activities.
      2. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. How to use the elements of space to describe spatial patterns.
        2. How to use spatial concepts to explain spatial structure
  2. Places and Regions
    1. Standard 4: The physical and human characteristics of places.
      1. By the end of fourth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The physical characteristics of places (e.g., landforms, bodies of water, soil, vegetation, and weather and climate).
        2. The human characteristics of places (e.g., population distributions, settlement patterns, languages, ethnicity, nationality, and religious beliefs).
        3. How physical and human processes together shape places.
      2. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. How different physical processes shape places.
        2. How different human groups alter places in distinctive ways.
        3. The role of technology in shaping the characteristics of places.
    2. Standard 5: That people create regions to interpret Earth's complexity
      1. By the end of fourth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The concept of a region as an area of Earth's surface with unifying geographic characteristics.
        2. The similarities and differences among regions.
        3. The ways in which regions change.
      2. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The elements and types of regions.
        2. How and why regions change.
        3. The connections among regions.
    3. Standard 6: How culture and experience influence people's perceptions of places and regions.
      1. By the end of fourth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. How to describe the student's own community and region from different perspectives.
        2. Ways in which different people perceive places and regions.
  3. Physical Systems
    1. Standard 7: The physical processes that shape the patterns of Earth's surface.
      1. By the end of fourth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The components of Earth's physical systems; the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere.
        2. How patterns (location, distribution, and association) of features on Earth's surface are shaped by physical processes.
        3. How Earth-Sun relations affect conditions on Earth.
      2. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. How physical processes shape patterns in the physical environment.
        2. How physical processes influence the formation and distribution of resources.
        3. How to predict the consequences of physical processes on Earth's surface.
      3. By the end of twelfth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The dynamics of the four basic components of Earth's physical systems: the atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere.
        2. The interaction of earth's physical systems.
        3. The spatial variation in the consequences of physical processes across Earth's surface.
    2. Standard 8: The characteristics and spatial distribution of ecosystems on Earth's surface.
      1. By the end of fourth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The components of ecosystems.
        2. The distribution and patterns of ecosystems.
        3. How humans interact with ecosystems.
      2. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The local and global patterns of ecosystems.
        2. How ecosystems work.
        3. How physical processes produce changes in ecosystems.
        4. How human activities influence changes in ecosystems.
      3. By the end of twelfth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The distribution and characteristics of ecosystems.
        2. The biodiversity and productivity of ecosystems.
        3. The importance of ecosystems in people's understanding of environmental issues.
  4. Human Systems
    1. Standard 9: The characteristics, distribution, and migration of human populations on Earth's surface.
      1. By the end of fourth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The spatial distribution of population.
        2. The characteristics of populations at different scales (local to global).
        3. The causes and effects of human migration.
      2. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The reasons for spatial variations in population distribution.
        2. The types and historical patterns of human migration.
        3. The effects of migration on the characteristics of places.
    2. Standard 10: The characteristics, distribution, and complexity of Earth's cultural mosaics.
      1. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The spatial distribution of culture at different scales (local to global).
        2. How to read elements of the landscape as a mirror of culture.
    3. Standard 11: The patterns and networks of economic interdependence on Earth's surface.
      1. By the end of fourth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The location and spatial distribution of economic activities.
        2. The factors that influence the location and spatial distribution of economic activities.
        3. The transportation and communication networks used in daily life.
      2. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. Ways to classify economic activity.
        2. The basis for global interdependence.
        3. Reasons for the spatial patterns of economic activities.
        4. How changes in technology, transportation, and communication affect the location of economic activities.
      3. By the end of twelfth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. How places of various size function as centers of economic activity.
    4. Standard 12: The processes, patterns, and functions of human settlement.
      1. By the end of fourth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The types and spatial patterns of settlement.
        2. The factors that affect where people settle.
        3. How spatial patterns of human settlement change.
        4. The spatial characteristics of cities.
      2. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The spatial patterns of settlement in different regions of the world.
  5. Environment and society
    1. Standard 14: How human actions modify the physical environment.
      1. By the end of fourth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. How people depend on the physical environment.
        2. How people modify the physical environment.
        3. That the physical environment can both accommodate and be endangered by human activities.
      2. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The consequences of human modification of the physical environment.
        2. How human modification of the physical environment in one place often lead to changes in other places.
        3. The role of technology in the human modification of the physical environment.
      3. By the end of twelfth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The role of technology in the capacity of the physical environment to accommodate human modification.
        2. The significance of the global impacts of human modification of the physical environment.
        3. How to apply appropriate models and information to understand environmental problems.
    2. Standard 15: How physical systems affect human systems.
      1. By the end of fourth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. How variations within the physical environment produce spatial patterns that affect human adaptation.
        2. The ways in which the physical environment provides opportunities for people.
        3. The ways in which the physical environment constrains human activities.
      2. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. Human responses to variations in physical systems.
        2. How the characteristics of different physical environments provide opportunities for or place constraints on human activities.
        3. How natural hazards affect human activities.
      3. By the end of twelfth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. How changes in the physical environment can diminish its capacity to support human activity.
        2. Strategies to respond to constraints places on human systems by the physical environment.
        3. How humans perceive and react natural hazards.
    3. Standard 16: The changes that occur in the meaning, use, distribution, and importance of resources.
      1. By the end of fourth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. The characteristics of renewable, nonrenewable, and flow resources.
        2. The spatial distribution of resources.
        3. The role of resources in daily life.
      2. By the end of twelfth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. How the spatial distribution of resources affects patterns of human settlement.
        2. How resource development and use change over time.
        3. The geographic results of policies and programs for resource use and management.
  6. The uses of geography
    1. Standard 17: How to apply geography to interpret the past.
      1. By the end of fourth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. How places and geographic contexts change over time.
        2. That people's perceptions of places and geographic contexts change over time.
        3. That geographic contexts influence people and events over time.
      2. By the end of eighth grade, the student knows and understands:
        1. How the spatial organization of a society changes over time.
        2. How geographic contexts have influenced events and conditions in the past.

Geography for Life, National Geography Education Standards, Geography Education Standards Project, National Geographic Research and Exploration, Washington, D.C., 1994.