The Physiographic Influence Upon the Distribution of Population in Maryland and Pennsylvania

A. K. LOBECK INTRODUCTION.-For the past two or three years the author of this paper has been engaged in classifying the minor administrative divisions of the United States (that is, townships, etc.) on the basis of physiographic provinces., in the interest of the National ResearchCouncil. The ultimate purpose is to have as many statistics as possible coming from the Census Bureau given by these administrative divisions rather than by counties as at present. Opportunity would then be afforded to correlate more closely the statistics and the physiography and to study the effect of the physiographic setting upon many phases of human interest. At present, population figures alone are available in these smaller units. It is with the purpose of experimenting with a problem of the type suggested that some of these figures for the last two decades in Maryland and Pennsylvania were placed in their physiographic background and the accompanying deductions made. The conclusion we draw from this type of study is that the value of the study is lessened if the figures for too large an area are grouped for the purpose of coming to some generalization. If, for example, we had taken Pennsylvania and Maryland as one unit instead of two, and had then drawn conclusions regarding the movement of population in each physiographic province included therein, we should have failed to bring out certain distinctions between the two states, as for instance the difference between the Pennsylvania and Maryland piedmont areas, due to the industrial and urban character of the former and the rural character of the latter. We would in consequence recommend studies which dealt with limited areas of rather unified character, with the intent of delimiting or even of discovering such units within the different physiographic provinces. In other words, we feel that the wide range of conditions even within a physiographic province invalidates or at least reduces the value of any generalization which may be arrived at by considering the province as a whole. That is to say, the contrasts within a province are often greater, as far as many statistics

Census · Generalization · Geography · Mathematics education · Physiographic province · Population · Sociology · Unit (ring theory) · Demography · Environmental and Air Quality Management · Geology · Historical Geography and Cartography · Mathematics · Scientific Research and Discoveries

• A Century of Physical Geography Research in the Annals

  Richard Aspinall•Annals of the Association of…•2010

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