[transcribed 2021-06-02]

**In the activity, you learned about cultural hearths, or the foundations of
major cultures. Modern societies have spread throughout the globe for a number
of reasons.**

**How have climate, tectonic activity, and/or settlement and migration patterns
resulted in specific physical and human characteristics of different locations?
Pick two different global locations with different physical and human
characteristics to support your answer.**

The climate and local plants of a location often affects what kind of
agriculture (if any at all!) happens there. For example, you wouldn’t farm
wheat or canola in a rainforest, and you wouldn’t grow oranges in a tundra.

Nearby locations can affect another place, too, especially if there’s a good
method of transport, such as a river or other body of water for boats. When
people who live in different locations trade with each other, they can use the
traded goods to help their area grow and change.

*TODO: Example locations!*

**An ecosystem is a community of living things together with their environment.
The organisms and environment within an ecosystem share complex connections.
Using your knowledge of ecosystems, answer the following questions:**

 1. **Classify an ecosystem in your home state.**

    New Brunswick is an eastern province in Canada. It’s made of mostly smooth
    land and forest, though there’s some hills (with an elevation of roughly
    700m[1]). Like most of Atlantic Canada, it’s inhabited by animals such as
    moose, beavers, and all those other animals that make you think of Canada.
    As it’s fairly close to water, there’s many fish in the surrounding
    Atlantic Ocean.

[1] That’s probably super low.  [<- NB: Pages comment.]

 2. **Classify an ecosystem in a foreign country.**

    Ireland[2] is a western island in the northern Atlantic ocean. The climate
    there is considered oceanic, which means its (average) temperatures
    throughout the year vary fairly little. Because of the narrow temperatures,
    there are many kinds of plants that grow there. There’s not much forest in
    Ireland, though – only about 10% of the island is covered in trees.


[2] I spent roughly 45 minutes picking a country, which isn’t as long as it
    felt.. https://gist.github.com/liam4/470a32f40c51799a91dfc66b5b22dd6a
    [NB: Pages comment. Gist embedded at end of this file.]

 3. **How have factors such as soil, climate, and animal and plant life
    affected the global distribution of ecosystems? How have these factors
    influenced and affected the formation of ecosystems?**

    Animal life depends on the lives of local plants as well as the climate of
    the place. Plant life depends on the soil and climate nearby. For example,
    since the climate and soil depends greatly on how and where the ecosystem
    was formed, a rocky area where roots can’t grow as well isn’t going to have
    as tall trees, which might have an effect on what animals the area would
    now be suitable for.


 4. **How has human-environment interaction affected ecosystems? Support your
    answer with a specific example.**

    *Everything* can be affected by how humans interact with the area – people
    can change what type of soil plants have to grow on, either directly
    through tilling the ground, or indirectly by polluting the ground; people
    can start new plants growing; remove plants that are already living there;
    hunt or get rid of the homes of animals...

---

(from gist) pick-a-country.js:
    Picks a country for you to study. (Actually, three.)

fetch('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_and_their_capitals_in_native_languages')
  .then(res => res.text())
  .then(resText => (new DOMParser()).parseFromString(resText, 'text/html'))
  .then(doc => (
    Array.from(doc.getElementsByClassName('wikitable'))
      .map(tbl => tbl.querySelectorAll('tr'))
      .reduce((f, tf) => f.concat(Array.from(tf)), [])
      .map(r => r.children[0])
      .map(t => t.innerText)
  ))
  .then(countries => {
    const picked = []
    for (i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
      picked.push(countries[Math.floor(Math.random() * countries.length)])
    }
    return picked
  })
  .then(picked => {
    console.log(picked)
  })