THE 6 CONTINENTAL REGIONS (NATURAL AND SOCIAL) - GEOGRAPHY - 2024

The continental regions are large areas of land that stand out from others that are submerged by the oceans. The word "continent" comes from the Latin continent, which means "to keep together."

These areas not covered by water occupy only 29% of the entire earth's surface, which is equivalent to approximately 148 million square kilometers, mostly concentrated in the northern hemisphere.

Within the term continent are also included the islands located a short distance from the coasts or linked to the continental plates.

The 6 continental regions

For your better study and understanding, the continental surface is divided according to historical or cultural criteria.

In principle, the most generalized division is the one that takes place in sectors called continents that are: America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania (also called Australia or Australasia) and Antarctica.

This and all the divisions are arbitrary, since, for example, Asia and Europe are part of the same tectonic plate (called by many Eurasia); however the most universally used convention is the one that divides it as two different continents.

In this same way, there are those who see America as a single continent and others who conceive it as three: North America, Central America and South America.

Taking as valid the division into six continents mentioned recently, these would be their locations or limits:

Africa

From the south, it starts at the Cape of Good Hope in present-day South Africa and extends north to the Strait of Gibraltar - which separates it from Europe - and the Suez Canal - which separates it from Asia.

Europe

It is separated from Africa, to the south, by the Mediterranean Sea, by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and to the north it ends in the Ural Mountains, the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, the Caucasus mountain range, the Strait of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. It is the continent with the smallest area.

Asia

It begins in the north in the Bering Strait and extends to the Indian Ocean in the south; the Pacific limits it to the east and the Ural Mountains to the west. It is the largest continent and also the most populated.

America

If taken as a single continent, it would be the second largest of all, after Asia. If it is taken as three subcontinents, its limits are: North America, from the Bering Strait in the north to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico; Central America to the Isthmus of Panama and South America to Cape Horn.

Oceania

It is the only insular continent, bounded by the Indian and Pacific Oceans, southeast of Asia. This continental model also includes Pacific islands such as New Guinea, New Zealand, and Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia.

Antarctica

It is the southernmost on earth. It is south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Antarctic Ocean.

Continental natural and social regions

Although the political-administrative division is the best known and universally used as a frame of reference for data collection, today the concept of “regions” includes less simplistic concepts that have to do with natural, as well as political and cultural characteristics. From this complexity, the natural and social continental regions emerge.

Natural regions

As their name indicates, they are classified according to the distribution and diversity of natural components, thus being able to exist multiple natural regions within the same continental region.

Some of the factors that are taken into account for this classification are:

• The climate (climatic regions): defined mainly by latitude, then there is a tropical climate near the Equator; intertropical climate between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, temperate climate between the line of the tropics and the polar circles, and polar climate at the poles.
• The relief (orographic regions): defined by altitude, they originate mountain ranges, plains, plateaus, hills, etc.
• Vegetation (phytogeographic regions): they take into account the type of plant species that predominate, generating areas such as scrublands, savannas, jungles, plains, chaparrals, etc.

Social regions

In them, aspects such as population and economic indicators and cultural aspects shared by its inhabitants are taken into account.

In this way, different divisions can be given by taking different indicators, such as:

• The population (urban / rural regions): depending on the number of inhabitants and the conditions in which they live from the point of view of existing housing and basic services.
• The predominant economic activity (agricultural, livestock, industrial, commercial, tourist regions, etc.).
• Economic development (developed, developing or underdeveloped regions): they are defined by multiple economic indicators, but basically by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that expresses the amount of money that the region produces for the production of goods and services during a specified period of time (usually one year). There may also be economic regions defined on the basis of trade agreements or exchanges between countries or provinces, such as the European Union, Mercosur or the Free Trade Agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada.
• Culture (cultural regions): they are created based on the cultural aspects that are common to them, such as language, folklore and traditions, religious beliefs, etc.

In conclusion, although the primary concept of continental regions has to do with large land surfaces and their division into continents, there are other types of more complex divisions that are influenced by multiple social, economic, cultural, historical and political factors.

References

1. The Geographic space. Recovered from contentsdigitales.ulp.edu.ar.
2. Natural region. Recovered from es.wikipedia.org.
3. IGGass, Peter J. Smith, and RCL Wilson (2002). Introduction to earth sciences. The Open University. Editorial Reverté. Sevilla Spain.
4. Aurelio Cebrian Abellan (1993). The regions of the world system. University of Murcia. P. 12.