KS2 Geography: Settlements. Changing land use.
EVA: Get set for an exciting journey.
I’ll be your guide, ‘Earth’s Virtual Assistant’. But you can call me E.V.A.
Your mission is to discover how humans influence land use and why this is always changing. Land use is what an area of land is used for. It can be…
[ZOOM OUT OF MISSION HQ TO FOOTAGE ILLUSTRATING LAND USE]
Residential – places where people live, including houses or flats.
Commercial – these are places where people sell items and include shops and supermarkets.
Agricultural – this is land that is used for farming.
Industrial – which includes factories and warehouses.
Recreational – which is land used for leisure: for example, sports fields, playgrounds and public parks.
And Transport – like railways, roads and airports, which use the land to connect places together.
In the UK about six tenths of the land is used for agriculture. Less than one tenth is residential – the built-up areas where people live.
But land use – the things humans use land for – is always changing. It’s time to dig deeper!
[SPINNING GLOBE ZOOMS INTO THE UK]
In the UK the amount of land used for urban areas – such as towns and cities – is increasing. The land used for agriculture in the countryside is decreasing. But this change of use is happening quite slowly.
New uses for agricultural land include transport services, housing and recreational uses, such as golf courses.
A key change in urban land use is how settlements grow over time. A village may slowly grow to become a town; a town may grow to become a city – and there are many things that influence that growth.
Better job opportunities, wanting to live closer to your place of work, and easy access to services like healthcare, attract people from smaller settlements to larger ones.
The growth of urban areas can lead to pollution, and pollution plays a part in climate change.
[ON-SCREEN GRAPHICS – CLIMATE CHANGE]
Climate change is the long-term rise in Earth’s average temperatures, which is making the weather more extreme and unpredictable.
For this reason it’s important that any change in land use is sustainable.
[ON-SCREEN GRAPHICS – SUSTAINABILITY]
Sustainability means doing something that will cause little or no damage to the environment and can be carried on for a long period of time.
For example, the land used for industrial purposes is declining in the UK. A disused industrial area might be redeveloped for leisure purposes or housing, to avoid urban areas spreading further.
Or land might be developed for renewable energy sources – such as wind farms to generate electricity.
[ON-SCREEN GRAPHICS – RENEWABLE ENERGY]
Renewable energy is a natural source of energy that can be used again and again. It’s much less harmful to the environment than burning fossil fuels, like oil and gas.
Other changes in land use that can help slow the effects of climate change include planting more woodlands and ‘rewilding’.
[ON-SCREEN GRAPHICS – REWILDING]
Rewilding means to return land and oceans to a more natural – or wilder – state. This can mean doing nothing and letting nature take over. Or it could be as part of an organised scheme, such as planting wild flowers or trees.
There may be some negative impacts from any change of land use. Wind farms can harm birds and other wildlife, and they can impact some people who live close to them, who feel they ruin the landscape.
[DEBRIEF – CHANGES IN LAND USE]
1: Changes in land use are happening all the time. 2: Most changes happen slowly. 3: Any new developments need careful consideration to ensure they are sustainable, so that the positives outweigh the negatives.
[ZOOM OUT TO MISSION HQ]
Congratulations! We’ve come to the end of our journey exploring how humans influence land use and why this is always changing. Mission complete!
