Where did the change begin?
Labs / Geography
Contour Map Builder
Drag on the shaded terrain to raise, lower, or smooth hills and hollows, and watch the contour map beside it redraw as the surface is sliced at even heights. Move the amber A and B endpoints to swing the cutting line and read the live cross-section profile below. Contours crowd together where the land is steep and open up where it is gentle.
Labs / Geography / Contour Map Builder
Contour Map Builder
Drag on the shaded terrain to raise, lower, or smooth hills and hollows, and watch the contour map beside it redraw as the surface is sliced at even heights. Move the amber A and B endpoints to swing the cutting line and read the live cross-section profile below. Contours crowd together where the land is steep and open up where it is gentle.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Geography explains how places, people, and Earth systems affect one another. This model lets you change one factor and watch its effects spread across space.
Explore
Try the model
elev —slope —landform —
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Raise a single peak. Why do its contour lines form closed loops that shrink toward the top?
- Where the contour lines bunch tightly together, what does the cross-section profile do — and what does that tell you about the slope?
- Use the Lower tool to scoop out a basin. How can you tell a depression from a hill on the flat contour map alone?
- Halve the contour interval. Do more lines mean the land got steeper, or just that you are slicing it more finely?
- Sculpt two peaks with a dip between them, then park the cursor in the gap. Can you make the landform readout say “Saddle”?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Connect the pattern to place: identify where the change begins, where its effects appear, and which process links those locations.
Check
Before you leave
What spatial pattern appeared?
Which process connects the cause and effect?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.