OCR Geography A Level Dryland Landscapes: Revision Notes

Dryland Landscapes is the OCR A-Level Geography (H481) unit on desert and semi-arid landscapes, and how their landforms form, evolve and are changed by people. It is one of three landscape options examined in Section A of Paper 1, and students answer on the one their school teaches. The specification requires case studies of one mid-latitude desert and one low-latitude desert, plus one dryland landscape affected by water supply issues and one affected by economic activity.

The whole of Dryland Landscapes for OCR A-Level Geography (H481), built around the four enquiry questions.

1. How can dryland landscapes be viewed as systems?

2. How are landforms of mid and low latitude deserts developed?

3. How do dryland landforms evolve over time as climate changes?

4. How does human activity cause change within dryland landscape systems?

Every specification bullet point is covered, clearly identified, and in one download. No more searching across your paper files, teacher PowerPoints, OneNote and Google Classroom assignments, or generic free notes you have found online.

Every landform in the specification is covered in the way the exam asks for it: what to look for in a photograph, and the formation sequence including the flows of energy and material, what controls it, and a real example. That is what the 8-mark "Explain" questions need.

At the end of each section there are:

Examiner's Warnings — concise summaries of the common mistakes identified in the OCR Examiner's Reports, so that you do not make the same ones and do not need to go and read them yourself.

Past exam paper questions, and where to find them — every question OCR has already set on each topic, so that you know how this material is tested in the exam.

Potential Future Questions — written with the same command words and the same wording structure as the OCR questions, so that you can see what is likely to come up and prepare for it.

Revision Recall — retrieval practice questions, a technique educational research has repeatedly shown to produce significant gains in student outcomes. These support active revision of the content rather than rereading it.

Comprehensive case study coverage

Not all schools teach the same Dryland Landscapes case studies, and the two editions of the textbook do not either. This download contains:

The Colorado Plateau, for a mid-latitude desert landscape.

The Namib and the Kalahari, for low-latitude desert landscapes — the Namib in the second edition of the textbook, the Kalahari in the third.

The Colorado Basin, for water supply issues within dryland landscape systems.

The desert in southeast Utah, for economic activity within dryland landscape systems, and identical in both editions.

Five case studies, each one labelled, so that you revise the ones your school teaches.

What if my school teaches a different case study? Do email jono@geographystudio.co.uk and say which one. He will reply, and it helps him to know which case study to write next.

The Big Picture

Most students learn case studies as a set of facts, then find that the exam does not ask for facts. It asks for an argument.

Every case study closes with a Big Picture: the story that case study tells, and the different arguments it can be used to build.

Paper 1 has two halves. Section B is Earth's Life Support Systems, which every OCR student sits, and that unit is free on this site. If you have not downloaded it yet, do take that one first. It is in the same format, with the same features, and it will show you exactly how these notes work before you spend anything.

Section A is your landscape system, and which one you study depends on your school. If your school teaches Dryland Landscapes, this is the other half of the paper that you need.