17.3 Technology, Natural Resources & Human Impact on the Environment

Why This Topic Matters on the GED

The final three sub-items under G.b — G.b.3 Technology, G.b.4 Natural resources, and G.b.5 Human changes to the environment — form a tightly connected cluster on the real test. GED Social Studies stimulus items in this cluster are almost always a chart, graph, or short data set: a pie chart of a country's energy sources, a line graph of rising CO2 (carbon dioxide) and temperature, or a map of land use. You are tested on reading the data correctly and reasoning about cause-and-effect and geopolitical consequences — not on memorizing statistics. Because Geography is 15% of the exam, expect this specific cluster to generate roughly 2 of the ~35 scored items.

How Technology Reshapes Geography

Technology changes how societies use and are constrained by their physical environment. Key examples the GED draws on:

• Irrigation and agricultural technology. Ancient qanats and terracing let societies farm land that would otherwise be too dry or too steep. The 20th-century Green Revolution (roughly 1950s–1970s) introduced high-yield crop varieties, synthetic fertilizers, and modern irrigation across Asia and Latin America, dramatically increasing food production and reducing famine risk in previously food-insecure regions.
• Transportation technology. Canals cut travel time and reshape trade geography: the Suez Canal (opened 1869) let ships pass between Europe and Asia without sailing around Africa, and the Panama Canal (opened 1914) connected the Atlantic and Pacific without rounding South America. Both are frequently used as map-based GED stimuli about how a single engineering project changed global trade routes.
• Communication technology. Modern telecommunications and the internet reduce the friction of physical distance for information and financial transactions, a key driver of globalization discussed in the Economics chapters of this guide.

Natural Resources: Renewable vs. Nonrenewable

The uneven global distribution of nonrenewable resources is one of the single biggest drivers of modern geopolitics: a country with abundant oil (like Saudi Arabia) gains disproportionate global economic leverage relative to its population or land area, while resource-poor but population-rich countries must import energy, shaping trade relationships and foreign policy. This directly connects to the Economics domain's coverage of trade and global markets.

Human Changes to the Environment

This sub-item covers how human activity intentionally or unintentionally reshapes physical geography:

• Deforestation — clearing forest for agriculture, ranching, or logging (the Amazon rainforest is the standard example) reduces carbon absorption and biodiversity and can alter regional rainfall patterns.
• Urbanization — converting farmland and natural land into cities and suburbs, reducing agricultural capacity near population centers and increasing impervious surface (pavement), which increases flood risk.
• Dam construction — large dams like Egypt's Aswan High Dam or China's Three Gorges Dam provide electricity and flood control but trap natural sediment upstream, starving downstream farmland of the silt that once renewed it naturally (directly reversing the river-valley advantage covered earlier in this chapter) and displacing populations.
• Desertification — land degradation in dry regions (the African Sahel is the standard example) from a combination of drought, overgrazing, and deforestation, turning marginal farmland into desert.
• Climate change — a sustained, decades-long rise in global average temperature correlated with rising atmospheric CO2 levels from fossil fuel combustion. GED stimulus items frequently present two trend lines (CO2 concentration and average temperature) rising together and ask what conclusion the data supports.

Reading a Correlation Chart Correctly (the Recurring Exam Trap)

When a chart shows two lines rising together over a long period (e.g., CO2 and global temperature over 60 years), the GED wants you to distinguish between an overreaching claim and a well-supported one:

• Overreach: "This chart proves CO2 emissions are the only cause of all climate change" — too strong; a single chart cannot prove exclusivity.
• Underreach/wrong: "This chart shows no relationship between CO2 and temperature" — ignores the visible sustained correlation.
• Well-supported: "This chart supports a relationship between rising CO2 levels and rising global temperatures over this period" — matches exactly what the data shows, without overstating causation or ignoring the pattern.

Policy responses to these issues — such as the U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), which enforces the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, or international accords like the Paris Agreement — occasionally appear as answer choices, so know that environmental regulation is a government response to exactly these human-environment problems.

Common Traps

1. Picking the most dramatic answer over the best-supported one on correlation/causation charts — the correct choice matches the data's actual strength, not the scariest-sounding option.
2. Confusing renewable with unlimited. Renewable resources (timber, fish stocks, groundwater) can still be depleted if used faster than they regenerate — this links directly back to the sustainability concept in the previous section.
3. Forgetting the geopolitical angle. A question about oil or freshwater distribution is often really testing whether you understand that uneven resource distribution drives international relations and conflict, not just physical geography.

Exam Scenario

A pie chart shows a country's electricity sources: 45% coal, 30% natural gas, 15% nuclear, and 10% renewables. A question asks which conclusion is best supported. The strongest answer notes that the country relies heavily on nonrenewable fossil fuels (coal and natural gas together are 75%) — not that the country "has no renewable energy" (10% is not zero) and not that "nuclear power is the country's primary energy source" (it is third, not first).