How to read a topographic map
1 min 22 s. The words are spoken and shown in the picture; the player can also show them as subtitles.
For the older Earth Science Regents, which used the 2011 Reference Tables. The Earth and Space Sciences Regents asks about this less often.
What Dr. Mars says (the words of the video)
How do you read a topographic map? Come with me up this hill.
Here are lines at twenty, forty, sixty and eighty meters.
A contour line connects every point at the same height.
Seen from above, each height goes all the way around the hill: a closed loop.
Every line he crosses means twenty meters higher or lower.
His path on the map is the orange dashed line.
Lines close together mean a steep slope.
Lines far apart mean a gentle slope.
The top of the hill is inside the smallest loop.
The contour interval, the height between two neighboring lines, is twenty meters.
Check yourself! On this map, where is the slope steepest: at A, or at B?
Think about how close the lines are.
Answer: A! The lines are close together there.
That is the steep side Dr. Mars climbed.
Dr. Mars. Free practice for the New York Earth and Space Sciences Regents.