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Quiz yourself on Map and Spatial SkillsGet your flashcardsBuild my revision planTrack my progress📸 Aerial Photographs and Satellite Images
Geography exams — especially at OCR B — sometimes provide aerial photographs or satellite images alongside or instead of a map extract. You need to be able to interpret what you see and link it to map evidence.
Two Types of Aerial Photograph
What to Look for in Aerial and Satellite Images
| What You See | What It Suggests |
|---|---|
| Dense, regular grid of streets with terraced housing | Older inner-city residential area, likely 19th-century development |
| Large, regularly spaced buildings with car parks | Industrial estate, retail park, or edge-of-city commercial area |
| Green fields with irregular shapes and hedgerows | Rural farmland — likely pastoral (animal) farming |
| Regular rectangular green fields with straight boundaries | Arable (crop) farming, likely mechanised agriculture |
| Blue/grey water body with white foam line | Coastline — useful for identifying erosion features like cliffs or beaches |
| Dense green canopy with irregular patches | Tropical rainforest or dense woodland |
| Brown/red land with sparse vegetation | Semi-arid or recently deforested area |
| Pale blue/grey urban sprawl with road networks | Urban area expanding into surrounding rural land (urban fringe) |
Linking Photograph to Map
Questions often ask you to identify which part of a map corresponds to a photograph, or to describe what a photograph shows using map terminology. The approach is:
- Identify distinctive features in the photograph: a river bend, a main road junction, a large building, a reservoir
- Find the same features on the map using the OS symbols
- Give the grid reference of the matching area on the map
- Describe any differences between what the photograph and the map show (a photograph may show recent development that postdates the map)
Satellite imagery (e.g., from Google Earth) is particularly useful for showing change over time — comparing images from different years can reveal deforestation, urban growth, coastal erosion, and flood extent. Exam questions may show two satellite images from different years and ask you to describe the change.
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