Australian and Oceania

European colonization of the region began in...

Australia (when the British needed a remote penal colony to which convicts could be exiled.)

Most Australians reflect the continent's more recent..

European-dominated migration history, but even these patterns have become more complex as a rising tide of Asian cultures becomes important.

Three major landform regions dominate Australia's physical geography:

The Western Plateau, Interior Lowland Basins, and forested and mountainous country near Australian's Pacific coast

European colonizers came into conflict with the Aborigines and were...

in most cases simply expelled from their lands. Some places, notable Tasmania, they were hunted and killed.

Most of the islands of Polynesia and Micronesia are truly..

oceanic and are dotted with extensive atoll systems.

Australian is commonly associated with its vast and arid Outback, a sparsely settled land of sweeping distances, scrubby vegetation, and unusual animal it is...

one of the world's most urbanized societies.

Much of Melanesia and Polynesia is part of the...

seismically active Pacific Basin.

Early 1800s Hawaii limited US and European claims to their islands. By

1898, US forces were strong enough to overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy and annexed the islands to the US.

For thousands of years, Australia's _____ dominated the cultural geography of the continent.

Aborigines

New Zealand is also a wealthy country, but it is somewhat less well of than ______.

Australia

The region's oldest independent states are...

Australia and New Zealand, and both 20th-century creations that are only now considering whether they want to complete their formal political separation from the British Crown.

______ is the least-develope and poorest part of Oceania because these countries have benefited less form tourism and from subsidies from wealthy colonial and ex-colonial powers.

Melanesia

The large islands of _____ and _____ were settle much earlier than most islands.

New Guinea, Australia

Around 40,000 years ago, the ancestors of today's native Australian populations were making their way out of ...

Southeast Asia and into Australia (likely using some kind of watercraft) .

New Zealand ratified the Kyoto agreement and committed itself to a 5% reduction over its 1990 baseline; however,

a booming economy resulted in a 50% increase of emissions over the past several decades. (largest problem is livestock)

Although French Polynesian residents have voted to remain a colony,

a large minority of the population opposes French control and demand independence.

The introduction of exotic (nonnative) plants and animals has cause problems for...

endemic (native) species throughout the Pacific region.

In most cases, the European attitude toward the Aboriginal population was..

even more discriminatory than it was toward native people to the Americas.

25% of Australia's people are now...

foreign born, reflecting the country's global popularity as a migration destination.

In New Zealand, mountain glaciers are melting away, while Australia suffered from...

frequent drought and devastating wildfires.

Indigenous peoples in both Australia and New Zealand have used the political process to...

gain more control over land and resources in their two countries.

In the 1970s, Britain and Australia began...

giving up their colonial empires in the Pacific.

To survive, Aborigines developed...

great adaptive skills, often subsisting in harsh environments that Europeans avoided.

Although Australia became a commonwealth in 1901,

it still acknowledges the British Crown as the symbolic head of its government.

Throughout Micronesia and Polynesia, economic conditions depend on both...

local subsistence economies or economic linkages to the wider world beyond.

New Zealand has been transformed into one of the most _____ of the world.

market-oriented

Today, Australia is one of the world's _____ superpowers.

mining

Among the smaller islands of Melanesia and Micronesia, _______ dominate New Caledonia and Nauru.

mining economies

Australia was the only industrial country besides the US to..

not ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

The Australian government has recently established a number of Aboriginal reserves,

particularly in the Northern Territory, and expanded Aboriginal control over sacred national parklands such as Uluru.

Main environmental issues:

sea level rise, deforestation, invasive species, (extensive mining operations)

Rising sea levels are flooding...

several low-lying island nations, forcing residents to migrate to higher land.

Deforestation is a major environmental threat across the region (for logging), which in turn often leads to...

soil erosion.

One way of life in Oceania is oriented around subsistence-based economies,

such as shifting cultivation or fishing.

Much of Australia's past economic wealth has been built on...

the cheap extraction and export of abundant raw materials.

A big problem for the national government of Papua New Guinea has been...

the rebellion of Bougainville (which has large reserves of copper and other minerals).

The US has recently turned over most of it Micronesian territories...

to local government, while still holding a large influence in the area.

Other island groups have been completely transformed by ______.

tourism

Major environmental hazards to the Oceanic population include:

volcanic eruptions, major earthquakes, and tsunamis

New Zealand owes its geologic origins to..

volcanic mountain-building that produced two rugged and spectacular island in the South Pacific.