Application Development Software

I've taken a look at the Developer Guide and the Javadoc Reference but couldn't find an answer to my question.

Is there a way to either:

- Read Content Parent assets, but at a specific level (depth) only, in order to output them (e.g. in an HTML option list) or
- When reading Content Parent Assets are you able to identify what level (depth) an item is, in order to only output a specific level

E.g. if I have a 'Location' taxonomy of Region > Country > State and define this into a Content Parent structure of the same to create assets of: Asia Pacific > Australia > NSW.... how can I read the Content Parent assets and output a list of only Countries?

Not sure on tag or API... but assume there is some way?

Cheers