Geography
Geography is the study of the locational and spatial variation in both physical and human phenomena on Earth. The word derives from the Greek words hê gê ("the Earth") and graphein ("to write", as in "to describe").Geography is also the title of various historical books on this subject, notably the Geographia by Klaudios Ptolemaios (2nd century).
Geography is much more than cartography, the study of maps. It not only investigates what is where on the Earth, but also why it's there and not somewhere else, sometimes referred to as "location in space". It studies this whether the cause is natural or human. It also studies the consequences of those differences.
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2 Methods 3 Branches 4 Geographic Techniques 5 Related Fields 6 See also |
The Greekss are the first known culture to actively explore geography as a science and philosophy, with major contributors including Thales of Miletus, Herodotus, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Aristotle, Dicaearchus of Messana, Strabo, and Ptolemy. Mapping by the Romanss as they explored new lands added new techniques.
During the Middle Ages, Arabs such as Idrisi, Ibn Battuta, and Ibn Khaldun built on and maintained the Greek and Roman learnings. Following the journeys of Marco Polo, interest in geography spread throughout Europe. During the Renaissance and into the 16th and 17th centuries the great voyages of exploration revived a desire for solid theoretical foundations and accurate detail. The Geographia Generalis by Bernhardus Varenius and Gerardus Mercator's world map are prime examples.
By the 18th century, geography had become recognized as a discrete discipline and became part of a typical university curriculum. Over the past two centuries the quantity of knowledge and the number of tools has exploded. There are strong links between geography and the sciences of geology and botany.
Spatial interrelationships are key to this synoptic science, and it uses maps as a key tool. Classical cartography has been joined by the more modern approach to geographical analysis, computer-based geographic information systems (GIS).
Geographers use four interrelated approaches:
This branch focuses on Geography as an Earth science, making use of biology to understand global flora and fauna patterns, and mathematics and physics to understand the motion of the earth and relationship with other bodies in the solar system. It also includes landscape ecology and environmental geography.
atmosphere -- archipelago -- continent -- desert -- island -- landform -- ocean -- sea -- river -- ecology -- climate -- soil -- geomorphology -- biogeography - Timeline of geography, paleontology
The human, or political/cultural, branch of geography - also called anthropogeography focuses on the social science, non-physical aspects of the way the world is arranged. It examines how humans adapt themselves to the land and to other people, and in macroscopic transformations they enact on the world. It can be divided into the following broad categories: economic geography, political geography (including geopolitics), social geography (including urban geography), feminist geography , environmentalism, and military geography.
Countries of the world -- country -- nation -- state -- union -- province -- county -- city -- municipality
This branch seeks to determine how cultural features of the multifarious societies across the planet evolved and came into being. Study of the landscape is one of many key foci in this field - much can be deduced about earlier societies from their impact on their local environment and surroundings.
"Historical Geography" can indeed refer to the recipriocal effects of geography and history on each other. But in the United States, it has a more specialized meaning: This is the name given by Carl Ortwin Sauer of The University of California, Berkeley to his program of reorganizing cultural geography (some say all geography) along regional lines, beginning in the first decades of the 20th Century.
To Sauer, a landscape and the cultures in it could only be understood if all of its influences through history were taken into account: Physical, cultural, economic, political, environmental. Sauer stressed regional specialization as the only means of gaining expertise on regions of the world.
Sauer's philosophy was the principal shaper of American geographic thought in the mid-20th century. Regional specialists remain in academic geography departments to this day. But many geographers feel that it harmed the discipline in the long run: Too much effort was spent on data collection and classification, and too little on analysis and explanation. Studies became more and more area specific as later geographers struggled to find places to make names for themselves. This probably led in turn to the 1950's crisis in Geography which nearly destroyed it as an academic discpline.
Urban planning and regional planning use the science of geography to assist in determining how to develop (or not develop) the land to meet particular criteria, such as safety, beauty, economic opportunities, the preservation of the built or natural heritage, etcetera. The planning of towns, cities and rural areas may be seen as applied geography although it also draws heavily upon the arts, the sciences and lessons of history. Some of the issues facing planning are considered briefly under the headings of rural exodus, urban exodus and Smart Growth.
In the 1950s the regional science movement arose, led by Walter Isard to provide a more quantitative and analytical base to geographical questions, in contrast to the more qualitative tendencies of traditional geography programs. Regional Science comprises the body of knowledge in which the spatial dimension plays a fundamental role, such as regional economics, resource management, location theory, urban and regional planning, transportation and communication, human geography, population distribution, landscape ecology and environmental quality.
History of Geography
Methods
Branches
Physical geography
Human geography
Historical geography
What's in a name? Historical Geography and the Berkeley School
Geographic Techniques
Cartography has grown from a collection of drafting techniques into an actual science. Cartographers must learn cognitive psychology and ergonomics] to understand which symbols convey information about the Earth most effectively, and [behavioral psychology] to induce the readers of their maps to act on the information. They must learn geodesy and fairly advanced mathematics to understand how the shape of the Earth affects the distortion of map symbols projected onto a flat surface for viewing.Related Fields
Urban and Regional Planning
Regional Science
See also
List of countries
simple:Geography
