Geography is the scientific study of the locational and spatial variation in both physical and human phenomena on Earth. The word derives from the Greek words γη or γεια ("Earth") and γραφειν ("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).

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.

Geography is much more than cartography, the study of maps, and is far beyond the study of 'capes and bays'.

As William Hughes - who taught the geography of the Holy Lands to divinity students at King's College London - put it in an address in 1863:

"Mere place names are not geography. To know by heart a whole gazeteer full of them would not, in itself, constitute anyone a geographer. Geography has higher aims than this: it seeks to classify phenomena (alike of the natural and of the political world insofar as it treats of the latter) to compare, to generalise, to ascend from effects to causes and in doing so to trace out the great laws of nature and to mark their influence upon man. In a word, geography is a science, a thing not of mere names, but of argument and reason, of cause and effect."

See main article: History of geography

The Greeks are the first known culture to actively explore geography as a science and philosophy. Mapping by the Romans as they explored new lands added new techniques. During the Middle Ages, Arabs such as Idrisi, Ibn Batutta, and Ibn Khaldun maintained the Greek and Roman techniques and developed new ones.

Following the journeys of Marco Polo, interest in geography spread throughout Europe. The great voyages of exploration in 16th and 17th centuries revived a desire for both accurate geographic detail, and more solid theoretical foundations. This period is also known as Great Geographical Discoveries. By the 18th century, geography had become recognized as a discrete discipline and became part of a typical university curriculum in Europe (especially Paris and Berlin).

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, as well as economics, sociology and demographics. In the West during the 20th century, the discipline of geography went through four major phases: environmental determinism, regional geography, the quantitative revolution, and critical geography.

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:

• Systematic - Groups geographical knowledge into categories that can be explored globally
• Regional - Examines systematic relationships between categories for a specific region or location on the planet.
• Descriptive - Simply specifies the locations of features and populations.
• Analytical - Asks why we find features and populations in a specific geographic area.

This branch focuses on Geography as an Earth science (and is somtimes called Earth Sytem 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.

The branches of Physical Geography are:

• Geomorphology
• Hydrology
• Glaciology
• Biogeography
• Climatology
• Pedology
• Costal/ Marine studies
• Geodesy
• Palaeogeography
• Environmental geography and management

Sometimes Oceanography is included as a branch within physical geography, but is now considered a separate subject in its own right.

Related Topics: atmosphere -- archipelago -- continent -- desert -- island -- landform -- ocean -- sea -- river -- lake -- ecology -- climatology -- soil -- geomorphology -- biogeography -- Timeline of geography, paleontology -- palaeogeography -- hydrology -- glaciology --pedology -- coastal science -- geostatistics -- environmental science-- geodesy -- oceanography

Human geography, including economic, political and cultural 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.

Human Geography can be divided into the following broad categories:

• Economic geography
• Political geographyor Geopolitics#
• Social geography
• Urban geography
• cultural geography
• Feminist geography
• Strategic geography
• Population geography or Demography#
• Behavioral geography
• Developmental geography
• Historical geography
• Regional science
• Military geography

1. N.B. Distinction between these fields of study have become increasingly blurred over time and many consider them to be the same subject.

Related Topics: Countries of the world -- country -- nation -- state -- personal union -- province -- county -- city -- municipality -- central_place_theory --

During the time of environmental determinism, geography was defined not as the study of spatial relationships, but as the study of how humans and the natural environment interact. Though environmental determinism has died out, there remains a strong tradition of geographers addressing the relationships between people and nature. There are two main subfields of socio-environmental geography:

• cultural and political ecology (CAPE) and
• risk-hazards research.

Cultural ecology grew out of the work of Carl Sauer in geography and a similar school of thought in anthropology. It examined how human societies adapt themselves to the natural environment. Sustainability science has been one important outgrowth of this tradition. Political ecology arose when some geographers used aspects of critical geography to look at relations of power and how they affect people's use of the environment. For example, an influential study by Michael Watts argued that famines in the Sahel are caused by the changes in the region's political and economic system as a result of colonialism and the spread of capitalism..

Research on hazards began with the work of geographer Gilbert F. White, who sought to understand why people live in disaster-prone floodplains. Since then, the hazards field has expanded to become a multidisciplinary field examining both natural hazards (such as earthquakes) and technological hazards (such as nuclear reactor meltdowns). Geographers studying hazards are interested in both the dynamics of the hazard event and how people and societies deal with it.

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.

What's in a name? Historical geography and the Berkeley School

"Historical Geography" can indeed refer to the reciprocal 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 1950s crisis in Geography which nearly destroyed it as an academic discipline.

The science behind Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

• Cartography studies the representation of the Earth's surface with abstract symbols. It can be said, without much controversy, that cartography is the seed from which the larger field of Geography grew. Most geographers will cite a childhood fascination with maps as an early sign they would end up in the field. Although other subdisciplines of geography rely on maps for presenting their analyses, the actual making of maps is abstract enough to be regarded separately.

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.

• Geographic Information Systems deals with the storage of information about the Earth for automatic retrieval by a computer, in an accurate manner appropriate to the information's purpose. In addition to all of the other subdisciplines of geography, GIS specialists must understand computer science and database systems. GIS has so revolutionized the field of cartography that nearly all mapmaking is now done with the assistance of some form of GIS software.

• Geographic quantitative methods deal with numerical methods peculiar to (or at least most commonly found in) geography. In addition to spatial analyses, you are likely to find things like cluster analysis, discriminant analysis, and non-parametric statistical tests in geographic studies.

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, transport and communication, human geography, population distribution, landscape ecology, and environmental quality.

• Human geography
• List of geography topics
• Geographical terms
• List of countries
• Geography reference tables
• Geopolitics
• Geographic magazines
• National Geographic Society
• National Geographic Bee

• PopulationData.net
• Using Literature To Teach Geography in High Schools. ERIC Digest.
• Teaching Geography at School and Home. ERIC Digest.
• The National Geography Content Standards. ERIC Digest.
• Geo-Guide extensive list of academic resources on geography and earth science
• Geopium: Geopolitics of Illicit Drugs in Asia
• National Geographic Online
• Royal Geographical Society
• Royal Canadian Geographical Society
• Canadian Geographic
• Hypergeo : Geographical Encyclopedia