Geography comes from the Greek words geo (Earth) and graphia (to write). It examines the physical features of the Earth, its atmosphere, the human landscape, and the spatial relationships between them. Geographers seek to identify, explain, and predict human and physical patterns across space to understand how the spaces in between are connected. In this unit, we introduce the discipline of geography and the importance of the spatial perspective. We investigate the different types of locations and regions, the use of maps, and the role of technology. We also introduce the components of physical and human geography that we will examine across the world's regions.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 3 hours.
Geography is a broad discipline that focuses on spatial relationships and the interaction between humans and their physical environment. Geographers use the word spatial to describe their approach; some even refer to geography as a spatial science. However, the words spatial and geographic have different meanings, even though some use them interchangeably.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines spatial as relating to the "position, size, and area of things" and geographic as relating to "geography, or to the geography of a particular area or place". "Spatial" is the broader of the two terms and includes the concept of "geographic".
Remember that geography refers to Earth's human landscape and its physical features. Although the discipline of geography often focuses on particular locations, it also focuses on the broader context – the spatial relationships between locations. At the 1969 International Geographical Union's Commission on Qualitative Methods, Waldo Tobler (1913–2018), an American geographer, observed that "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things". This idea, known as Tobler's First Law of Geography, is fundamental to spatial relationships.
Read this text to understand the principles of geography as a field of study. In the next section, we explore how we use maps, visual representations of location, and spatial relationships, as tools to study the world geographically and spatially.
Maps divide the world into regions that can be smaller or larger, depending on the map, its purpose, and its creator. The regions vary according to the characteristics we use to define them. The United Nations Statistical Commission divided the world into continental regions, which they have subdivided further into subregions as shown on their website, Countries or Areas/Geographical Regions. Their goal was to achieve greater homogeneity within each subregion according to population size, demographic circumstances, and the accuracy of demographic statistics. While we will use fewer regions than the United Nations has identified in this course, there are similarities that we will explore later.
You should be able to identify and place all of the regions of the world listed on this map.
Before we examine the map we will work from, we need context for this regional approach and a framework for how to explore the world in one course.
This section presents a framework that does the following:
Watch this video for an overview of geography. The presenter introduces geography through the five themes of location, place, region, movement, and human-environment interaction. We will study many different concepts to understand the world from a spatial perspective. You will see that identifying the patterns that connect regions is an important element of this course.
What roles do maps play in geography? Maps are geographical abstractions of the environment – they are graphic representations of spatial forms and the relationships between them. We often think of maps as displays on a screen or on paper. We use them to navigate, explore, communicate information, solve problems, and organize our ideas. They are an efficient way to share data that occurs in two- and three-dimensional space. We call the study of maps "cartography" or the science of maps.
Cartography includes the following activities and anything else that focuses on the presentation and use of maps.
Maps are fundamental to the study of geography. Geographers use existing maps and create new ones to explore places and phenomena. We can use relative or absolute location to map a location. Two major challenges include determining how to project the roughly spherical Earth onto a two-dimensional map and fitting the Earth onto a map that is a size we can use.
While we will not go into all of the details of the projection process in this course, we learn to appreciate that distortion is inherent in mapmaking. We also need to understand scale when selecting a map. Read this introduction to the concepts of latitude and longitude, relative versus absolute location, and scale.
Maps do not always include a scale or a coordinate system, such as latitude and longitude. It depends on what type of map it is. For example, while general reference maps and topographic maps usually include the scale of the map and the reference system, thematic maps do not. Many maps include a legend to help interpret the symbols on the map. There may also be a directional indicator, such as a compass rose.
These elements all help us:
In the previous video, the speaker said we use GIS to make thematic maps. However, humans have made detailed thematic maps by hand or with software that is not a GIS long before GIS became mainstream during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today, GIS allows us to make these maps more quickly. Access to accurate data has increased the use of maps and facilitated the mapmaking process. These three thematic maps were created by hand before the advent of GIS.
Geographers use many tools to help them study places and the relationships between them. Many disciplines also use these tools. For example, cell phones use the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) for location information to help us navigate. Remotely sensed imagery (captured by satellites, aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones) provides information about land use and cover to help us mitigate hazards. Much of this imagery is captured over time, which gives us a valuable temporal perspective on changes in the landscape.
Geographers use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to layer data, including remotely-sensed imagery and GNSS locations. Maps are the most common mode of analysis and presentation, which is what distinguishes GIS from other modes of information science. Your ability to analyze data spatially provides a powerful perspective: whether you study a map printed on paper or examine its multiple geographic layers on a computer.
The author in our previous reading referred to GIS as Geographic Information Systems and Geographic Information Science. Let's look at the difference between the two.
Geographic Information Systems integrate hardware, software, and data to capture, manage, analyze, and display geographically referenced information. Many disciplines use GIS, not just geography.
Geographic Information Science is a scientific discipline in its own right, although it is often associated with the discipline of geography. It is the study of geographic information, including the representation of phenomena in the real world, the representation of the way humans understand the world, and how geographic information can be captured, organized, and analyzed. Some people think of GIScience as the science behind the GISystem.
In this course, we use GIS to mean Geographic Information Systems. GIS allows users to combine multiple layers of geographic data to create maps and solve problems. There are many different GIS software platforms – they are proprietary and open source. There are also web-based GIS platforms.
Figure 1.2 shows the overlay of streets, building footprints, and vegetation data to create a map of all three layers.
Figure 1.3 illustrates the user interface of a GIS software platform.
Watch this video. The presenter, Jack Dangermond, the president and co-founder of Esri, which produces the suite of ArcGIS products, highlights how we use geospatial technology (GIS in particular) to understand our changing Earth and take action to create a more sustainable future.
In addition to GIS, geographers use other technological components to explore and understand the world. Satellite technology provides access to positional data. GPS (global positioning system) or GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receivers rely on a network of satellites that determine our position on the surface of the Earth and our elevation or vertical position.
GPS satellites and ground stations, installed and maintained by the United States, provide horizontal and vertical positional data. The GNSS includes the U.S. GPS and those from other countries, such as the European Union (Galileo), Russia (GLONASS), and China (BeiDou). Figure 1.4 illustrates the orbits of these satellites relative to Earth, the International Space Station (ISS), and the Hubble Space Telescope. The ISS and Hubble Space Telescope are in low Earth orbit (LEO).
Satellites, aircraft, and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) capture remotely sensed imagery, a valuable source of geospatial data. This imagery includes data on Earth's land cover, elevation, magnetic field, weather, and climate, among other phenomena. For example, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration/U.S. Geological Survey (NASA/USGS) Landsat program has been capturing satellite imagery of the Earth's surface since 1972. Geographers and other scientists use this imagery, which is free to the public, to track changes in land cover over time.
For example, Figure 1.5 illustrates the increase in urban development in Casablanca, Morocco, from 2005 to 2018.
Aerial imagery programs provide more detailed coverage of smaller areas. Figure 1.6 shows the difference in coverage extent between a Landsat satellite image and an image captured by an aircraft. An aircraft with a Microsoft Ultracam Eagle sensor captured the image on the right. In this image, Horseshoe Falls, the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, is clearly visible. It was captured from an altitude of about 5,850 m. The image on the left is a Sentinel-2 image and was captured from an orbit of 786 km. The Sentinel-2 image covers a much larger area and shows much less detail. The red rectangle on the Sentinel-2 image indicates the coverage of the aerial image.
Remember the definition of scale from the reading in Section 1.2, "Scale is the ratio between the distance between two locations on a map and the corresponding distance on Earth's surface". The distance between two locations on the aerial image is larger than the same distance on the satellite image. Thus, the aerial image of Horseshoe Falls is considered a large-scale image, and the Sentinel-2 image of the same area is considered a small-scale image.
All of these technological components, including GIS, comprise what we call geospatial technology. The term geospatial may seem redundant, but remember that "geographic" refers to particular locations, and "spatial" refers to the position, size, and area of things. Thus, geospatial technology refers to technology that helps us capture and analyze places and the relationships between those places.
These varied applications of geospatial technology reflect the breadth of geography. The next section introduces some of its subdisciplines and specializations. You will see that GIS actually pervades many of these subdisciplines and specializations.
As we learned earlier, geography is a broad discipline that focuses on spatial relationships and the interaction between humans and their physical environment. Like all disciplines, geography has subdisciplines and specializations.
Some geographers focus on spatial relationships in the human realm, and others focus on them in the physical realm. Danny Dorling, the presenter of this video, describes himself as a human geographer because he studies the relationship between humans and the Earth's surface. In this presentation, he describes maps that depict Earth and observes that border controls are a recent construct – there was a time when people were free to immigrate wherever they wanted without passports.
As a human geographer, Dorling uses maps to show cultural landscapes and the landscapes humans have altered or created, such as trade routes, light pollution, and where rice, maize, and corn grow.
A physical geographer, on the other hand, considers the physical landscape. They would look at Dorling's annual precipitation map to see if a pattern exists among the physical features. For example, they would see if the location of mountain ranges, the distance from the coast, the pattern of ocean currents, or other physical factors might explain why annual precipitation differs from place to place. Like human geographers, physical geographers study and compare places, but they focus on non-human elements, such as rivers, landforms, climate, and plants.
Below is a summary of some more specializations within the subdisciplines of human and physical geography. Note that the categories of human and physical geography often overlap. Some specializations span both disciplines. For example, a hazard geographer studies the physical aspects of certain phenomena (such as earthquakes or wildfires) in addition to efforts to mitigate their effect on humans. Figure 1.7 shows specializations within geography that share aspects of human and physical geography. Note that this figure does not include every specialization within geography – there are lots more!
Read this text which explores different specializations in geography, with examples of the problems they try to solve using a spatial perspective. Remember this opening statement from the preface of this textbook:
"Geography is a discipline of explorers. Some geographers explore the world using satellite imagery and others by interviewing members of an indigenous community in an isolated area. What unites geographers everywhere is a desire to dig deeper, a desire to better understand why the spatial patterns and unique features we find in the world exist and how they interact and change."
This section introduces several of the major concepts of physical geography: plate tectonics, erosion, deposition, climate, and climate change. Remember that physical geographers focus on how natural features and processes related to human activity. Note that it goes both ways: the physical environment affects human activity, and human activity affects the physical environment. Some of these interactions occur rapidly, while others transpire over hundreds of years.
Read this introduction. Pay attention to the brief introduction of climate change – the long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. While some of these shifts may be natural, human activities have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, accelerating climate change since the 1800s (see Figure 1.10 in Section 1.4).
Burning fossil fuels (such as coal, oil, and gas), which produce heat-trapping gases, have been the primary drivers of climate change.
For example, the peatlands of the Congo Basin, which result from natural processes, are a physical feature on the Earth's surface. However, a human component threatens this feature, puts the local population at risk, and could contribute to climate change.
Watch this presentation to learn about the role peatlands, a type of wetland, play in the climate process.
Remember that human geographers focus on how humans interact with and affect the Earth. This section introduces several major concepts of human geography: demography, urbanization, core and periphery, globalization and inequality, and diffusion.
Read these three sections of our text to learn more.
Economic development varies from region to region. Globalization provides opportunities to certain world regions by increasing national income and other value-added profit activities. However, it can negatively affect cultural independence and ecological and human well-being. Globalization is a major theme in later units of this course. Ian Goldin, a professor of globalization and development at the University of Oxford, presents the advantages and disadvantages of globalization in this video from the World Economic Forum.
Globalization has increased collaboration among countries based on their shared values rather than their geography or geographic proximity. During globalization, the shared value was economic wealth which was not equally distributed. In the next video, O'Sullivan argues that the shared values in this new period of post-globalization are ecological and human well-being.
This does not mean Tobler's First Law of Geography no longer applies. Countries still have more in common with their neighbors than distant countries due to their shared physical and cultural landscapes. However, communications technologies have made it possible to collaborate with geographically-distant countries in real time. They have accelerated interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide.
As we study the world's regions, we explore the concepts we have discussed above, such as language, religious practices, political and economic systems, birth and death rates, and the role of colonialism. A regional approach helps us organize the complexity of the world.
Watch this video where Mike O'Sullivan, an economist, investor, and author, presents his perspective on globalization. He highlights two commonly-accepted limitations of globalization: inequality and record-level indebtedness. Do you agree with his claim that globalization is "on its deathbed"?
Geographers divide the world into regions, the categories they created to reduce the complexity of the world. Generally, each region has at least one feature in common. Let's look at three examples.
Americans are familiar with the relatively-flat interior Midwest region of the United States. However, not everyone agrees on the boundaries of the Midwest because, for example, they may think agricultural production or tornado activity helps define them. We call regions based on these types of perceptions "vernacular regions".
A formal region, on the other hand, has an internationally-recognized border or boundary that is not open to debate. The countries Bolivia, Costa Rica, and the United States are examples. A functional region offers a particular function or service. The delivery area of a grocery store is an example of a functional region. The store delivers groceries to residents who live within the area, but those living outside the delivery area must go to the store to pick up their purchases.
It is common to find variation among individuals, groups, subdisciplines, and academic courses because people have different ideas on the parameters that define a world region or what their boundaries should be. For this course, we have divided the world into the nine realms shown in Figure 1.17 of the following text. There are many common characteristics that establish a coherent unit, although there is variation within each region in terms of size and borders that overlap.
Read this section for more examples of these different types of regions.
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.