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Definition of geography

• chorography
• geomorphology

Examples of geography in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'geography.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Latin geographia , from Greek geōgraphia , from geōgraphein to describe the earth's surface, from geō- + graphein to write — more at carve

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing geography

• dialect geography
• physical geography
• linguistic geography

Dictionary Entries Near geography

geographize

geography cone

Cite this Entry

“Geography.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/geography. Accessed 10 Apr. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of geography, more from merriam-webster on geography.

Nglish: Translation of geography for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of geography for Arabic Speakers

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Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments.

Earth Science, Geography, Human Geography, Physical Geography

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Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments. Geographers explore both the physical properties of Earth’s surface and the human societies spread across it. They also examine how human culture interacts with the natural environment, and the way that locations and places can have an impact on people. Geography seeks to understand where things are found, why they are there, and how they develop and change over time.

Ancient Geographers

The term "geography" was coined by the Greek scholar Eratosthenes in the third century B.C.E. In Greek, geo- means “earth” and -graphy means “to write.” Using geography, Eratosthenes and other Greeks developed an understanding of where their homeland was located in relation to other places, what their own and other places were like, and how people and environments were distributed. These concerns have been central to geography ever since.

Of course, the Greeks were not the only people interested in geography, nor were they the first. Throughout human history, most societies have sought to understand something about their place in the world, and the people and environments around them. Mesopotamian societies inscribed maps on clay tablets, some of which survive to this day. The earliest known attempt at mapping the world is a Babylonian clay tablet known as the Imago Mundi. This map, created in the sixth century B.C.E., is more of a metaphorical and spiritual representation of Babylonian society rather than an accurate depiction of geography. Other Mesopotamian maps were more practical, marking irrigation networks and landholdings.

Indigenous peoples around the world developed geographic ideas and practices long before Eratosthenes. For example, Polynesian navigators embarked on long-range sea voyages across the Pacific Islands as early as 3000 years ago. The people of the Marshall Islands used navigation charts made of natural materials (“stick charts”) to visualize and memorize currents, wind patterns, and island locations.

Indeed, mapmaking probably came even before writing in many places, but ancient Greek geographers were particularly influential. They developed very detailed maps of Greek city-states, including parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia. More importantly, they also raised questions about how and why different human and natural patterns came into being on Earth’s surface, and why variations existed from place to place. The effort to answer these questions about patterns and distribution led them to figure out that the world was round, to calculate Earth’s circumference, and to develop explanations of everything from the seasonal flooding of the Nile to differences in population densities from place to place.

During the Middle Ages, geography ceased to be a major academic pursuit in Europe. Advances in geography were chiefly made by scientists of the Muslim world, based around the Middle East and North Africa. Geographers of this Islamic Golden Age created an early example of a rectangular map based on a grid, a map system that is still familiar today. Islamic scholars also applied their study of people and places to agriculture, determining which crops and livestock were most suited to specific habitats or environments.

In addition to the advances in the Middle East, the Chinese empire in Asia also contributed immensely to geography. Around 1000, Chinese navigators achieved one of the most important developments in the history of geography: They were the first to use the compass for navigational purposes. In the early 1400s, the explorer Zheng He embarked on seven voyages to the lands bordering the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, establishing China’s influence throughout Southeast Asia.

Age of Discovery

Through the 13th-century travels of the Italian explorer Marco Polo, European interest in spices from Asia grew. Acquiring spices from East Asian and Arab merchants was expensive, and a major land route for the European spice trade was lost with the conquering of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire. These and other economic factors, in addition to competition between Christian and Islamic societies, motivated European nations to send explorers in search of a sea route to China. This period of time between the 15th and 17th centuries is known in the West as the Age of Exploration or the Age of Discovery.

With the dawn of the Age of Discovery, the study of geography regained popularity in Europe. The invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s helped spread geographic knowledge by making maps and charts widely available. Improvements in shipbuilding and navigation facilitated more exploring, greatly improving the accuracy of maps and geographic information.

Greater geographic understanding allowed European powers to extend their global influence. During the Age of Discovery, European nations established colonies around the world. Improved transportation, communication, and navigational technology allowed countries such as the United Kingdom to establish colonies as far away as the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Africa. This was lucrative for European powers, but the Age of Discovery brought about nightmarish change for the people already living in the territories they colonized. When Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, millions of Indigenous peoples already lived there. By the 1600s, 90 percent of the Indigenous population of the Americas had been wiped out by violence and diseases brought over by European explorers.

Geography was not just a subject that enabled colonialism, however. It also helped people understand the planet on which they lived. Not surprisingly, geography became an important focus of study in schools and universities.

Geography also became an important part of other academic disciplines, such as chemistry, economics, and philosophy. In fact, every academic subject has some geographic connection. Chemists study where certain chemical elements, such as gold or silver, can be found. Economists examine which nations trade with other nations, and what resources are exchanged. Philosophers analyze the responsibility people have to take care of Earth.

Emergence of Modern Geography

Some people have trouble understanding the complete scope of the discipline of geography because geography is interdisciplinary, meaning that it is not defined by one particular topic. Instead, geography is concerned with many different topics—people, culture, politics, settlements, plants, landforms, and much more. Geography asks spatial questions—how and why things are distributed or arranged in particular ways on Earth’s surface. It looks at these different distributions and arrangements at many different scales. It also asks questions about how the interaction of different human and natural activities on Earth’s surface shape the characteristics of the world in which we live.

Geography seeks to understand where things are found and why they are present in those places; how things that are located in the same or distant places influence one another over time; and why places and the people who live in them develop and change in particular ways. Raising these questions is at the heart of the “ geographic perspective .”

Exploration has long been an important part of geography, and it’s an important part of developing a geographic perspective. Exploration isn’t limited to visiting unfamiliar places; it also means documenting and connecting relationships between spatial, sociological, and ecological elements. t

The age-old practice of mapping still plays an important role in this type of exploration, but exploration can also be done by using images from satellites or gathering information from interviews. Discoveries can come by using computers to map and analyze the relationship among things in geographic space, or from piecing together the multiple forces, near and far, that shape the way individual places develop.

Applying a geographic perspective demonstrates geography’s concern not just with where things are, but with “the why of where”—a short but useful definition of geography’s central focus.

The insights that have come from geographic research show the importance of asking “the why of where” questions. Geographic studies comparing physical characteristics of continents on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, for instance, gave rise to the idea that Earth’s surface is comprised of large, slowly moving plates—plate tectonics.

Studies of the geographic distribution of human settlements have shown how economic forces and modes of transport influence the location of towns and cities. For example, geographic analysis has pointed to the role of the United States Interstate Highway System and the rapid growth of car ownership in creating a boom in U.S. suburban growth after World War II. The geographic perspective helped show where Americans were moving, why they were moving there, and how their new living places affected their lives, their relationships with others, and their interactions with the environment.

Geographic analyses of the spread of diseases have pointed to the conditions that allow particular diseases to develop and spread. Dr. John Snow’s cholera map stands out as a classic example. When cholera broke out in London, England, in 1854, Snow represented the deaths per household on a street map. Using the map, he was able to trace the source of the outbreak to a water pump on the corner of Broad Street and Cambridge Street. The geographic perspective helped identify the source of the problem (the water from a specific pump) and allowed people to avoid the disease (avoiding water from that pump).

Investigations of the geographic impact of human activities have advanced understanding of the role of humans in transforming the surface of Earth, exposing the spatial extent of threats such as water pollution by artificial waste. For example, geographic study has shown that a large mass of tiny pieces of plastic currently floating in the Pacific Ocean is approximately the size of Texas. Satellite images and other geographic technology identified the so-called “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

These examples of different uses of the geographic perspective help explain why geographic study and research is important as we confront many 21st century challenges, including environmental pollution, poverty, hunger, and ethnic or political conflict.

Because the study of geography is so broad, the discipline is typically divided into specialties. At the broadest level, geography is divided into physical geography, human geography, geographic techniques, and regional geography.

Physical Geography

The natural environment is the primary concern of physical geographers, although many physical geographers also look at how humans have altered natural systems. Physical geographers study Earth’s seasons, climate, atmosphere, soil, streams, landforms, and oceans. Some disciplines within physical geography include geomorphology, glaciology, pedology, hydrology, climatology, biogeography, and oceanography.

Geomorphology is the study of landforms and the processes that shape them. Geomorphologists investigate the nature and impact of wind, ice, rivers, erosion, earthquakes, volcanoes, living things, and other forces that shape and change the surface of Earth.

Glaciologists focus on Earth’s ice fields and their impact on the planet’s climate. Glaciologists document the properties and distribution of glaciers and icebergs. Data collected by glaciologists has demonstrated the retreat of Arctic and Antarctic ice in the past century.

Pedologists study soil and how it is created, changed, and classified. Soil studies are used by a variety of professions, from farmers analyzing field fertility to engineers investigating the suitability of different areas for building heavy structures.

Hydrology is the study of Earth’s water: its properties, distribution, and effects. Hydrologists are especially concerned with the movement of water as it cycles from the ocean to the atmosphere, then back to Earth’s surface. Hydrologists study the water cycle through rainfall into streams, lakes, the soil, and underground aquifers. Hydrologists provide insights that are critical to building or removing dams, designing irrigation systems, monitoring water quality, tracking drought conditions, and predicting flood risk.

Climatologists study Earth’s climate system and its impact on Earth’s surface. For example, climatologists make predictions about El Niño, a cyclical weather phenomenon of warm surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. They analyze the dramatic worldwide climate changes caused by El Niño, such as flooding in Peru, drought in Australia, and, in the United States, the oddities of heavy Texas rains or an unseasonably warm Minnesota winter.

Biogeographers study the impact of the environment on the distribution of plants and animals. For example, a biogeographer might document all the places in the world inhabited by a certain spider species, and what those places have in common.

Oceanography, a related discipline of physical geography, focuses on the creatures and environments of the world’s oceans. Observation of ocean tides and currents constituted some of the first oceanographic investigations. For example, 18th-century mariners figured out the geography of the Gulf Stream, a massive current flowing like a river through the Atlantic Ocean. The discovery and tracking of the Gulf Stream helped communications and travel between Europe and the Americas.

Today, oceanographers conduct research on the impacts of water pollution, track tsunamis, design offshore oil rigs, investigate underwater eruptions of lava, and study all types of marine organisms from toxic algae to friendly dolphins.

Human Geography

Human geography is concerned with the distribution and networks of people and cultures on Earth’s surface. A human geographer might investigate the local, regional, and global impact of rising economic powers China and India, which represent 37 percent of the world’s people. They also might look at how consumers in China and India adjust to new technology and markets, and how markets respond to such a huge consumer base.

Human geographers also study how people use and alter their environments. When, for example, people allow their animals to overgraze a region, the soil erodes and grassland is transformed into desert. The impact of overgrazing on the landscape as well as agricultural production is an area of study for human geographers.

Finally, human geographers study how political, social, and economic systems are organized across geographical space. These include governments, religious organizations, and trade partnerships. The boundaries of these groups constantly change.

The main divisions within human geography reflect a concern with different types of human activities or ways of living. Some examples of human geography include urban geography, economic geography, cultural geography, political geography, social geography, and population geography. Human geographers who study geographic patterns and processes in past times are part of the subdiscipline of historical geography. Those who study how people understand maps and geographic space belong to a subdiscipline known as behavioral geography.

Many human geographers interested in the relationship between humans and the environment work in the subdisciplines of cultural geography and political geography.

Cultural geographers study how the natural environment influences the development of human culture, such as how the climate affects the agricultural practices of a region. Political geographers study the impact of political circumstances on interactions between people and their environment, as well as environmental conflicts, such as disputes over water rights.

Some human geographers focus on the connection between human health and geography. For example, health geographers create maps that track the location and spread of specific diseases. They analyze the geographic disparities of health-care access. They are very interested in the impact of the environment on human health, especially the effects of environmental hazards such as radiation, lead poisoning, or water pollution.

Geographic Techniques

Specialists in geographic techniques study the ways in which geographic processes can be analyzed and represented using different methods and technologies. Mapmaking, or cartography, is perhaps the most basic of these. Cartography has been instrumental to geography throughout the ages.

Today, almost the entire surface of Earth has been mapped with remarkable accuracy, and much of this information is available instantly on the internet. One of the most remarkable of these websites is Google Earth, which “lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean.” In essence, anyone can be a virtual explorer from the comfort of home.

Technological developments during the past 100 years have given rise to a number of other specialties for scientists studying geographic techniques. The airplane made it possible to photograph land from above. Now, there are many satellites and other above-Earth vehicles that help geographers figure out what the surface of the planet looks like and how it is changing.

Geographers looking at what above-Earth cameras and sensors reveal are specialists in remote sensing. Pictures taken from space can be used to make maps, monitor ice melt, assess flood damage, track oil spills, predict weather, or perform endless other functions. For example, by comparing satellite photos taken from 1955 to 2007, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) discovered that the rate of coastal erosion along Alaska’s Beaufort Sea had doubled. Every year from 2002 to 2007, about 13.7 meters (45 feet) per year of coast, mostly icy permafrost, vanished into the sea.

Computerized systems that allow for precise calculations of how things are distributed and relate to one another have made the study of geographic information systems (GIS) an increasingly important specialty within geography. Geographic information systems are powerful databases that collect all types of information (maps, reports, statistics, satellite images, surveys, demographic data, and more) and link each piece of data to a geographic reference point, such as geographic coordinates. This data, called geospatial information, can be stored, analyzed, modeled, and manipulated in ways not possible before GIS computer technology existed.

The popularity and importance of GIS has given rise to a new science known as geographic information science (GISci). Geographic information scientists study patterns in nature as well as human development. They might study natural hazards, such as a fire that struck Los Angeles, California, United States, in 2008. A map posted on the internet showed the real-time spread of the fire, along with information to help people make decisions about how to evacuate quickly. GIS can also illustrate human struggles from a geographic perspective, such as the interactive online map published by the New York Times in May 2009 that showed building foreclosure rates in various regions around the New York City area.

The enormous possibilities for producing computerized maps and diagrams that can help us understand environmental and social problems have made geographic visualization an increasingly important specialty within geography. This geospatial information is in high demand by just about every institution, from government agencies monitoring water quality to entrepreneurs deciding where to locate new businesses.

Regional Geography

Regional geographers take a somewhat different approach to specialization, directing their attention to the general geographic characteristics of a region. A regional geographer might specialize in African studies, observing and documenting the people, nations, rivers, mountains, deserts, weather, trade, and other attributes of the continent. There are different ways you can define a region. You can look at climate zones, cultural regions, or political regions. Often regional geographers have a physical or human geography specialty as well as a regional specialty.

Regional geographers may also study smaller regions, such as urban areas. A regional geographer may be interested in the way a city like Shanghai, China, is growing. They would study transportation, migration, housing, and language use, as well as the human impact on elements of the natural environment, such as the Huangpu River.

Whether geography is thought of as a discipline or as a basic feature of our world, developing an understanding of the subject is important. Some grasp of geography is essential as people seek to make sense of the world and understand their place in it. Thinking geographically helps people to be aware of the connections among and between places and to see how important events are shaped by where they take place. Finally, knowing something about geography enriches people’s lives—promoting curiosity about other people and places and an appreciation of the patterns, environments, and peoples that make up the endlessly fascinating, varied planet on which we live.

Gazetteer A gazetteer is a geographic dictionary. Gazetteers, which have existed for thousands of years, usually contain some sort of map and a set of information. Some gazetteers may contain a list of capital cities or areas where a specific resource is found. Other gazetteers may contain information about the local population, such as languages spoken, money used, or religious beliefs.

Old Maps People have been making maps for thousands of years. One of the oldest known maps was found near the city of Kirkuk, Iraq. Most geographers say it dates from 2500 B.C.E. It is a palm-sized block of clay depicting an area with two hills and a stream. (Some geographers think the stream is a canal made by people for irrigation.) Geographers have identified one of the towns on the map. However, they are not sure exactly what the hand-held map represents. Ancient maps could also be quite large. A nine-foot wall painting in Catal Hyuk, Turkey, was made about 6000 B.C.E. It is a map of a busy city, complete with crowded housing and even an erupting volcano. However, some scientists believe this "map" is decorative and not an accurate representation of what was there.

Wrong-Way Corrigan The American aviator Douglas Corrigan is often nicknamed "Wrong-Way Corrigan" because of a navigational error he made on a flight in 1938. Corrigan had just piloted a very impressive flight from the U.S. cities of Long Beach, California, to New York, New York. He was scheduled to fly back to Long Beach. Instead, with the sky covered in clouds, Wrong Way Corrigan flew to Dublin, Ireland.

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Related Resources

Explainer: what is biogeography?

Senior Lecturer and ARC Future Fellow in Biogeography, UNSW Sydney

Disclosure statement

Malte C Ebach is supported under Australian Research Council's ‘Future Fellow’ funding scheme.

UNSW Sydney provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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How did you get to work today? I walked to the station, caught a train, then walked to a bus stop and hopped on the 891 express.

All this time, while I was travelling, I moved in space – in fact a lot of space – what some call the Sydney Basin. From the window of the train I saw the landscape change from high wet forest to low and dry woodland plains. Without knowing it, I and many of my fellow passengers were unwitting biogeographers.

Biogeographers study the distribution of organisms from two very different perspectives. Biologists – like taxonomists, palaeobiologists and geneticists – study how organisms move within space, while geographers study how the landscape affects the same distributions.

But this was not true 200 years ago, when naturalists first started to examine animal and plant distributions.

Geography has a multifaceted history that involves many prominent naturalists and philosophers of the 18 th and 19 th centuries. What intrigued naturalists such as Eberhard Zimmermann was the worldwide distribution of quadrupeds.

Did these distributions change over time? Fossils tell us that many of the regions today were very different in the past. Impossible as it seemed for early plant and animal geographers, Earth had changed; therefore organisms in the same geographical areas changed too.

This was the birth of plant and animal geography. But how did these organisms get there?

Unlike biogeography today, few of the early naturalists – such as Zimmermann – really queried individual plant and animal dispersal. For him, distributions such as the discovery of monkeys in the New World , were simply explained as creations unique to an area.

Most 18th century thinkers looked to the French naturalist and author Georges Buffon , who believed animals (and plants) could change temperament and form according to the environment they lived in.

According to Buffon, New World monkeys for instance, got to the Americas via the Arctic. But geography was not about explaining individual species histories, rather the areas that created them.

In any case, what evidence was there for the long journey from the Old to the New World? Untestable hypotheses about dispersal were overshadowed by more intriguing and answerable questions about geography.

The Prussian geographer and scientific explorer Alexander von Humboldt took geography to its limits by looking at all aspects of a landscape, describing the temperature, humidity, elevation and air pressure.

Factors such as elevation, thought Humboldt, were the key to explaining the distribution of organisms. After all, an alpine plant is only found in alpine environments. Change the environment and you change the plant. Geography was literally the key to understanding not only distribution but also diversity.

With greater emphasis on geography, early 19th century plant and animal geographers started to describe the world’s biogeographical regions, the same we use today, such as neotropical and boreal .

Regions, like organisms, had characteristics, except those characteristics were temperature, elevation, soils and, of course, the plants and animals that were dependent on them.

Plant and animal geography was about measuring these characteristics and finding ways to compare regions and the organisms that live there.

The geographical nature of biogeography dominated much of early 19th century plant and animal geography, until biologists started to embrace their new science and focus on endemism (being unique to a geographic location) and evolution.

Rather than looking at the defining physical characteristics of an area, biologists now looked for the histories of individual species and the physiological and evolutionary mechanisms responsible for dispersal.

Biogeographical maps changed from regionalisations into roadmaps, and geographical regions into vegetations. Ecology and evolutionary biology were the driving force behind the new biogeography at the beginning of the 20 th century.

So what happened to the “geography” in biogeography?

There are still many scientists who study the nature of landscapes and how they shape plant and animal distributions. In fact, the discipline of discovering new biogeographical areas and describing their characteristics is blossoming.

Presently new biogeographical regions have been proposed for Antarctica and the deep sea, possibly the largest and most under-explored parts of our planet. Microbiologists are also looking at the distributions of bacteria.

Once believed to have randomly dispersed everywhere, many bacteria are highly endemic and are only found in certain types of environments, such as toxic hot springs and the human digestive tract.

Big or small, biogeographical areas can be studied in order to gain insight into the organisms that live there.

Biogeography, as the study of place, not only links us back to the early plant and animal geographers of the past, but incorporates our observations of organisms and their distributions within space.

Looking at what makes up an area, its history and how it bounds the distributions of many different organisms, is the first step toward understanding our natural world in its entirety.

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a written account of another person's life: the biography of Byron by Marchand.

an account in biographical form of an organization, society, theater, animal, etc.

such writings collectively.

the writing of biography as an occupation or field of endeavor.

Origin of biography

Words nearby biography.

• biographical
• biographize
• bioindustry

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use biography in a sentence

Barrett didn’t say anything on Tuesday to contradict our understanding of her ideological leanings based on her past rulings, past statements and biography .

Republicans, meanwhile, focused mostly on her biography — including her role as a working mother of seven and her Catholic faith — and her credentials, while offering few specifics about her record as a law professor and judge.

She delivered an inspiring biography at one point, reflecting on the sacrifice her mother made to emigrate to the United States.

As Walter Isaacson pointed out in his biography of Benjamin Franklin, Franklin proposed the postal system as a vital network to bond together the 13 disparate colonies.

Serving that end, the book is not an in-depth biography as much as a summary of Galileo’s life and science, plus a thorough recounting of the events leading up to his famous trial.

The Amazon biography for an author named Papa Faal mentions both Gambia and lists a military record that matches the FBI report.

For those unfamiliar with Michals, an annotated biography and useful essays are included.

Did you envision your Pryor biography as extending your previous investigation—aesthetically and historically?

But Stephen Kotkin's new biography reveals a learned despot who acted cunningly to take advantage of the times.

Watching novelists insult one another is one of the primary pleasures of his biography .

He also published two volumes of American biography , a work which his death abridged.

Mme. de Chaulieu gave her husband the three children designated in the duc's biography .

The biography of great men always has been, and always will be read with interest and profit.

I like biography far better than fiction myself: fiction is too free.

The Bookman: "A more entertaining narrative whether in biography or fiction has not appeared in recent years."

British Dictionary definitions for biography

/ ( baɪˈɒɡrəfɪ ) /

an account of a person's life by another

such accounts collectively

Derived forms of biography

• biographer , noun
• biographical ( ˌbaɪəˈɡræfɪk ə l ) or archaic biographic , adjective
• biographically , adverb

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Cultural definitions for biography

The story of someone's life. The Life of Samuel Johnson , by James Boswell , and Abraham Lincoln , by Carl Sandburg , are two noted biographies. The story of the writer's own life is an autobiography .

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Simply Geography

Geography website

Physical Geography , Featured , Geographical Thoughts , Human Geography , Population Geography

What is geography.

• August 21, 2022

Table of Contents

What is Geography in simple words?

The word “Geography” was gotten from two Greek words which are: “Geo” which means earth and “Graph”  which means to describe. So, putting those two greek words “Geo” and “Graph” together, Geography can simply be defined by a layman as the description of the earth.

The full definition of Geography

However, there’s more to Geography than a mere description of the earth. Hence, can be defined as the study of physical features, places, people, and their activities within the earth.

It also deals with the study of various people in different parts of the earth including their activities like mining, construction, agriculture, trading, fishing, etc, and how these activities affect the earth.

Scope of Geography

Geography is a social science course in the academic world that has to do with the study of man and his activities in the environment.

Therefore, Geography ideas are realistic, practical, and easy to understand because they are very relevant to our daily life experiences.

Geography is also related to many other disciplines such as Economics, Agricultural Science, Biology, Sociology, History, Government, Political Science, Environmental Science, and list goes on. Geography has one or two things in common with all these disciplines as mentioned above.

Brief History of Geography and its branches

Modern-day geography originated from medieval cosmography ,  a fascinating combination of astronomy, astrology, nautical science, earth core, natural history, and history, etc. gradually as a result of the development of signs and scientific study in the 17th and 18th centuries, cosmography shed many of its facets which became sciences of their own right, examples of these facets were astronomy , geology, meteorology, botany, zoology, etc. the remaining that was left became geography which was a study focusing mainly on the motions of the earth, its measurements, the description of places, etc., in the 19th century, geography was typified by its “capes, coves, and items”, which was a methodology that was somewhat dull and sterile. the tumult of causes in scientific circles by charles darwin ‘s idea of evolutionary development joined with the tremendous fund of knowledge being made available at man’s disposal as a result of the 19th-century exploration, travel, and opening up of new lands of the world which also contributed the rebirth of geographical study. during this period, geographers became less concerned with making inquiries and explorations around the world, and began asking questions like “how”, “why”, as well as “where”. this new approach gave rise to what came to be known as causal geography., during the 20th century, geography evolved into an analytical and interpretative study. though starting from the 19th century national censuses, trade statistics, and ethnographic studies gave a formal foundation to human geographic investigation, and by the end of the 19th century, geography became a very distinctive academic discipline in universities and other academic institutions across europe and other parts of the world where european academic curriculum and schemes were followed. the rapid increase in the number of professional geographers and geography programs gave rise to a whole series of increasingly specialized disciplinary sub-division., so, modern geography can be defined as the exact and organized knowledge of the distribution and organization of phenomenon on the surface of the earth..

Types of Geography

Geography is classified into 3 main categories below;

• Physical Geography
• Human Geography
• Environmental Geography

1.  Physical Geography:  This has to deal with the study of man’s immediate natural environment and its physical features like water bodies, mountains, soil, atmosphere, earth motion, etc.

2.  human geography:  this is a branch of geography that has to do with the study of human behaviors, activities, populations, habitats, culture, laws, etc., 3. environmental geography:  this is a branch of geography that has to do with the study of man’s relationship with his environment..

Tobler’s First Law of Geography

The first law of geography was formulated by Waldo R. Tobler in the year, 1970. According to Waldo Tobler, The first laws of geography state that everything on the earth’s surface is related to everything else, but near things are more closely related.

Examples of Tobler’s law of Geography

Take for example if you want to shave your hair and beard (For Men), and get your hair done (for ladies) you would always look for a salon that is next to you. This doesn’t mean that we are not going to interact with features that are far away from us, it means that we are most likely to always interact with things that are near to us.

Also, another example that can be used to explain the first law of geography is a long-distance relationship. Imagine being in a long-distance relationship, at first it might feel so good missing each other while engaging in chats and phone calls, but along the line, you will get tired of the relationship and start interacting with people that are near to you, meeting new friends and even fl!rt with someone more attractive than your partner or even catch feelings for him or her which makes your serious relationship break apart (though there are exceptions to this). this also example also explains the Distance Decay concept which is very vital to Tobler’s First Law of Geography .

What is Distance Decay?

Distance decay states that the interaction between two places, items, people, etc declines as the distance increases between them increases

4 Traditions of Geography

The following are the four traditions of geography;

• Spatial or locational Tradition
• Study area or Regional Tradition
• Man-land Tradition
• Earth Science Tradition

Criticism of the traditions of geography

Ever since Waldo Tobler formulated the first law of geography, there have been critics of this law, there are a lot of scholars that have disputed the entire concept of the first laws of geography one of these people who is known as Robinson, said that the traditions of geography formulated by Williams (1963) lacked the concept of time.

5 Importance of geography

There following are the major importance of geography;

• To study the physical environment around us
• To gain knowledge of the physical features in our immediate environment
• To study and understand the cultures of people all over the world.
• It helps in external and internal trade.
• It helps us in studying our immediate social environment.

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(Definition of geography from the Cambridge Learner's Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

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a type of singing in which four, usually male, voices in close combination perform popular romantic songs, especially from the 1920s and 1930s

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