Chapter 1 Thinking Geographically Key Issue 1 How Do Geographers Describe Where Things Are?

Geography as a Field of Inquiry Geography can be divided into two major fields-human geography and physical geography. Human geography is the scientific study of the location of people and activities on the Earth’s surface. It is the study of where and why human activities are located where they are. Geographers look at the world from a spatial perspective, and will study how people and objects vary across the Earth’s surface. They will also study the relationship or spatial interaction between people and objects, as well as the movement or diffusion of people and ideas. The study of human geography involves a consideration of various scales. Geographers will observe a tension between local uniqueness and globalizing forces. This will help to understand many of the world’s problems studied in this course, including those related to political conflicts, development and economic geography, and the environment.

Geography as a Field of Inquiry The earliest geographers studied places mainly because of the necessities of the trade routes and navigation. The maps made by Chinese, Greek, and North African scholars became the foundation of the art and science of mapmaking or cartography. The word geography was invented by the ancient Greek scholar Eratosthenes during the third century B.C.; geo means “Earth,” and graphy means “to write.” He also accepted Aristotle’s findings that the earth was round. Two Roman geographers made key contributions to geography. Strabo described the known world in his 17 volume work Geography. Ptolemy, known as the father of cartography, published numerous maps in his eight –volume Guide to Geography. Geographic inquiry continued during the Middle Ages in the Islamic world, especially through the work of al-Edrisi and Ibn Battuta. Geography as a discipline developed from description to explanation and analysis through the work of two German geographers.

Geography as a Field of Inquiry cont. The philosopher Immanuel Kant had placed geography within an overall framework of scientific knowledge by arguing for logical or physical classification. In the 18th century Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter argued for environmental determinism, the belief that the environment causes human development. Later geographers argued that landscapes are the products of complex human-environment relationships. This approach is known as cultural ecology or possibilism. This approach to the subject recognizes that the physical environment may limit certain human activities, but also that people can adapt to their environment. The regional studies approach, which emphasizes the unique characteristics of each place, both human and physical, is a third approach to the study of geography. It was pioneered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Paul Vidal de la Blache, Jean Brunhes, Carl Sauer, and Robert Platt. While the environmental determinist approach has largely been abandoned by modern geographers, the human-environmental relationships and regional studies approaches remain integral to the scientific study of geography today.

Map Scale Map scale refers to the ratio between the distance on a map and the actual distance on the Earth’s surface. Scale is usually presented by cartographers as a fraction (1/24,000), a ratio (1:24,000), or a written statement (“1 inch equals 1 mile”). In a small scale map, the ratio between map units and ground units is small (such as 1:100,000); and since one map unit equals so many of the same units on the ground, these maps tend to cover large regions (such as a map of the U.S.). In a large-scale map, the ratio between map units and ground units is large (such as 1:5,000) and thus covers much smaller regions (such as a map of a city).

Contemporary Tools Important technologies related to geography that have been developed since the 1970s include remote sensing, the Global Positioning System (GPS), and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Remote sensing is the process of acquiring data about the Earth’s surface from satellites. This could include the mapping of vegetation, winter ice, or changes in weather patterns or deforestation. A GPS device enables one to determine absolute location through an integrated network of satellites. It also allows geographers to determine distances between two points and is thus a valuable navigational tool. GIS enables geographers to map, analyze, and process different pieces of information about a location. These thematic layers could include various physical features, transportation infrastructure, population, and settlement patterns, and could be analyzed individually or together. Indeed GIS is especially useful when relationships can be seen between the different layers.