the world- earth

A Geographer's Look	The Earth	Climate	Population and Culture	Economics and Resources

Exploring Geography

Geography is the study of earth's physical features and the living thing(humans,animals, and plants) that inhabit the planet. Geography studies the parts of the world all of these elements live in, and how they relate to one another. The word geography comes from the ancient greek word meaning "earth description". Geographers are people who study the earth's physical and human features adn the realionship between people, places, and enviornments.

Geographers use Spatial terms to study the earth. They use the terms location, relative location, and absolute location to determine where a place on the earth is. Location is a specific place on the earth. Absolute location is the exact location of a place, and relative location is the location of a place in relation to another place. Most people use relative location to give directions to most places.

A place is a particular space with physical and human meaning. Geographers often group places into regions to see the earth's complexity. Regions are areas united my specific factors. They can group regions due to their soil type, vegetation, river systems, and climate. Also, they can group regions by humanfactors such as language, religion, cultural traditions, forms of government, and trade networks. There are three tipes of regions. These are, a formal region wich is defined by a common characteristic such as a product, a functional region wich is a central place and it's surrounding territory, or a perceptual region wich is defined by popular feelings or images rather than by objective data. Geographers also study ecosystem wich is the community of plants, and animals that depend upon one another, and their surroundings, for survival.

Geographers also examine how people shape the world, or how they settle the earth, form societies, and create permanent features, such as man made mountains or highways. They study the ongoing movement of poeple, goods, and ideas. Geographers also study the Enviornment and Society using Human-enviornment interaction. That is the study of the interrelationship between people and their physical enviornment. They study the way people use their enviornment, and how and why they change it.

Geography also works for letting us see how things where in the past, and letting us predict of things will be in the future. As geographers learn more about the earth, their knowledge can help us make a better future.

The Geographer's Craft

To make their job easyer Geographers divide their work into different branches. The two major branches are physical geography and human geography. Physical geography is the study of the earth's physical features, for example, the bodies of water in the earth's surface. Also it studies climate, land, plants and animal life and their relationships to one another, and humans. Human geography wich can also be called cultural geography is the study of how humans relate with one another, and their enviornment. This studies human activity. It concentrates on politica, economic, and cultural factors, such as population density, urban developement, economic production, and ethnicity.

Another branch that they use is meteorology. Meteorology is the stude of weather and weather-forecasting. It also studies historical geography, the study of places and human avtivities over time and the various geographic factors that have shaped them.

Geographers use specialized methods at work. These methods are direct observation, mapping, interviewing, statistics,and the use of technology. Direct observation is when go and visit a region to gather specific information about the region and its geographic features. They also use aerial photographs and satellite images. Geographers also use the method of mapping to study the earth. When they do this, they use the work of cartography. Cartography is the work of studying and making maps and cartographers are the people who make them. Maps are a better resource so geographers because many maps show places better than how they can be explained verbally or in written text. It is more understandable. Another method that they use is the method of interviewing wich is when geographers actually go and interview different people to learn more about their society. The can do this by doing surveys, or actually talking to the people. They also use statistics wich has to do with numbers. They study the temperature, and rainfall data of a place. Geographers use computers to organize their data. They can also use technology wich is much easyer. They use scientific intstruments to study the earth such as satellites and radars.

Learing Geography can help in many careers such as a salesperson, or a bus driver, or any other jobs that may include traveling.

A Geographer's Look | The Earth | Climate | Population and Culture | Economics and Resources

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