Geography as a Discipline

What geography studies and asks, its two approaches, its many branches and the modern tools it uses.

Key ideas

• Geography is the description of the earth: it studies how physical and cultural features differ from place to place (areal differentiation).
• It asks three questions: what (patterns), where (distribution) and why (cause and effect); the “why” made it a science.
• Geography is a discipline of synthesis: it draws on many natural and social sciences and ties them together over space, as history does over time.
• The systematic approach studies one phenomenon across the world; the regional approach studies all phenomena of one region together.
• Physical geography studies four realms: lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere.
• Time is the “fourth dimension”: features change over time, and distance can be stated as travel time.
• Modern tools such as GIS, GPS, remote sensing and computer cartography handle large data and map places accurately.

Remember

Watch out

• Swapping Humboldt (systematic) and Ritter (regional).
• Calling a road or a port a physical feature: anything people build is cultural.
• Linking soil geography to geology instead of pedology.

Worked example