Frenzie Mae V.

Rivera

Assignment in Geography

19 Nov. 2012

What is Geography?
The science of geography is likely the oldest of all sciences. Geography is the answer to the question that the earliest humans asked, "What's over there?" Exploration and the discovery of new places, new cultures, and new ideas have always been basic components of geography. Thus, geography is often called the "mother of all sciences" as studying other people and other places led to other scientific fields such as biology, anthropology, geology, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, among others. Geography (from Greek , geographia, lit. "earth description") is the science that studies the lands, the features, the inhabitants, and the phenomena of the Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes (276-194 BC). Four historical traditions in geographical research are the spatial analysis of the natural and the human phenomena (geography as the study of distribution), the area studies (places and regions), the study of the man-land relationship, and the research in the earth sciences. Nonetheless, the modern geography is an all-encompassing discipline that foremost seeks to understand the Earth and all of its human and natural complexitiesnot merely where objects are, but how they have changed and come to be. Geography has been called "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and the physical science". Geography is divided into two main branches: the human geography and the physical geography.

What are the branches of geography?

There are two main branches of geography: (1) human/cultural geography; and (2) physical geography. a. Physical geography (or physiography) focuses on geography as an Earth science. It aims to understand
the physical problems and the issues of lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere,pedosphere, and global flora and fauna patterns (biosphere). b. Human geography is a branch of geography that focuses on the study of patterns and processes that shape the human society. It encompasses the human, political, cultural, social, andeconomic aspects. c. Other branches: a. Integrated geography is the branch of geography that describes the spatial aspects of interactions between humans and the natural world. It requires an understanding of the traditional aspects of the physical and the human geography, as well as the ways that human societies conceptualize the environment. b. Geomatics is a branch of geography that has emerged since the quantitative revolution in geography in the mid 1950s. Geomatics involves the use of traditional spatial techniques used in cartography and topography and their application to computers. Geomatics has become a widespread field with many other disciplines, using techniques such as GIS and remote sensing. Geomatics has also led to a revitalization of some geography departments, especially in Northern America where the subject had a declining status during the 1950s. c. Regional geography is a branch of geography which studies the regions of all sizes across the Earth. It has a prevailing descriptive character. The main aim is to understand, or define the uniqueness, or character of a particular region that consists of natural as well as human elements. Attention is paid also to regionalization, which covers the proper techniques of space delimitation into regions.

 What are the fields of geography in each branch?

Physical Geography

Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time Climatology (from Greek , klima, "place, zone"; and -, -logia) is the study of climate, scientifically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of time, Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Coastal geography is the study of the dynamic interface between the ocean and the land, incorporating both the physical geography (i.e. coastal geomorphology, geology and oceanography) and the human geography (sociology and history) of the coast. Environmental resource management is a purposeful activity with the goal to maintain and . improve the state of an environmental resource affected by human activities Geodesy also named geodetics, a branch of earth sciences, is the scientific discipline that deals with the measurement and representation of the Earth, including its gravitational field, in a threedimensional time-varying space. Geomorphology (from Greek: , ge, "earth"; , morf, "form"; and , logos, "study") is the scientific study of landforms and the processes that shape them. Geomorphologists seek to understand why landscapes look the way they do, to understand landform history and dynamics, and to predict future changes through a combination of field observations, physical experiments, and numerical modeling. Glaciology (from Middle French dialect (Franco-Provenal): glace, "ice"; or Latin: glacies, "frost, ice"; and Greek: , logos, "speech" lit. "study of ice") is the study of glaciers, or more generally ice and natural phenomena that involve ice. Hydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water on Earth and other planets, including the hydrologic cycle, water resources and environmental watershed sustainability. Hydrography refers to the mapping or charting of water's topographic features. It involves measuring the depths, tides, and currents of a body of water and establishing the topography and morphology of seas, rivers, and lake beds. Landscape ecology is the science of studying and improving relationships between ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems Oceanography (compound of the Greek words meaning "ocean" and meaning "to write"), also called oceanology or marine science, is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean. Pedology (from Greek: , pedon, "soil"; and , logos, "study") is the study of soils in [1] their natural environment. It is one of two main branches of soil science, the other being edaphology. Palaeogeography (also spelled paleogeography) is the study of historical geography. Most often the term is used to describe the physical landscape, although it can be used to reference the human or cultural environment. Quaternary science is an inter-disciplinary field of study focusing on the Quaternary period, which encompasses the last 2.6 million years. The field studies the last ice age and the recent interstadial the Holocene and uses proxy evidence to reconstruct the past environments during this period to infer the climatic and environmental changes that have occurred.

Human/Cultural Geography

Cultural geography is a sub-field within human geography. Cultural geography is the study of cultural products and norms and their variations across and relations to spaces and places. It focuses on describing and analyzing the ways language, religion, economy, government and

other cultural phenomena vary or remain constant, from one place to another and on explaining how humans function spatially. Development geography is a branch of geography with reference to the standard of living and quality of life of its human inhabitants. In this context, development is a process of change that affects people's lives. It may involve an improvement in the quality of life as perceived by the people undergoing change. Economic geography is the study of the location, distribution and spatial organization of economic activities across the world. Health geography is the application of geographical information, perspectives, and methods to the study of health, disease, and health care. Historical geography is the study of the human, physical, fictional, theoretical, and "real" geographies of the past. Historical geography studies a wide variety of issues and topics. Time geography or time-space geography traces its roots back to the Swedish geographer Torsten Hgerstrand who stressed the temporal factor in spatial human activities. The time-space path, devised by Hgerstrand, shows the movement of an individual in the spatial-temporal environment with the constraints placed on the individual by these two factors. Political geography is the field of human geography that is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. Geopolitics, from Greek (earth) and (politics), refers broadly to the relationship between politics and territory whether on local or international scale. It comprises the practice of analysing, proscribing, forecasting, and the using of political power over a given territory. Population geography is a division of human geography. It is the study of the ways in which spatial variations in the distribution, composition, migration, and growth of populations are related to the nature of places. Demography is the statistical study of living populations. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic living population, that is, one that changes over time or space (see population dynamics). Religion and geography is the study of the impact of geography, i.e. place and space, on religious belief. Social geography is the branch of human geography that is most closely related to social theory in general and sociology in particular, dealing with the relation of social phenomena and its spatial components. Transportation Geography, also Transport Geography, is the branch of geography that investigates spatial interactions; letting them be of people, freight, and information. It can consider humans and their use of vehicles, or other modes of traveling. Tourism geography is that branch of science which deals with the study of travel and its impact on places. Urban geography is the study of areas which have a high concentration of buildings and infrastructure. These are areas where the majority ofeconomic activities are in the secondary sector and tertiary sectors. They often have a high population density. Behavioral geography is an approach to human geography that examines human behavior using a disaggregate approach. Behavioral geographers focus on the cognitive processes underlyingspatial reasoning, decision making, and behavior. Feminist geography is an approach in human geography which applies the theories, methods and critiques of feminism to the study of the human environment, society and geographical space. Culture theory is the branch of comparative anthropology and semiotics (not to be confused with cultural sociology or cultural studies) that seeks to define the heuristic concept of culture inoperational and/or scientific terms. Geosophy is the study of geographical knowledge from any or all points of view. It is to geography what historiography is to history; it deals with the nature and expression of geographical knowledge both past and presentwith what Whittlesey has called mans sense of [terrestrial] space. Thus it extends f ar beyond the core area of scientific geographical knowledge or of geographical knowledge as otherwise systematized by geographers.