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What is geography?

What is geography?

We are learning to:

• explain the importance of studying geography.

The word ‘geography’ comes from the Ancient Greek ‘geo-’ meaning Earth and ‘graphia’ meaning writing. In ancient times, geography was mostly about drawing maps – pictures of what they thought the surface of the Earth looked like. Since about 900 BC, people have drawn maps showing what they believed the world looked like.

In this unit, we will focus on two aspects of geography:

• The relationship between man and his environment (human geography)

• The sustainable use of the environment (physical geography)

Human geography

Human geography is the relationship between humans and their environment and how human activity affects or is influenced by the environment.

The environment determines what kinds of things people can do and create within it, but human activities also change and affect the environment. For example, we can only create cities close to freshwater resources. However, cities may change the environment and affect the water supply.

Physical geography

Physical geography is the study of the features of the natural environment, such as mountains, rivers, oceans and forests, as well as the processes within our natural environment – for example, the water cycle.

In order to live in a sustainable way on Earth, we need to understand the processes that shaped the planet and continue to affect the climate and the natural environment.

Exercise

1. What are the two branches of geography called?

Activity

Using YouTube and SlideShare on the internet, do a search on ‘importance of geography’. Find at least two different videos on this topic and watch them as a class. Discuss what you agreed or disagreed with in each video.

Geography for Trinidad and Tobago: What is geography?

Why is it important to study geography?

It is important to study geography for several reasons.

• Understand our natural environment: geography helps us to understand how features such as mountains, rivers and oceans are formed and processes such as the water cycle.

• Understand and predict climate and weather: through geography, we can study weather and climate patterns. We can also see how human activities such as industry and air travel affect the world climate.

• Understand cultures: geography helps us to investigate the Earth and the people that live here. We can compare and understand different cultures and religions.

• Develop useful skills: studying geography helps us to develop a range of useful skills such as mapwork, data collection, information and communications technology (ICT) and problem solving.

• Open up a world of careers: geography opens up a number of different careers. This box lists some of the careers in the field of geography.

• Agriculture

• Climate change studies

• Climatology and meteorology

• Coastal, marine and hydrographic studies

• Community development

• Conservation, heritage and land management

• Environmental and social work

• Research

Exercise

• Geomorphology

• Hazard assessment and disaster management

• Market research

• Managing natural resources

• Planning (e.g. urban and social planning)

• Population studies

• Tourism

• Geographic information systems

3. Look at the map on the opposite page and compare it with a modern map or atlas. How is it different from our maps of today?

4. From the list of jobs above, suggest two jobs each from the fields of human and physical geography.

5. Look at the photograph on this page. Choose any of the careers listed and suggest what kind of work someone in that field might do in an environment like Trinidad and Tobago.

Discussion

Have a class discussion about why you think it is important to study geography.

Activity

Use cut out images from brochures, fliers, newspapers or magazines. Create a collage showing what you have learned about the importance of geography.

Key vocabulary map human geography physical geography