---
title: "Geography"
chunk: 3/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:57:52.593175+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In another approach to the abovementioned four traditions, geography is organized into applied branches. The UNESCO Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems organizes geography into the three categories of human geography, physical geography, and technical geography. Some publications limit the number of branches to physical and human, describing them as the principal branches. Human geography largely focuses on the built environment and how humans create, view, manage, and influence space. Physical geography examines the natural environment and how organisms, climate, soil, water, and landforms produce and interact, studying spatial patterns in the natural environment, atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and geosphere. The difference between these approaches led to the development of integrated geography, which combines physical and human geography and concerns the interactions between the environment and humans. Technical geography involves studying and developing the tools and techniques used by geographers, such as remote sensing, cartography, and geographic information system. It is the newest of the branches, and often other terms are used in the literature to describe the emerging category. While human and physical geographers use the techniques employed by technical geographers, technical geography is more concerned with the fundamental spatial concepts and technologies than with the nature of the data. It is therefore closely associated with the spatial tradition of geography while being applied to the other two major branches. These branches use similar geographic philosophies, concepts, and tools, and often overlap significantly, so geographers rarely focus on just one topic; they often use one as their primary focus and then incorporate data and methods from the other branches. Often, geographers are asked to describe what they do by individuals outside the discipline and are likely to identify closely with a specific branch, or sub-branch, when describing themselves to lay people.

==== Physical ====

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). Physical geography is the study of earth's seasons, climate, atmosphere, soil, streams, landforms, and oceans. Physical geographers will often work in identifying and monitoring the use of natural resources.

==== Human ====

Human geography (or anthropogeography) is a branch of geography that studies the patterns and processes that shape human society. It encompasses the human, political, cultural, social, and economic aspects. In industry, human geographers often work in city planning, public health, or business analysis. Various approaches to the study of human geography have also arisen through time and include behavioral geography, culture theory, feminist geography, and geosophy. Human geographers study people and their communities, cultures, economies, and environmental interactions by studying their relations with and across space and place.

==== Technical ====

Technical geography involves studying and developing tools, techniques, and statistical methods for collecting, analysing, using, and understanding spatial data. Technical geography is the most recently recognized, and controversial, of the branches. Its use dates back to 1749, when a book published by Edward Cave organized the discipline into a section containing content such as cartographic techniques and globes. There are several other terms, often used interchangeably with technical geography to subdivide the discipline, including "techniques of geographic analysis," "Geographic Information Technology," "Geography method's and techniques," "Geographic Information Science," "geoinformatics," "geomatics," and "information geography". There are subtle differences between each concept and term; however, technical geography is one of the broadest, consistent with the naming convention of the other two branches, has been in use since the 1700s, and has been used by the UNESCO Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems to divide geography into themes. As academic fields increasingly specialize in their nature, technical geography has emerged as a branch of geography specializing in geographic methods and thought. The emergence of technical geography has brought new relevance to the broad discipline of geography by serving as a set of unique methods for managing the interdisciplinary nature of the phenomena under investigation. A technical geographer might work as a GIS analyst, a GIS developer creating new software tools, or a cartographer creating general reference maps incorporating human and natural features.

== Methods ==

All geographic research and analysis start with asking the question "where," followed by "why there." Geographers start with the fundamental assumption outlined in Tobler's first law of geography, that "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things."
As spatial interrelationships are key to this synoptic science, maps are a key tool. Classical cartography has been joined by a more modern approach to geographical analysis, computer-based geographic information systems (GIS).
In their study, geographers use four interrelated approaches:

Analytical – Asks why we find features and populations in a specific geographic area.
Descriptive – Specifies the locations of features and populations.
Regional – Examines systematic relationships between categories for a specific region or location on the planet.
Systematic – Groups geographical knowledge into categories that can be explored globally.

=== Quantitative methods ===

Quantitative methods in geography became particularly influential in the discipline during the quantitative revolution of the 1950s and 60s. These methods revitalized the discipline in many ways, allowing scientific testing of hypotheses and proposing scientific geographic theories and laws. The quantitative revolution heavily influenced and revitalized technical geography, and lead to the development of the subfield of quantitative geography.

==== Quantitative cartography ====