---
title: "Geography"
chunk: 1/6
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"
---

Geography (from Ancient Greek γεωγραφία geōgraphía; combining gê 'Earth' and gráphō 'write', lit. 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of planet Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be. While geography is specific to Earth, many concepts can be applied more broadly to other celestial bodies in the field of planetary science. Geography has been called "a bridge between natural science and social science disciplines."
The history of geography as a discipline spans cultures and millennia, having been independently developed by multiple groups and cross-pollinated through trade between them. Geography as a discipline dates back to the earliest attempts to understand the world spatially, with the earliest example of an attempted world map dating to the 9th century BC in ancient Babylon. Origins of many of the concepts in geography can be traced to Greek Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who may have coined the term "geographia" (c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BC). The first recorded use of the word γεωγραφία was as the title of a book by Greek scholar Claudius Ptolemy (100 – 170 AD). During the Middle Ages, geography was influenced by Islamic scholars, such as Muhammad al-Idrisi, producing detailed maps of the world. The Age of Discovery was influential in the development of geography, as European explorers mapped the New World. Modern developments include geomatics and geographic information science.
The core concepts of geography that are consistent across all approaches are space, place, time, and scale. Today, geography is an extremely broad discipline with multiple approaches and modalities. The main branches of geography are physical geography, human geography, and technical geography. Physical geography focuses on the natural environment, human geography on how humans interact with the Earth, and technical geography on developing tools for understanding geography. Techniques employed can generally be broken down into quantitative and qualitative approaches, with many studies taking mixed-methods approaches. Common techniques include cartography, remote sensing, interviews, and surveying.

== Fundamentals ==
Geography is a systematic study of the Earth (other celestial bodies are specified, such as "geography of Mars", or given another name, such as areography in the case of Mars, or selenography in the case of the Moon, or planetography for the general case), its features, and phenomena that take place on it. For something to fall into the domain of geography, it generally needs some spatial component that can be placed on a map, such as coordinates, place names, or addresses. This has led to geography being associated with cartography and place names. Although many geographers are trained in toponymy and cartology, this is not their main preoccupation. Geographers study the Earth's spatial and temporal distribution of phenomena, processes, and features as well as the interaction of humans and their environment. Because space and place affect a variety of topics, such as economics, health, climate, plants, and animals, geography is highly interdisciplinary. The interdisciplinary nature of the geographical approach depends on attentiveness to the relationships among physical and human phenomena and their spatial patterns.While narrowing down geography to a few key concepts is extremely challenging and subject to tremendous debate within the discipline, several sources have approached the topic. The 1st edition of the book "Key Concepts in Geography" broke down this into chapters focusing on "Space," "Place," "Time," "Scale," and "Landscape." The 2nd edition of the book expanded on these key concepts by adding "Environmental systems," "Social Systems," "Nature," "Globalization," "Development," and "Risk," demonstrating how challenging narrowing the field can be. Another approach used extensively in teaching geography is the Five themes of geography established by "Guidelines for Geographic Education: Elementary and Secondary Schools," published jointly by the National Council for Geographic Education and the Association of American Geographers in 1984. These themes are Location, place, relationships within places (often summarized as Human-Environment Interaction), movement, and regions. The five themes of geography have shaped how American education approaches the topic in the years since.

=== Space ===

Just as all phenomena exist in time and thus have a history, they also exist in space and have a geography.
For something to exist in the realm of geography, it must be able to be described spatially. Thus, space is the most fundamental concept at the foundation of geography. The concept is so basic, that geographers often have difficulty defining exactly what it is. Absolute space is the exact site, or spatial coordinates, of objects, persons, places, or phenomena under investigation. We exist in space. Absolute space leads to the view of the world as a photograph, with everything frozen in place when the coordinates were recorded. Today, geographers are trained to recognize the world as a dynamic space where all processes interact, rather than as a static image on a map.

=== Place ===