Chapter 1: What is Human Geography?

Introduction
Human Geography: the study of human activities on the earth s surface Thinking Geographically: developing a spatial perspective; looking at the earth in terms of the relationships between various places Geography is everything!

Chapter 1 1

Person Eratostheros Ptolemy

Date 3 BCE Egyptian 2 CE

Significance

Coined term geography (means earth writing ) Wrote Guide to Geography, which established a global grid system and rough maps of the land masses Provided first description of the extent to which natural resources had been impacted by human actions Transcendentalist Believed that man s willful destruction of the environment could have potentially disastrous consequences Conservationist (Fertile Crescent) Argues that cultural landscapes, which are the products of complex interactions between humans and their environments, should be the fundamental focus of geographic inquiry Argues that all landscapes are altered by humans Paved the way for environmental or cultural ecology Claims that geography pulls from four distinct traditions: earth-science tradition, culture-environment tradition, locational tradition, area-analysis tradition

George Perkins Marsh

1864

Carl Saur

1925

W.D. Pattinson

1964

Term Remote Sensing

Definition/Use The process of capturing images of the earth s surface from airborne platforms, such as satellites or airplanes

Image

GPS (Global Positioning System)

Integrated network of satellites that orbit the earth, broadcasting location information to hand-held receivers on the earth s surface

GIS (Geographical Information Systems)

Family of software programs that allow geographers to map, analyze, and model spatial data; most include thematic layers which include things like roads, soils, land ownership, etc.

Regions
Region: an area larger than a single city that contains unifying social or physical characteristics
conceptual constructions Regional geography: the study of regions; Pattinson s areaanalysis tradition Perceptual Regions (or Vernacular Regions): exist in the minds of people (i.e. the Deep South) Sense of Place: people s attachment to what they perceive as their home

Regions
Regions are both places and processes Regions change throughout time, and can even move:
In the eighteenth century, the American West included upstate New York. In the early nineteenth century, the American West included Missouri and Ohio states that we now consider part of the Midwest. The term is not used as frequently now, but when it is, it refers to the Rocky Mountains and the West Coast.

Regions
Insert image (pg. 64)

Synthesizing Data
Qualitative Data: often associated with cultural or regional geography because this data tends to be more unique to and descriptive of places; collected through interviews, interpretations, and observations Quantitative Data: numerical data; used frequently in economic, political, and population geography (hard data) Idiographic: facts or features that are unique to a particular place or region Nomothetic: concepts which are universally applicable

Possible Open Response

How has tourism both increased and decreased regional landscape distinctiveness? Why are countries sometimes included in certain regions, but other times may not be included?