Introduction to Geography
What in the World is Geography?
Now you have had a chance to read the first
couple of chapters of the textbook. You
may be wondering what geography is all
about.
The word “Geography” is from Greek (as so
many other words!). It has two parts:
Geo = the Earth
Graph = to describe
Describing the earth was for a long time what
geographers did, but they do a lot more today, and
that also makes the whole discipline more fun.
Below are two somewhat more formal definitions of geography
(two ways of looking at it):
• It studies how things differ between different places and why
they are different
or the “why of where”
• It studies human activity, the natural environment, and the
relationship between the two
Geographers may be interested in questions such as
• Why is Las Vegas, Nevada where it is, and why did the
settlement evolve on this site?
• Why is the temperature in Las Vegas usually so high?
Obviously geographers already know the answers. Do you know
them?
Speaking of differences, the earth surface is
absolutely fascinating and diverse
From big cities like New York,
Manhattan, NY
Beijing
To rural areas like this farm in the U.S.
Or this rural area in Southwest China
Or picturesque rural India,
Things are just very different!
Then there are somewhat artificial places like Las Vegas
Or futuristic places like Dubai, the UAE
Geographers are
interested in
explaining those
differences and
why what we see
is where it is.
Burj Khalifa
- The highest
tower in the
world
Do you know
where it is?
Geographers are also interested in cultural differences, such
as why the Hindus consider the Ganges (or Ganga) a holy
river, and bathe and bury their dead in it…. (see also the
textbook cover photos)
Why different denominations tend
to concentrate in certain areas in
North America
Or why people in different parts of the United States call
the same stuff by different names: pop, soda, coke, etc.
• www.popvssoda.com
Americans are not paying enough attention to geography.
The National Geographical Society did a survey in 2002:
Among 18- to 24- year-olds given maps
• 11% could not find the United States
• 49% could not find New York
• 76% could not find Saudi Arabia
• 83% could not find Afghanistan
• 87% could not find Iraq
This prompted the NGS president to say
“If our young people can’t find places on a map and lack
awareness of current events, how can they understand the world’s
cultural, economic and natural resource issues that confront us?”
John Fahey (President of the NGS)
The NGS did basically the same survey again in 2006 to
see if things had changed:
Among 18- to 24- year-olds
• 6 in 10 couldn’t find Iraq or Saudi Arabia on a Middle East
map
• 75% couldn’t locate Israel
• 1/3 couldn’t find Louisiana on a U.S. map
• 88% could not find Afghanistan on a map of Asia
• “Geography is Greek to young Americans”
• On the other hand, 7 in 10 correctly located China on a
map!
Shortly after that, a Miss Teen USA contestant from South Carolina was
asked to comment on this. It is not good. You can watch it at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww.
In an October 2012 talk at Kansas State University,
former senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin voiced
concern over the lack of knowledge that not only the
average U.S. citizen, but also the average U.S.
politician, has of other countries.
He went so far as to recommend politicians be assigned
specific regions to study in order to understand the
culture.
Well, he is essentially
referring to geography!
Geography Sometimes Can be a MillionDollar Question:
Some years ago, the TV show “Who Wants to be a
Millionaire” had this last question:
Which of the following countries is completely
surrounded by another country?
A. Egypt
B. Lesotho
C. Austria
D. Nepal
Which is the correct answer?
BTW, the contestant got it right and won a million $$!
You can
verify
your
answer on
this map!
But geography can also help make better decisions
in more important areas like war and conflict
resolution.
Had the US military
considered Iraq’s
complicated ethnic
geography, we
could have avoided
some of the
problems in the
war.
Maybe that is why Prince William majored in
geography in college, not once but twice (BA and MA)
That’s where he met his wife, Kate Middleton
Studying geography can be hard. Look what it did to William
………….’s hair (just kidding)
The picture to the left
shows the senior author of
our textbook. He is
originally from the
Netherlands. He once
commented on the
importance of geography:
Harm de Blij
“Geography can bring to
our lives the insights that
would be otherwise not
obtainable”
- H de Blij
What sets geography apart from other disciplines?
Below are five questions at the core of the geographic
way of viewing the world
•
•
•
•
Where is a place located? - Location
What makes a place special?
Relationships b/w humans and environment?
What are the patterns of movement?
– People, commodities, and information
• How can the place be divided into regions for study?
The highlighted words constitute the five themes in geography.
We can use the five themes to describe, for
example, the geography of Manhattan, KS
Location: including
• Absolute Location
Refers to the longitude and latitude of a place
Manhattan: 39.11°N, 96.34°W
Compare: Salina: 38.50°N, 97.37°W
• Relative Location
Location relative to other places
e.g., Manhattan is about 135 miles from Kansas City
(or about a two-hour drive)
Absolute location on earth uses latitude
and longitude
Place: Here we focus on
• Physical/Environmental characteristics
– Landforms
– Climate
– Flora and fauna
– etc.
Is Kansas flatter than a pancake?
(You can find the article on the Internet)
• Human Characteristics, such as
– Economy
– Who live there
– Culture (language, religion, etc.)
Human-Environment Relations/Interaction
We examine things like:
How do people use resources in Manhattan?
What kind of environmental impact (including
carbon footprint)
etc.
Movement
This theme refers to the movement of people,
goods, and information between Manhattan and
other places in the US and in the world. It affects
the type of place Manhattan is.
Finally, we will see if we can divide the city into some subregions that possess more or less similar characteristics, for
example, the downtown area, Aggieville, the west side, etc.…
Studying the geography of the world is not
much different.
We may divide the world into 12 realms:
1. Europe
2. Russia
3.North America
4. Middle America
5. South America
6. North Africa / SW
Asia
7. Subsaharan Africa
8. South Asia
9. East Asia
10. Southeast Asia
11. Australia and New
Zealand
12. The Pacific Realm
That is what our textbook did. Each realm got a chapter
in the book. You can see the 5 themes in each.
•Keep in mind the realms are dynamic (they change over
time), and
•Transition zones, not sharp boundaries, exist b/w geog
realms.
For example, there is a transition zone b/w North and
Middel America:
Transition zones are marked by a gradual shift (rather than
a sharp break) in the characteristics that distinguish
neighboring realms
The nature of geography can also be seen by
the classification system it uses:
Biologists
Taxonomy: kingdom, phylum,
Class, order, family, genus,
species
Geologists
3 Major groups of rocks,
Subsidiary, groups, geological time
Historians
Eras, ages, periods
Geographers
Geographic Realms and/or
Regions based on sets of spatial
criteria
Geography has always been important, but I
would argue that it is becoming more important
because the world is getting increasingly
 Integrated
 Interconnected
 Interdependent
We now live in “the Age of Globalization” or,
some would say, a “global village”.
National economies are connected in myriad ways:
trade, transnational business operations, tourism,...
For example, the production of iPOD and iPhone is an
international operation, with the technology developed in
the U.S. and elsewhere, and actual devices produced in
China by a Taiwanese company called Foxconn.
Foxconn
Many American companies sell products to other countries but
also buy things from them.
Do you know Americans drink more than 800 million gallons of
imported beer annually? This map shows where the beer is from.
One implication of this integrated
world is:
What happens elsewhere will affect our
lives directly or indirectly
I can give many examples to illustrate this.
Example 1
Oil Production in the Middle East affects how
much we pay for gas.
We have experienced that several times in
recent years.
Example 2
Food production/demand in China and India
has been blamed for higher food prices in
recent years.
American economist Lester Brown
warned us about that years ago in his book
titled Who will feed China?
Example 3
In our tightly connected world, pollution
and infectious disease anywhere is a
threat to public health everywhere.
SARS, Avian flu, HIV/AIDS, H1N1, ...
The interdependent nature of the world
means that in order to understand
ourselves, we need to understand
others as well.
Just as poet T.S. Eliot said:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
T.S. Eliot
Another implication of the interdependent
world is “made in America” means very
little
• “Buy American” is just rhetoric, a sales pitch.
• Many American brand products are made
overseas
• Many foreign products are actually made in
the U.S. by American workers
e.g. Toyotas in Kentucky and California
This picture shows Toyota employees in Georgetown, Ky,
examine production stats.
The US Auto Industry has changed, with many foreign car
makers operating in the Midwest and southern states.
US Auto Plant Employees, 2006
• Geography can help us understand
the interconnected and
interdependent character of our
lives. It therefore plays a crucial role
in understanding the cultures and
countries of our world.
• Hopefully this course will do
something toward that.
This is a logo designed by a company called
ESRI that focuses on the geographic information
Systems technology. It makes a good point.