Introduction To Human
Geography
By: Kinga Wolska, Charlie Pritscher, and Michael
Cerami
What Is Human Geography?
• It is the study that focuses on how people make
places, how we organize space and society, how
we interact with other people in places and
across space, and how we make sense of others
and ourselves in our locality, region, and world.
Important Terms
 Globalization- Set of processes that are increasing in interactions,
deepening relationships, and heightening interdependence without
regard to country borders.
 Spatial Distribution- Physical location of geographic phenomena across a
place.
 Pattern- the design of a spatial distribution, for example, scattered or
concentrated.
The Five Themes
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1) Location
2) Human-Environment Interaction
3) Region
4) Place
5) Movement
Human-Environment
Interactions
-Spatial Perspective: used for the study of a multitude of
phenomena, such as anything from elections, folk
music, and ethnic neighborhoods.
• -This plays a big role in the relationship among
phenomena in individual places and the relationship
between humans and the physical world.
Location
-How the geographical position of people and
things on the Earth’s surface affects what
happens and why.
- Theory: Seeks answers such as, Why are
villages, towns and cities spaced the way
they are?
Locations of
Different Wal-Marts
Place
-All places have unique human and physical
characteristics.
-Sense of place: remembering important events, or labeling
a place with certain character.
-Perceptions of places: never been to a place,
remembering it by books, movies, etc.
Region
-Features are usually concentrated in particular areas,
because phenomena are not evenly distributed.
-Fieldwork, quantitative, and qualitative methods used to
develop descriptions of these different areas.
Formal Region: People share cultural traits,
uniform region, and same in one or more
phenomena. Ex. Tibet
Functional Region: people function together
socially, politically, and economically. Ex.
San Francisco
Perceptual Region: designed to help people
understand the nature of a phenomena in a
person’s mind. Ex. The Southern region of
the U.S.
Movement
-The mobility of people, goods, and ideas across the
surface of a planet.
-Interconnectedness of places
-Spatial interaction between places depends on:
• Distance
• Accessibility
• Connectivity
Landscape of a Place
•
The material character of a place, complex of natural features, and
human structures.
• Cultural landscape: visible imprint of human activity on the
landscape.
• Sequent occupance: a society leaving their cultural imprints on a
place.
Medical Geography
• Mapping the distribution of a disease.
• Pandemic: a worldwide outbreak of
disease. Ex: AIDS
• Epidemic: Regional outbreak of disease.
Ex: Bubonic Plague
• 1854, Dr. John Snow mapped cases of
cholera.
Types of Maps
-Cartography: the art and science of making maps.
Reference map-location of places and geographical features.
More Types of Maps
-Thematic map-tells a story or shows
movement.
-Mental map-map a person carries in their
mind of a place they have been to.
Maps Continued
• Absolute location: determined by latitude and longitude.
• Relative location: describes a place in relation to other human and
physical features.
• Global positioning system, or GPS, is satellite based, and locates
places very accurately.
• Activity space: used when you have a mental map. It is the places a
person travels to routinely.
• Remote sensing: Method of collecting information by using
instruments (satellites, aircraft) that are physically distant from the
area or object of study.
Scale
Scale has two meanings:
1) Distance on a map compared to the
distance on Earth.
2) Territorial extent of something
Culture
-Location decisions, patterns, and landscape are influenced
by culture.
-Music, routine habits, literature, food, and arts are all parts
of a culture. Ex. Indian culture 
Culture Continued
**Cultural Trait: a single attribute of a culture. Ex.
Wearing a turban in Muslim society.
**Cultural Complex: a combination of cultural
traits.
**Cultural Hearth: place of origin of a major
culture.
**Independent invention: Trait with many hearths
that developed independent of each other.
Diffusion
The movement of people, goods, and ideas across space
.
• Culture diffusion- the process of the spread of an idea or
innovation from its hearth to another area.
-Carl Sauer wrote Agricultural Origins and Dispersals, in which he
traced the diffusion of agricultural practices from hearths.
Expansion Diffusion- an innovation or idea
develops in a hearth and diffuses outward.
Ex. Spread of Islam
• Contagious Diffusion-Expansion
diffusion in which all adjacent individuals
are affected. Ex. Disease, new fashion.
Hierarchical Diffusion-Diffusion only to
those who are susceptible to, or adopting
to, what is being diffused. Ex. Birkenstock
Sandals.
• Stimulus diffusion-adaption is created as
a result of introduction of a cultural trait
from another place. Ex. Veggie burgers in
India.
Diffusion Continued
• Relocation Diffusion- Movement of individuals who carry
and new idea or innovation to a place.
-Time Distance Decay- The farther a place is from a hearth,
the less likely it is to adopt a new idea.
-Cultural Barriers-ideas unacceptable or adoptable in a
certain areas because of prevailing attitudes.
Determinism and Possiblism
• Environmental Determinism: Human behavior is
strongly affected by the physical environment.
-climate is a critical factor
• Possibilism: human decision making, and not the
environment, is the crucial factor in cultural
development.
Four Traditions Of Geography
* Created by W.D. Pattison *
1) Spatial Tradition: location; what you see.
2) Area Studies:How an area has affect on
surrounding areas.
3) Man-land: how man and land affect each
other.
4) Earth Science: weather, natural disasters, dirt,
water.
THE END
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