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Association of American Geographers
What is geography?
Geography is the science of place and space.
Geographers ask where things are located on the surface of the earth, why they
are located where they are, how places differ from one another, and how people
interact with the environment.
There are two main branches of geography: human geography and physical
geography. Human geography is concerned with the spatial aspects of human
existence - how people and their activity are distributed in space, how they use
and perceive space, and how they create and sustain the places that make up the
earth's surface. Human geographers work in the fields of urban and regional
planning, transportation, marketing, real estate, tourism, and international
business.
Physical geographers study patterns of climates, land forms, vegetation,
soils, and water. They forecast the weather, manage land and water resources,
and analyze and plan for forests, rangelands, and wetlands. Many human and
physical geographers have skills in cartography and Geographic Information
Systems (GIS).
Geographers also study the linkages between human activity and natural
systems. Geographers were, in fact, among the first scientists to sound the
alarm that human-induced changes to the environment were beginning to threaten
the balance of life itself. They are active in the study of global warming,
desertification, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, groundwater pollution, and
flooding.
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