Barrons Ch. 1 Outline

History and Development of the Discipline
• Early cartographers
 3rd C. BC Eratosthenes calculated the earth’s circumference
 2nd C. AD Ptolemy rough maps and landmasses
 1400s explorers (Columbus & Magellan)
 18th-20th C. geography became a respect field of study and scholars began to synthesize knowledge.
• Darwin’s theory of evolution
• Wegner’s theory of continental drift
• 1864—George Perkins Marsh wrote Man and Nature
• 1925—Carl Sauer proposed that cultural landscapes be the focus of geographic inquiry which began environmental geography and cultural ecology
• 1960s—quantitative revolution
o Empirical measurements
o Hypothesis testing
o Mathematical models
o Computer programs
• 1970s—with more complex computers and technology we have
o Remote sensing
o Global Positioning System (satellites)
o Geographical Information Systems (software programs)

• Geography Today
 Broadly defined as “the study of human activities on the earth’s surface”
• Population
• Cultural
• Economic
• Urban
• Agricultural
• Political
 Today’s focus is on environmental geography
• How humans have altered the earth
• Are our actions sustainable?


• Thinking Geographically
 Developing a spatial perspective
• Looking at relationship between places
o Why do certain phenomena occur in certain places?
o How do places interact economically, socially, and culturally?
o Why are places alike or different?
 Appreciation of scale
• Ratio between distance on a map and distance on earth’s surface
• Looking at the local and the global
o How each affects the other
• Looking at the neighborhood, city, metro, and region (small to large)
o Regions
 Defined as an area that contains some type of unifying social or physical characteristics
• Functional (Nodal) Regions
o Specific characteristics
o San Francisco Bay area (all depend on SF)
• Formal
o Uniform specific characteristics
o Rolling hills
o Cultural similarities (practice same religion)
• Vernacular (Perceptual) Regions
o Exists in people’s minds
 The Deep South
 Southern accent
 Southern Baptist
 Fried food
o Sense of Place – People’s attachment to these regions
o US has 10 major ones
 The Northwest
 West Coast
 Inter-Mountain West
 Southwest
 Great Plains
 Midwest
 South
 New England
 Mid-Atlantic
 South Florida
• Understand and synthesize various types of data
o Qualitative data
 Associated with culture or region
 Non-mathematical
 Interviews
 Empirical observation
 Interpretation of texts, art, maps, etc.
o Quantitative
 Uses math
 Measures
 Statistical
o Idiographic
 Uniqueness of particular region
o Nomothetic
 Universally applicable


• Applications of Geography
 Environmental studies
• Global warming
• Climate change
 Human conflict
 Population predictions