It’s Geography Awareness Week! What IS Geography? Posted on November 14th, 2011 by

Astronaut photograph of the Midwest at night showing city lights, the aurora borealis, and a storm in the east. Aquired Sept. 29, 2011 by NASA's Earth Observatory. (See http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=76201 for more information.)

 

We’re celebrating Geography Awareness Week at Gustavus!

So what is Geography and what do Geographers study?

Geography is a lot more than identifying capitals and countries on maps! Geographers study places, global change, and human-environment interactions in order to develop a broad, integrated understanding of the earth as the home of humanity. Geographers bridge the social and natural sciences to examine critical issues such as environmental degradation, economic development, globalization, migration, urbanization, population growth, natural hazards, climate change, and land-use change. The study of geography is particularly relevant to understanding the diversity of places and regions, the relations between societies and the natural environment, and the relationships between global and local processes.

Website-of-the-Day for Monday: NASA’s Earth Observatory “Image of the Day

 

 


One Comment

  1. Great post!

    Even though geography involves more than just maps, I thought I would share a couple of great resources to learn countries and capitals in various languages:

    The first is an online tool I use with my Spanish 102 class: http://www.xtec.cat/~ealonso/flash/flashmaps.htm
    This is an online tool in Flash which has many different map exercises. Learn in English, French, Spanish, Italian, and some other languages spoken in Spain.

    Another great tool is http://www.seterra.net/
    You need some version of Windows for this program, but it is also very good and quite powerful. (Many languages as well!)