Section 1.1:
Geography Matters:
Environments, Regions, Landscapes

Geography is a foundational discipline, inspired and informed by the long-standing human curiosity about our surroundings and how we are connected to the world. The term geography has its roots in the Greek word for “describing the Earth,” and this discipline is central to all cultures and civilizations as humans explore their world, seeking natural resources, commercial trade, military advantage, and scientific knowledge about diverse environments. In some ways, geography can be compared to history: Historians describe and explain what has happened over time, whereas geographers describe and explain the world’s spatial dimensions—how it differs from place to place.

Given the broad scope of geography, it is no surprise that geographers have different conceptual approaches to investigating the world. At the most basic level, geography can be broken into two complementary pursuits: physical geography and human geography. Physical geography examines climate, landforms, soils, vegetation, and hydrology. Human geography concentrates on the spatial analysis of economic, social, and cultural systems.

A physical geographer, for example, studying the Amazon Basin of Brazil, might be interested primarily in the ecological diversity of the tropical rainforest or the ways in which the destruction of that environment changes the local climate and hydrology. A human geographer, in contrast, would focus on the social and economic factors explaining the migration of settlers into the rainforest or the tensions and conflicts over resources between new migrants and indigenous peoples. Both human and physical geographers share an interest in human–environment dynamics, asking how humans transform the physical environment and how the physical environment influences human behaviors and practices. Thus, they learn that Amazon residents may depend on fish from the river and plants from the forest for food (Figure 1.1) but raise crops for export and grow products such as black pepper or soy, rather than wheat, because wheat does poorly in humid tropical lowlands.

Another basic division in geography is the focus on a specific topic or theme as opposed to analysis of a specific place or a region. The theme approach is termed thematic or systematic geography, while the regional approach is called regional geography. These two perspectives are complementary and by no means mutually exclusive. This textbook, for example, utilizes a regional scheme for its overall organization, dividing Earth into 12 separate world regions. It then presents each chapter thematically, examining the topics of environment, population and settlement, cultural differentiation, geopolitics, and socioeconomic development in a systematic way. In doing so, each chapter combines four kinds of geography: physical, human, thematic, and regional geography.

Areal Differences and Connections

As a spatial science, geography is charged with the study of Earth’s surface. A central theme of that responsibility is describing and explaining what distinguishes one piece of the world from another. These differences can be about the physical Earth, or about cultural features such as building designs, transportation systems, or language groups. Why is one part of Earth humid and lush, while another, just a few hundred kilometers away, is arid (Figure 1.2)? Or, why are people in one setting more affluent, while those in an adjoining area are poor?

Geographers are not only interested in place differences, but also in how these distinct localities are interconnected within and among each other. This concern for understanding integration and connectivity is fundamental to geographic analysis. For example, a geographer might ask how and why the economies of Singapore and the United States are closely intertwined, even though the two countries are situated in entirely different physical, cultural, and political environments. Questions of linkages over space are becoming increasingly important because of the new global connections inherent in globalization.

Scale: Global to Local 

All systematic inquiry considers scale, whatever the discipline. In biology, some scientists study the very small units such as cells, genes, or molecules, while others take a larger view, analyzing plants, animals, or whole ecosystems. Geographers also work at different scales. While one may concentrate on analyzing a local landscape—perhaps a single village in the Philippines—another might focus on the broader regional picture, examining patterns of trade throughout Southeast Asia. Other geographers do research on a still larger global scale, perhaps studying emerging trade networks between southern India’s center of information technology in Bengaluru and North America’s Silicon Valley, or investigating how the Indian monsoon might be connected to and affected by the Pacific Ocean’s El Niño phenomenon. But even though geographers may work at different scales, they never lose sight of the interactivity and connectivity among local, regional, and global scales. They will note the ways that the village in the Philippines might be linked to world trade patterns, or how the late arrival of the monsoon could affect agriculture and food supplies in Bangladesh.

The Cultural Landscape: Space into Place

Humans transform space into distinct places that are unique and heavily loaded with significance and symbolism. Place, as a geographic concept, is not just the characteristics of a location; it also encompasses the meaning that people give to such areas, as in the sense of place. This diverse fabric of placefulness is of great interest to geographers because it tells us much about the human condition throughout the world. Places can tell us how humans interact with nature and how they interact among themselves; where there are tensions, and where there is peace.

A common tool for the analysis of place is the concept of the cultural landscape, which is the tangible, material expression of human settlement, past and present. Thus, the cultural landscape visually reflects the most basic human needs—shelter, food, and work. Additionally, the cultural landscape acts to bring people together (or keep them apart) because it is a marker of cultural values, attitudes, history, and symbols. As cultures vary greatly around the world, so do cultural landscapes (Figure 1.3).

Geographers are also interested in spatial analysis and the concept of space. Space represents a more abstract, quantitative, and model-driven approach to understanding how objects and practices are connected to and impact each other. For example, a geographer interested in economic development may measure income inequality and examine how it differs from one location to another to better understand how poverty might be addressed. Similarly, a geographer interested in the impacts of climate change might model the effects of sea-level change on coastal settlements based on different warming scenarios. An appreciation for space and place is critical in understanding geographic change.

Regions: Formal and Functional

The human intellect seems driven to make sense of the universe by lumping phenomena together into categories that emphasize similarities. Biology has its taxa of living organisms, while history marks off eras and periods of time. Geography, too, organizes information about the world into units of spatial similarity called regions—each a contiguous bounded territory that shares one or many common characteristics.

Sometimes, the unifying threads of a region are physical, such as climate and vegetation, resulting in a regional designation like the Sahara Desert or Siberia. Other times, the threads are more complex, combining economic and social traits, as in the use of the term Rust Belt for parts of the northeastern United States that have lost industry and population. Think of a region as spatial shorthand that provides an area with some signature characteristic that sets it apart from surrounding areas. In addition to delimiting an area, generalizations about society or culture are often embedded in these regional labels.

Geographers designate two types of regions: formal and functional. A formal region is defined by some long-term aspect of physical form, such as a climate type or mountain range. The Rocky Mountains or the Amazon Basin are two examples of formal regions. Cultural features, such as the dominance of a particular language or religion, can also be used to define formal regions. Belgium can be divided into Flemish-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia. Many of the maps in this book denote formal regions. In contrast, a functional region is one where a certain activity (or cluster of activities) takes place. The earlier example of North America’s Rust Belt is such a region because it encompasses a triangle from Milwaukee to Cincinnati to Syracuse, where manufacturing dominated through the 1960s and then experienced steady decline as factories shut down and people left (Figure 1.4). Geographers designate functional regions to show changing regional associations, such as the spatial extent of a sports team’s fan base or the commuter shed of a major metropolitan area like Los Angeles. Delimiting such regions can be valuable for marketing, planning transportation, or thinking about the ways that people identify with an area.

Regions can be defined at various scales. In this book, we divide the world into 12 world regions based on formal characteristics such as physical features, language groups, and religious affiliations, but also relying on functional characteristics such as trade groups and regional associations (Figure 1.5). In Chapter 3, we will begin with a region familiar to most of our readers—North America—and then move on to Latin America, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and Southwest Asia, Europe, Eurasia, and the different regions of Asia, before concluding with Oceania. Each regional chapter employs the same five-part thematic structure—physical geography and environmental issues, population and settlement, cultural coherence and diversity, geopolitical framework, and economic and social development.

Some of these regional terms are in common use, such as Europe or East Asia. Understandings and characteristics of these regions have often evolved over centuries. Yet the boundaries of these regions do shift. For example, during the Cold War, it made sense to divide Europe into east and west, with eastern Europe closely linked to the former Soviet Union. With the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the expansion of the European Union in the 2000s, that divide became less meaningful. In this edition, the regions of Europe (Chapter 8) and Eurasia (Chapter 9, which includes Russia) reflect this long-standing west–east divide. Working at the world regional scale invariably creates regions that are not homogeneous, with some states fitting better into regional stereotypes than others. Yet understanding world regional formations is an important way to explore the impact of globalization on environments, cultures, political systems, and development.