Geography

Physical mapmundi.

The geography (from the Latin geographĭa, and this from the Greek γεωγραφία [ geōgraphía], literally translated as "description of the earth") is the discipline that deals with the study, description or graphic representation of the Earth. In a broad sense, it is the science that studies the terrestrial surface, the societies that inhabit it and the territories, landscapes, places or regions that form it when related to each other.

The first author to use the word geography was Eratosthenes (276-194 BC) in a work now lost. However, the foundation of geography is attributed to the also considered father of history, Herodotus (484-420 BC). For the Greeks it is the rational description of the Earth and, particularly for Strabo, it is the study of the different human regions as a basis for the formation of the politician.

There are four historical traditions in geographic research, which are: the spatial analysis of natural and human phenomena, the studies of the territory (from the place to the region), the study of the relationship between man and his environment, and Earth science research.

Modern geography is a discipline whose primary objective is the explanation of a whole series of natural and social phenomena and does not refer only to the location of these phenomena, but also studies how they are and how they have changed to become what they are.

Geography is divided into two main branches: regional geography and general geography.

Regional geography studies the different subdivisions of the terrestrial space in countries, states and regions at different scales of detail, from the geographical analysis of a small mountain valley, to the broad regional study of counties, countries, nations or states, and even multinational spaces. While general geography is divided into two large branches: physical geography and human geography:

• Human geography deals with the study of people and their communities, cultures, economy and interactions with the environment through the study of their relationships with space and place and through it.
• Physical geography deals with the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment such as the atmosphere, the hydroosphere and the geosphere.

The four historical traditions in geographic research are: spatial analysis of natural and human phenomena, area studies of places and regions, studies of human-land relations, and Earth sciences. Geography has been called "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human sciences and the physical sciences."

History

This section is an extract from Geography History.[chuckles]edit]

Portrait of Eratosthenes, who was the first to coin the term "geography".

Representation of the Earth extracted from the Nuzhat al-mushtāq fi'khtirāq al-āfāq or Tabula Rogeriana, the most remarkable work of Al-Idrisi.

The geographerJohannes Vermeer.

Geographical science is one of the oldest disciplines of humanity, but it must also be noted that it has experienced very complex development throughout its history. Basically, this evolution can be divided into two large periods, for example: a premodern period beginning in Greece, and a modern period from the century.XIX where its university institutionalization occurs, which had a huge influence on its development.

The ancient Greeks were the first to accumulate and systematize their knowledge, denouncing them with the title of "geographics", thus founding a new discipline. Strabon, Eratosthenes and Claudio Ptolomeo, were the ones who "classically" coined the term beginning to develop theories and practices of what was understood at that time by geography. The Romans continued their work by adding a new way of thinking it based on data collection and techniques, Pomponio Mela was one of them.

Thus, as it has been said, the geography is mostly aimed at the scope and needs of the government. But it is also that most of the ethical and political philosophy revolves around the government. See the test: we distinguish the differences between political regimes based on their types of government, establishing a type that is the monarchy, which we also call royalty, another that is the aristocracy, and a third, democracy. We also think that there are other political regimes, which we call with the same denomination, as if they derived from the principle of specific peculiarity: in one of them, in fact, it is law the command of the king, and in another the aristocrats and in the other, the people. And it is that the law is what characterizes and configures the political regime, and that is why some also came to say that the just is what suits the strongest. Thus, if political philosophy revolves mostly around the rulers, and if the geography also revolves around the needs of the government, the latter will present some superiority in this regard. But this superiority has practical projection.

Strabon, GeographyBook I

During what is usually known as the Middle Ages in Europe there was a significant development of discipline, if it is considered that cartography is a technical discipline by itself. However, we must not forget that Geography in Europe had been associated with what is now understood as cartography, the basis of modern Geomatics, through which we understand what discipline meant to them in the century.XVIII. Because of the requirements proper to the processes of the European colonization of America and Africa, the Cartography and Geography of the time were practically the same discipline. However, in the Arab world history is different for the time, Al-Idrisi and Ibn Jaldún appropriated and deepened the Greek-Roman geographical knowledge by consolidating a vision of the world that does not fit the standards of what is known as the Middle Ages, but they had their own way of producing it and meaning it. The Chinese also developed for the interior of their territory a geographical knowledge that would allow them to have a fierce control of it.

In an extremely broad sense it could be said that the Arab, Christian and Chinese geographical thought shared the fact of being based on a deterministic thought, with a strong inclination to the study of nature, with the saving that in the Arab world there was no rigid distinction between society and nature. They also shared considering the study of the territory on which human activities were carried out as a unit with which they considered the cycles of nature. That thought was strongly determined by the theological beliefs and ideas of its developers, there were, for example, representations of the surface of the earth in a circular way, of the world known to the cultures of that time (Europe, Asia and the northern part of Africa). Medieval Europe did not know developments but in the deepening of the most precise calculations, Cosmas Indicopleustes was one of the few "medieval" geographers—although it should be noted that it was a very early development of the Middle Ages in the centuryVI— despite the endorsement of Ptolomeo's geocentric idea. Idea that would not change but even the events that occurred in Europe known as scientific revolution that would begin with the heliocentric theory of Nicolas Copernicus, the phenomenon of terrestrial rotation and the idea of an Earth in a spherical way of Galileo Galilei, crowned with what is commonly known as the law of universal gravitation of Isaac Newton, the moment of the birth of modern physics and the mattization of the sciences that study to nature. This would not have been possible without the Conquest of the Americas and the slave trade of Africa, and the subsequent conquest of Oceania. These processes of Spanish Colonization of America have a profound impact on the Geography, which, for its part, undergone profound changes, because it was one of the most widely used knowledge in the period for European exploration of the world. The idea of discipline was then masterfully exposed by Johannes Vermeer in his painting The geographer, which also by these same conquest processes would become the dominant vision of discipline until the beginning of the centuryXX..

The centuryXV represents a radical change in the conditions of development of geographical knowledge. Classical knowledge was recovered and new territories and peoples were also known. Very different authors intervene in the descriptive work of these new territories. The following model is the one provided by Estrabón, whose work Geographiká it is rediscovered and reedited. At the same time it was necessary to modify also the cartographic image of the world. Juan de la Cosa is the first to collect on its map the well-known American lands of the Caribbean area (1500). In addition, Ptolomeo's work is corrected and expanded and subsequently overcome by the Atlas of Mercator (1595) which also found new solutions to the problem of projecting the Earth's spherical surface on a flat surface.

In the centuryXVII, geography took a prominent place in the scientific revolution that laid the foundations of modern science. Geography as a science that dealt with the description and cartographic representation of the Earth was part of mathematics. It was a mixed mathematical science like astronomy or optics. La General Geography explaining the properties of the Earth by B. Varenio published in 1650 represents this conception very well. According to Varenio, geography is "the mixed mathematical science that explains the properties of the Earth and its parts". Varenio divided the Geography into General and Special, studying the first Earth as a physical and celestial body and the second "constitution of each of the regions". In each region Varenio considered three types of properties: the celestials (the distance from the place from Ecuador and from the pole, the inclination of the movement of the stars on the horizon in the place, the duration of the longest and shortest day...), the terrestrials (limits, mountains, waters, jungles and deserts, animals...) and humans (works and techniques of the region, customs, forms of expression, cities...).

Throughout the centuryXVIII the development of the specialized sciences of the Earth, which resulted in a loss of content for geography as a general science. Geology, botany and chemistry study problems that were previously the subject of general geography. At the same time, the increase in the complexity of cartographic tasks led to the emergence of specialized professional corporations, so geodesy and cartography are also configured as independent disciplines. Geography, in short, gradually distances itself from mathematical disciplines and the geographer is identified with the chorographic or description tasks of countries and regions.

It should be noted however that throughout the centuryXIX, this discipline was consolidated as a fundamental part of the development of national states, achieving institutionalization in a large number of European universities, being recognized even until the end of the centuryXX.as one of the most important disciplines for the basic education of any citizen. The reason for this is due to the role it would play in building ideas such as border, country or nationality. The most recognized geographers of the time would be Bernhardus Varenius, who would be one of the most important predecessors of modern geography, like Mikhail Lomonosov, or for some the naturalist and critical of the geography of his time Alexander von Humboldt, as well as the also pedagogue Karl Ritter. Some of the most outstanding geographers of the centuryXIX were Friedrich Ratzel, who is best known for the influence he would have on the ideas of Nazi Germany, Elisée Reclus who worked on the field of human geography, William Morris Davis, one of the precursors of Geomorphology, the also edaphologist Vasily Dokuchaev, Alfred Russel Wallace, one of the precursors of the theories of evolution, the climatologist Wladimir Peter Köppen,

For its part, in the middle of the centuryXX. a deep break with the geography of the century would occurXIXwhich is still in dispute, since what happened in the words of Immanuel Kant could be called a Copernican twist, emphasizing the importance of the subject (society or individual) for the understanding of the world in consideration of the object (nature or individual), where there is empirical recognition that society is the one who directs that process, which can only be thought from the relationship of societies with the domestication and transformation specifically. This change of perspective has laid the foundation for what is known as the spatial turn of social sciences, focusing mainly on the development of the Study of Geographical Names (planned by cultural studies emanated from criticism of orientalism), critical geography (for the Hispanic world) or radical (in the Anglo-Saxon world), or postmodern geography. In addition, geography now has strong links with related disciplines such as Sociology, Economics or History. Between the geographers of the centuryXX. David Harvey, Neil Smith, Milton Santos, Yves Lacoste, Horacio Capel, Richard Hartshorne, Ellen Churchill Semple, Doreen Massey Walter Christaller, Torsten Hägerstrand, Carl Sauer, Peter Hall, Philippe Pinchemel, Brian Joe Lobley Berry, Yi-Fu Tuan or Maria Dolors García Ramón, all of them with very different positions and positions.

At the beginning of the centuryXXIThe current situation of Geography is ambivalent. On the one hand, it seems evident that the visibility of Geography as an academic discipline has decreased at the popular level. These changes are affecting the conception of discipline. In the contemporary way of understanding discipline is human freedom (with strong influence of German Idealism). There is now a deep debate in discipline, among the defenders of regional quantitative geography, where a rather descriptive Geography is defended, and the defenders of radical, humanistic and post-modern geography, which appeal for a more critical discipline against the facts manifested by the crisis of capitalism and, especially, the collapse of socialist governments on a global scale. The displacement of different educational institutions in the world of Geography closer to Earth Sciences or social sciences reveals a slow but progressive systematic change in discipline.

Contemporary Geography

Starting in the fifties of the XX century, there was an intense debate in the discipline, as a result of the catastrophic events of the Second World War, where the role of geography was questioned, which by tradition had been inclined to the interests of the State since its origins by focusing on the slogan of Strabo because its knowledge was oriented to that end.

Epistemology of geography

It is the study on the origins and senses of the theoretical approaches of the discipline.

Theoretical and current positions of contemporary geography

Geography, by encompassing the Social Sciences in its analysis, shares a series of theoretical positions and postures with other disciplines such as Sociology, History or Economics. These positions intersect with the analyzes that are carried out in the Natural Sciences, for the study of the physical and biological components of the geographical space, which are critically analyzed through the various positions.

Feminist Geographies

Decolonial geographies

Marxist Geographies

Postcolonial Geographies

Classical structure of Geography

Geography during classical Greek times was a discipline with a single objective, the description and study of the earth's surface. It was nourished by the stories of travelers who, thanks to navigation and exploration, came to have a fairly approximate idea of the ecumene, that is, of the world known in those times and was in charge of describing and cataloging or enumerating the location of natural accidents and of the different peoples that were on the earth's surface. But geographical knowledge, over time, gave rise to the division of geography into two branches that form the first great dichotomy of science, as Juan Vilá Valentí points out. () These two branches are General Geography and Special Geography, the latter also called, at different times, chorological geography, that is, geography of places and regional geography, which It was the term that finally prevailed and that both cover the double objective of the study of said science. Following Vilá Valentí's approaches, these two branches gave way to new divisions, as is the case with general geography, whose field of study gave rise to a new dichotomy: physical geography and human geography.

Thus, based on what was thought in the XIX century, that the ways of thinking about the relationship between society and nature required a separate and specialized approach, geography used to be divided into two major branches: general geography and regional geography. It is important to point out that it is essential to put it on the table since it is still one of the main ways of approaching the discipline, since it is a State knowledge as highlighted by Yves Lacoste in his work Geography, a weapon of war, which continues to be used by national institutions around the world, despite the fact that in specialized academic circles it is often recognized as obsolete. In the classical division, general geography used to be thought of as analytical, since it studied physical and human facts individually, while regional geography was considered synthetic, dealing with particular land systems without distinction between "physical" and "human". However, the articulation between both branches has traditionally been a topic of debate within geography that changed dramatically with the debates that occurred in the second half of the century XX.

General geography

General geography presents a set of different types of subdisciplines configured around its own object, with strong links with their respective auxiliary sciences and with variable degrees of communication with each other. It is a study of a multitude of specific sciences that are related to each other by the object of study (our planet, especially the concepts and processes that occur on the earth's surface). For methodological reasons derived from the broad field of study that it develops, it is subdivided into two large branches: human geography and physical geography.

Human Geography

Human geography is the social science focused on the study of societies and their territories; He also studies the human being and his reactions to his environment both in the static aspect of his organization, and in the dynamic of the changes they experience. Human geography contains several divisions:

Population geography

Geography of the population: studies the patterns and processes involved in the study of the population of the different spaces; its distribution, its natural dynamism and migratory movements, as well as demographic problems (rural depopulation or rural exodus, international migratory flows, aging, among others.). Its related science is demography. And the difference between the two sciences is centered on a distinction of point of view: demography studies the population from the perspective of statistics, while population geography studies it taking into account the spatial distribution of the population and its characteristics.

Rural geography

Rural geography: studies the rural world and rural spaces, the economic activities that are carried out in them (agriculture, livestock, tourism), the types of settlement and the problems of these areas (depopulation, economic problems, problems environmental, etc.). As related sciences, agronomy, rural sociology and economics can be mentioned.

Urban geography

Urban geography: studies cities and urban regions, their morphology (plan, structure, building, sectors, ecological processes), their socioeconomic characteristics, their changes and problems. As related sciences are urban planning and urban sociology.

Medical Geography

Medical geography: studies the effects of the environment on people's health and the geographical distribution of diseases, also including the study of environmental factors that influence their spread (epidemics, pandemics, endemics). His related science is medicine.

Geography of transport

Transportation geography: deals with transportation systems as part of the organization of geographic spaces. His main topics of study are the configuration and characteristics of transport networks, the flows that occur on these networks and problems related to transport, such as congestion, pollution, its role in the socioeconomic development of geographic spaces in that are integrated, etc. As related disciplines, the history of transport and the economics of transport can be cited.

Economic Geography

Economic geography: studies the economic activities that take place in different areas, the location of economic activities and economic problems (unequal geographical development, globalization, relocation of activities, etc.). For Krugman it is the "branch of economics" about the "location of production in space". Its related disciplines are regional economics and economic history. It encompasses more specialized subdisciplines such as:

• Industrial Geography: centered on spaces with strong industrial content, its characteristics, changes and problems.

• Geography of the services: studies the tertiary activities that take place in the different spaces.

• Tourist Geography: studies the tourist potential of the territories, the patterns of development and changes of tourism, the models of tourism development and the problems of these spaces.

Political geography

Political geography: studies politics in various spaces, the organization and characteristics of states (borders, territorial disputes, capital status, political-administrative structure, electoral system, etc.) and international relations of conflict or domination. Political science, sociology and political history are presented as related sciences.

Social Geography

Social geography: focuses on various social aspects of the spaces studied such as social divisions, education, poverty, gender relations, ethnicity, etc.

Geography of aging

Geography of aging or gerontological geography: analyzes the socio-spatial implications of population aging based on understanding the relationships between the physical-social environment and the elderly, at different scales, micro (housing), meso (neighborhood) and macro (city, region, country), etc. The contribution of aging geographers, such as Graham D. Rowles, are contributing to environmental gerontology by understanding the environmental aspects of gerontology in developed and developing countries.

Cultural Geography

Cultural geography: studies the different cultures, the diffusion of cultural elements, cultural representations, cultural landscapes, as well as the transformations that cultures cause in their environment. The related science par excellence of cultural geography has been anthropology.

Historical geography

Historical geography: studies the characteristics and evolution of historical spaces, their morphology and territorial organization as well as their social configuration. It has as a science related to history.

Physical Geography

Physical geography (known at one time as physiography, a term now rarely used) is the branch of geography that systematically and spatially studies the terrestrial surface considered as a whole and, specifically, the natural geographic space. Physical geography is concerned, according to Strahler, with processes that are the result of two great energy flows: the flow of solar radiation that drives surface temperatures together with fluid movements, and the flow of heat from the ground. interior of the Earth that manifests itself in the materials of the upper strata of the earth's crust. These flows interact on the earth's surface, which is the field of the physical geographer.

Biogeography.

Thus, physical geography is the branch of geography that studies the physical environment. The main elements that structure the physical environment correspond to the relief, terrestrial waters, climate, vegetation, fauna and soil; and the study of each of these has given rise to various Earth sciences, among which are:

Climatology

• Climatology deals with the study of climate, which is the long-term behavior of the atmosphere in a given geographical location, and should not be confused with meteorology, which studies short-term atmospheric time. It is closely related to meteorology that specifically studies atmospheric time from a physical point of view. More specialized sub-discipline:
  • Analytical weather.
  • Synoptic weather. The synoptic adjective refers specifically to the atmospheric data corresponding to a fairly large surface (one million km2 or more) so this branch is dedicated to the determination of large climatic groups in broad sectors of the earth's surface.
  • Topoclimatology (climatology of a specific place).
  • Urban climate, which studies urban climate (refers to locally modified climates for urban activities).
  • Agroclimatology, which studies the climate in relation to its characteristics that affect the development of crops.

Geomorphology

• Geomorphology studies in a descriptive and explanatory way the Earth's relief, which is the result of a dynamic balance—which evolves in time—between constructive and destructive processes, dynamic that is known generically as a geographical cycle, theory proposed by William Morris Davis. An important work in this field is that of Jean Tricart The Epidermis of the Earthwhose title makes us see its conception of geomorphology as a branch of the general geographical study of the Earth. The term geomorphology comes from the Greek language: ↓ηος, i.e. geos (Earth), μορφ μος or morphos (form) and λόγος, logos (study, knowledge), i.e. study of the forms of relief. Encloba more specialized subdisciplinaries such as:
  • La river geomorphology is responsible for the study of the forms caused by the river dynamics itself: erosion, transport and sedimentation.
  • La geomorphology of slopes it is the one that studies the phenomena produced on the sides of the mountains, as well as studies the mass movements.
  • La wind geomorphology it is responsible for studying wind processes and forms.
  • La glacial geomorphology is responsible for studying the forms and processes of geographical accidents and glacial reliefs and periglaciares.
  • La dynamic geomorphology it deals with the elementary processes of meteorization, erosion, transport agents, the geographic cycle and the nature of erosion, which integrates the antropic erosion and morphogenetic processes.
  • La Climate geomorphology studies the influence of the climate on the relief, the large morpholymatic domains and the footprint on the relief of morpholymatic domains of the past.

Hydrology

• Hydrology is dedicated to the study of distribution, spatial and temporal, and the properties of the water present in the atmosphere and in the terrestrial crust. This includes precipitation, runoff, soil moisture, evapoperspiration and the balance of the glacial masses, while the effects of the marine waters on the coastline remain within the coastal geography, in the meantime the processes of erosion and coastal sedimentation, formation of bars and albufers, among others, would remain within the field of geomorphology study. Encloba more specialized subdisciplinaries such as:
  • Poemology studies the dynamics of rivers.
  • Marine hydrology, as well as oceanography, is responsible for studying the dynamics of the various actors involved in the oceans and seas, such as marine currents, waves, water composition (sillinity, oxygenation, etc.).
  • Limnology studies the dynamics of lakes.

Hydrography

• Hydrography on its part studies all the water masses of the Earth, paying special attention to its geometric and spatial characteristics. It is divided into two branches:
  • Hydromorphometry is dedicated to the study of the watersheds, especially its form, dimensions, composition, response times, etc., focusing also on the type, trace and abundance of drainages and lagoon bodies and their implications in the operation of the watershed.
  • Marine hydrography is dedicated to the measurement, collection and representation of data relating to the bottom of the ocean, coasts, tides and currents, so that they can be translated into a hydrographic chart.

Glaciology

• La glaciology is a branch of physical geography, and therefore of the Earth sciences. Glaciology, unlike Hydrology, is concerned about the multiple current and past phenomena, related to the extension, distribution, causes, characteristics, processes, dynamics, classifications and implications of solid-state water bodies, such as glaciers, caskets, icebergs, ice rigs, banquisas, lacustre ice and river ice.

Geocryology

• Geocriology is a branch of Geography and more specifically, of the physical geography, which is dedicated to the study of the action of escarcha and the permanently frozen soil, including the study of the processes of freezing and slipping, and the engineering and technical devices that can be used to overcome the physical problems in such conditions.

Coastal geography

• The coastal geography deals with the study of the dynamic interaction between ocean, climate and land. It includes the understanding of the evolution of the coastal landscape, the coastal meteorization processes, the different types of waves and their action on the coast, the sediment movement, the coastal climate, as well as the impact of human activities on the coast.

Pedology

• Pedology or edaphogeography studies the soil regarding pedogenesis (the origin of the soil, its formation, classification, morphology, taxonomy and also its relation and interaction with the rest of the geographical factors in the dynamics of the geographical cycle). Within the pedology there are several theoretical and applied branches that are particularly related to physics and chemistry.

Natural Hazards

• The study of risks, since despite the fact that the number of natural disasters has not increased in recent years, the number of people affected has increased. It's a subject of human geography, too.

Landscape ecology

• Landscape ecology is a discipline between regionally oriented physical geography and biology. He studies natural landscapes with special attention to human groups as transformative agents of the physical-ecological dynamics of these. He has received inputs from both physical geography and biology, since although geography contributes the structural visions of the landscape (the study of the horizontal structure or the mosaic of subecosystems that make up the landscape), biology will give us the functional vision of the landscape (the vertical relations of matter and energy). This concept begins in 1898, with the geographer, father of Russian pedology, Vasily Vasilievich Dokuchaev and was later continued by German geographer Carl Troll. It is a discipline very related to other areas such as geochemistry, geobotics, forest sciences or edaphology.

Paleogeography

• Palaeogeography is the geographical discipline responsible for investigating and rebuilding the geography of past times and their evolution, being of great importance within the physical geography, as it serves to better understand the current dynamics of the geography of our planet. Encloba more specialized subdisciplinaries such as:
  • The paleoclimatology that deals with the study of the climates of the past.
  • The paleobiogeography, a subdiscipline that focuses on the distribution of the living beings of the past.
  • The paleohidrology studies the bodies of water and preterito current waters.
  • Paleopedology is dedicated to the study of the paleosuelos and the relictos soils.

Biogeography

• Biogeography studies the distribution of living beings on Earth, as well as the processes that have originated them, that modify them and that can make them disappear, including also their relationship with the medium. Among its branches are:

Phytogeography

• The phytogeography is the branch of the Biogeography that studies the relationship between the terrestrial surface and the plants and the distribution patterns of the latter on the planet.

Zoogeography

• The zoogeography, which is concerned about how animals influence the Earth's surface and the distribution patterns of these on the planet.

Biogeography of islands

• Biogeography of islands is a subfield of ecology that establishes and explains the factors that affect the wealth of species of natural communities. In this context an island can be any habitat area surrounded by inadequate areas for species; they may not be true islands surrounded by the ocean, but also mountains surrounded by deserts, lakes surrounded by the firm land, fragments of forests surrounded by landscapes altered by humans, etc.

Phylogeography

• The phylogeography is the study of historical processes that could be responsible for contemporary geographical distributions of individuals. This is achieved taking into account the geographical distribution of individuals according to the pattern associated with a genealogy.

Regional geography

Regional or chorological geography (from the Greek «χώρα», space, country, region and «λόγος», knowledge, study) is the discipline that studies geographic systems or complexes. However, there is no consensus when it comes to defining what a geographic complex is or the role of regional geography in the whole of geography.

Cultural regions of Europe. Central Europe Eastern Europe Northern Europe Western Europe (partial view) South Europe Asian countries with territories in Europe

For some geographers, regional geography is a discipline in charge of the synthetic study of geographic complexes (territories, places, landscapes or regions, among other denominations). It would therefore be a part of geography on an equal footing with the multiple disciplines that make up general or systematic geography, which analytically study various phenomena in their characteristics and distribution (relief, climate, vegetation, population, economic organization, political organization)., trade, transport, etc.).

For other geographers, however, the name regional geography is redundant since all geography is regional. That is, the purpose of geography is to study geographic complexes at any scale (localities, counties, regions, countries, large regions, etc.) both synthetically and thematically. The various disciplines that make up general geography would therefore be the thematic and comparative approach to the study of geographic complexes. Thus, according to Robert E. Dickinson, «Geography is fundamentally the regional or chorological science of the terrestrial surface» and for Manuel de Terán, «The primacy of regional geography is not debatable in the current situation of geographic science. Modern geography is fundamentally regional geography, as in antiquity it was chorology and chorography.

Objectives of Classical Geography

As has been carefully observed in the previous analysis, the dominant geographic thought focuses on the projection of particular characteristics of society for the analysis of statistical data, with the aim of being projected and analyzed in specific circumstances.

• The territorial system is an administrative technique, which has been influenced by a multitude of sciences, especially by physical geography, human and regional geography and environmental sciences. It has two major objectives that correspond to two traditions within the Territory ' s Ordinance, associated with the role of the State. On the one hand, the planning of the territory through the application of regulations that permit or prohibit certain uses. On the other hand, the balanced socio-economic development of the territories that make up the surface is generally ordered by a region or region.
• Urban planning is part of the techniques of urbanism and includes the essentially projective set of practices that establish a management model for a spatial area that generally refers to a municipality, an urban area or a neighbourhood-scale area. It is related to Architecture and Engineering to the extent that it commands built spaces.
• Rural planning is the technique of physical planning and promoting sustainable development in rural areas.
• Infrastructure and services planning is the technique that is responsible for promoting, developing and carrying out major civil works.
• Cartography is a discipline that integrates science, technology and art, which deals with the representation of the Earth on a map or cartographic representation. As the Earth is spherical, a projection system must be used to move from the sphere to the plane.
• Remote sensing is the technique that allows you to obtain information about an object, surface or phenomenon through the analysis of data acquired by an instrument that is not in contact with it.
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are organized systems of hardware, software, geographical and personal data, designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze and deploy in all its forms the geographically referenced information in order to solve complex planning and management problems. It can also be defined as a model of a part of reality referring to a system of Earth coordinates and built to meet specific information needs.
• Prevention of natural hazards. Within the risk chain, prevention measures, both structural and non-structural, the role of short-, medium- and long-term prediction should be known generically; the actors involved in warning systems; the necessary risk behaviour education as well as some aspects relating to legislation and insurance systems in relation to natural risks. All this can be framed within the conclusions of the International Decade for Disaster Mitigation (DIPC, 1990-1999), among which there is a special impact on the necessary assessment of risk hazards, vulnerability and mapping.
• Environmental management is responsible for identifying and preventing the negative effects that the activities of economic companies produce on the environment as well as analysing the risks that can reach such companies as a result of accidental environmental impacts that they can produce. For example, a chemical industry that produces a certain type of dumps should know the impact it is having on the environment with its normal activity, but also has to foresee what risks can be derived from possible accidents such as the case of a deposit break, a fire or similar.
• Geomatic (composed of two branches geo concerning geoid and Math by computer) is responsible for the automated study of geospatial information. It is based on a set of technologies focused on the development of studies on any object on Earth. It employs geospatial technologies used in cartography and topography, including photogrammetry, hydrography and hydrology; supported by the use of computer systems, such as GIS, remote perception, global positioning systems, spatial databases or CASE tools, among others.

Notable Geographers

• Erathists (276-194 BC). He calculated the size of the Earth.
• Strabon (64/63 BC-approximately 24 BC). Geographica wrote, one of the first books that outline the study of geography.
• Ptolemy (c.90-c.168). He compiled Greek and Roman knowledge in the book Geographia.
• Al Idrisi (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد الإدريسيييي, Latin: Dreseses) (1100-1165/66). Author of Kitab Ruyar.
• Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594). Innovative cartographer, created the Mercator projection. Despite not being a geographer, their contributions are recognized.
• Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). Considered one of the motherfucking parents of modern geography, Kosmos published and opened the biogeography subfield.
• Carl Ritter (1779-1859). Considered one of the parents of modern geography. He held the first chair of geography at the University of Berlin.
• Arnold Henry Guyot (1807-1884). He discovered the structure of glaciers and advanced understanding in the movement of these, especially in the rapid ice flow.
• William Morris Davis (1850-1934). Father of the American geography and developer of the cycle of erosion.
• Pablo Vidal de la Blache (1845-1918). Founder of the French school of geopolitics, wrote the principles of human geography.
• Halford John Mackinder (1861-1947). Heartland Theory Developer.
• Ellen Churchill Semple (1863-1932). It was America's first influential geographer.
• Carl O. Sauer (1889-1975). Father of cultural geography.
• Walter Christaller (1893-1969). Humanist geographer and developer of the theory of the central places.
• Yi-Fu Tuan (1930-). Humanist geographer, with contributions like the concept of Topophilia.
• Roger Tomlinson (1933-2014). Creator of the first Geographic Information System, so it is considered the father of Geomatics.
• Karl W. Butzer (1934-2016). Influent German-American geographer, cultural ecologist and environmental archaeologist.
• David Harvey (1935-). Marxist geographer and author of theories on spatial and urban geography, winner of the Vautrin Lud Prize.
• Milton Santos:(1926-2001). Humanist and urban Marxist geographer.
• Edward Soja (1941-2015). He highlighted his work in regional development, planning and governance. He coined the terms synekism and postmetropolis. Winner of the Vautrin Lud Prize.
• Michael Frank Goodchild (1944-). Geographer of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial analysis and winner of the RGS founder's medal in 2003.
• Doreen Massey (1944-2016). Key study on space and places in globalization and its pluralities. Winner of the Vautrin Lud Prize.
• Nigel Thrift (1949-). Creator of non-representative theory.

Vautrin Lud Award

Institutions and Societies

• American Geographical Society (United States)
• Anton Melik Geographical Institute (Slovenia)
• American Association of Geographers (AAG)
• National Geographic Society (United States)
• Royal Canadian Geographic Society (Canada)
• Royal Geographical Society (United Kingdom)
• Sociedad Geográfica Española (Spain)
• Russian Geographical Society (Russia)
• Royal Danish Geographical Society (Denmark)
• National Geographical Institute (Spain)
• National Geographical Institute (Argentina)
• Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi (Colombia)