Do you love maps? Do you adore travel? Are you fascinated by online clips of people trying exotic foods in faraway cities? Are you worried about climate change, the destruction of the environment, the plights of migrants, or why so many people still live in poverty? Then Human Geography might be the subject for you!

地理我s for people curious about our planet and intrigued by the myriad ways we interact with our environments. Geography is the “why of where” – the science that helps us understand the Earth and empowers us to make a difference. Geography is as old as the ancient Greeks and as new as today’s headlines. Take your voyage of discovery with us!

What is Human Geography?

人类地理我s the study of how human societies relate to the Earth. While other sciences—economics, political science, anthropology, biology, and environmental science, for example—look at either aspects ofsocietyornature, human geography is the only one that genuinely seeks to understand how the two interact.

人类geographers use tools like maps and censuses to understand places, landscapes, and many other types of locations. They gather and analyze data to describe and explain geographic processes ranging from the growth of cities to the strategies used in wars to how people can farm better to alleviate poverty.

人类Geography's most essential tool is the map

人类Geography Topics and Learning Objectives

人类Geographyis divided into six subject areas that cover cultural, political, and economic aspects of people’s relationships with the Earth. The six human geography content areas overlap and include physical and environmental geography elements. Another area looks at the essential tools of human geography.

Introduction to Human Geography

Everyone has heard of maps, but there are many other types of qualitative and quantitative tools that can be used in the search for understanding geography topics. Even—and especially—photographs, a visual record of the Earth, are part of the geographer’s craft.

人文地理,和其他科学一样,有很多不同ent theories and concepts that are useful to know. These include a concern with spatial questions—where things are located, how to find them, what scale or scales to use, how to group places that are similar together, and many others.

人类Geography: Population Geography

Population geography研究不太和谐的分布和浓度le and what that means for our world. Population geographers map and model where people are located and try to predict how and why populations will grow, shrink, or stabilize. How many people can live in a particular area comfortably? Can we change that? What if we run out of resources for these people? These are just some of the questions we ask in population geography.

人类Geography: Cultural Geography

Cultural geographylooks at how expressions of human culture—language, food, religion, leisure activities, gender identity, the arts, and others—are situated and arranged in different places. “Cultural Landscape” is a central concept that recognizes that culture is expressed geographically; you can see it in action every time you go outside. People express their culture through the types of buildings they construct, the cars they drive, the restaurants they eat in, the sports they play, and so on. And culture doesn’t just stay in one place–it diffuses (spreads), coming into contact and sometimes into conflict with other cultures. That conflict, and avoidance of it, are at the heart of closely-related political geography.

Cultural Geography studies the cultures of people across the world

人类Geography: Political Geography

Political geographyis often the flip side of cultural geography. Different cultures —an ethnic or religious group, for example—follow different rules. But human societies are comprised of many different cultures that usually have to follow the same rules when they live in the same area. Governments administer these systems of laws. Political geography studies the “spatial” parts of these governments—types of boundaries and voting districts, for example—and all of the issues created by governments controlling geographic territory.

Political geography looks at how different governments control and come into conflict over territories

You can probably see where this is going. Political geography does not shy away from trying to understand why people in different territories have conflicts with each other. Problems as severe as ethnic cleansing and genocide may emerge from disputes over territory and natural resources. Ah, resources! This leads us to another major part of human geography called economic geography.

人类Geography: Economic Geography

Economic geography deals with the many scales and levels of human economic activity across the world and how they interrelate. Economic geographers look at five sectors of economic activity, from mining resources, the raw materials of the global economy, all the way up to the high-level, literally earth-shaking decisions made in corporate boardrooms. For those interested in understanding how the world truly works and who wonder if and how it can be changed, economic geography is critical because it explores the importance of people’s basic economic behavior: earning money, getting a job, making more money, saving, retiring, investing.

But economic geography is more than just that; it provides us tools to understand how we can change a world dependent on raw materials that are scarce or even finite (i.e., that will run out someday, like fossil fuels). Economic geography helps us envision and plan a world where economic activities are in sync with what the Earth provides. Sustainable development is an end goal of economic geography.

人类Geography: Urban Geography

No question about it, cities and other urban areas are the focus of human activity in the world at this moment in time. Cities may not cover as much of the Earth’s surface as rural areas, but they hold an ever-increasing proportion of the world’s eight-billion-or-so humans. The majority of the world’s material wealth is found in them.Urban geographystudies the cities of the past and present to help plan for the healthier, sustainable cities of the future.

Urban Geography uses geographic models to understand cities

Urban geographers have their work cut out for them because the metropolitan areas of some cities may surpass 100 million people in the 21st century. That’s larger than most countries! And many cities, even in highly developed countries, contain large amounts of poverty and a host of other problems. Geography is at the forefront of improving city landscapes through more green space, local food options, better transportation, and equitable housing options.

人类Geography: Agricultural Geography

Cities may be where most people live, but asagricultural geographypractitioners know, rural areas are where most of the food comes from. Agricultural geography recognizes that farming, the domestication of plants and animals, is the most important human invention, one that allowed cities and modern civilization as we know it to exist in the first place.

Whether small farms will survive or mechanized commercial farming will dominate the planet, the geography of rural farming areas is critical to understanding and planning for the future.

How Can StudySmarter Support Me in Studying Human Geography?

StudySmarter’s bank of resources is there to help guide you through the maze of often complex geography concepts, themes, and topics. Our content writers have all been geography students at one time or another, so they remember how confusing Humannb雷竞技 can be! If you aren’t quite sure howpoliticsand geography relate or how culture, the environment, and space come together, then you are in the right place! You can use the resources we provide and add them to your resources.

人类Geography Study Guide

Our intelligent guide is here to introduce everything you need to know to study for your Humannb雷竞技 courses and exams successfully. Here is what you can discover on StudySmarter:

人类Geography Explanations

Our Humannb雷竞技 explanations provide you with the basic knowledge you need, and they are arranged in a format that will intrigue you. They are geared toward the topics typically taught in Advanced Placement Humannb雷竞技 courses in US high schools, so they are at the college freshman level in terms of language and content–not too hard, and not too simple, but just right.

The explanations include sections of text broken into easily digestible sections, with various examples used to make things a little more concrete. There are also study hints to get you zeroed in on the most important content you need to know, and there are Deep Dives for that little extra you might need to impress a teacher.

人类Geography Flashcards

人类Geography explanations come with ten or fifteen flashcards that you can use to get you started learning the material. You can add as many flashcards as you wish.

人类Geography Study Groups

You don’t have to stop at creating and uploading your material. StudySmarter lets you form study groups and learn with your friends and Human Geography students from wider learning communities. Remember the flashcards? You can use them to quiz fellow group members and test their knowledge. This way, you can create a personalized Human Geography quiz! Learn, create, quiz – repeat.

Rewards for Learning Human Geography

StudySmarter is your next best friend, encouraging you to learn and achieve top results. StudySmarter lets you set your weekly goals: complete subjects, correctly answer flashcards, and ask questions. Reaching these goals will earn you trophies. For example, gain the "Best thing since sliced bread"if you study every week for three months, or become aGrandmasterif you answer five questions in the same course. The more you learn, the more trophies you get to celebrate your hard work.