Subfields in Geography - What is Geography? (6/7)

Summary

In this educational video, Dr. Heath Robinson delves into the diverse subfields of geography, focusing on regional and thematic approaches. He explains that geography can be specialized by place or by themes such as physical, human, and biological geography. Physical geography encompasses the study of earth's surface features and geomorphology, while human geography includes economic, political, cultural, population, urban, and transportation geography. Biological geography, or biogeography, investigates the distribution of plants and animals. The video provides a comprehensive introduction to the multifaceted nature of geographic studies.

Takeaways

• 🌍 Geography is a holistic study of the world, often specialized by focusing on specific places or themes.
• 📍 Subdividing geography by region involves studying specific areas or locations.
• 🌱 The theme-based subdivision of geography includes physical, human, and biological geography.
• 🏞️ Physical geography encompasses the study of natural features like lakes, rivers, mountains, and deserts.
• 🔍 Geomorphologists within physical geography focus on the processes that create landforms and topographic features.
• 💼 Human geography includes subfields like economic geography, which studies the spatial aspects of economic activities and phenomena.
• 🏢 Business and marketing geography are important for understanding why certain businesses succeed or fail in specific locations.
• 🗳️ Political geography is concerned with the geographic aspects of politics, including electoral processes and geopolitical issues.
• 🌆 Cultural, population, urban, and transportation geography are significant subfields that study the spatial distribution and characteristics of human societies.
• 🌿 Biological geography, or biogeography, examines the distribution of plants and animals across the planet and the factors influencing their presence.

Q & A

What is the primary focus of the video series 'What is, Geography?'

The primary focus of the video series is to explore and explain the various aspects and subdivisions of geography, starting with the fundamental question 'where?' and moving on to discuss different ways to specialize and subdivide the field.

How does Dr. Heath Robinson suggest subdividing the study of geography?

Dr. Heath Robinson suggests subdividing the study of geography in three major ways: by region or place, by theme, and by a third method which is not detailed in the transcript.

What are the three major themes within geographic inquiry mentioned by Dr. Robinson?

The three major themes within geographic inquiry mentioned are physical geography, human geography, and biological geography, also referred to as biogeography.

What does physical geography encompass according to the video?

Physical geography includes the study of natural features such as lakes, rivers, mountains, deserts, and oceans, as well as the study of landforms and topographic features by geomorphologists.

How is geomorphology different from geology as explained in the video?

Geomorphology focuses on the processes that create the earth's surface features, while geology is centered around the subsurface processes of the planet. There is significant interaction between the two disciplines, and they are not strictly separated.

What is economic geography and why is it important?

Economic geography is a subfield of human geography that studies economic processes with reference to location and spatial variables, such as trade routes and unemployment patterns. It is important because it helps understand the geographic patterns of economic activities.

Can you explain the concept of business geography as discussed in the video?

Business geography is a subdivision of economic geography that focuses on the locational factors affecting businesses. It involves studying why certain businesses succeed or fail in specific locations and helps in making informed decisions about where to establish new businesses.

What role does geography play in political processes according to the video?

Geography plays a significant role in political processes, as seen in the way political units are delineated by geographical boundaries, and how elections and political representation are tied to specific locations.

What are some of the subfields within human geography mentioned in the video?

Some of the subfields within human geography mentioned are economic geography, political geography, cultural geography, population geography, urban geography, and transportation geography.

How does biological geography, or biogeography, differ from the other themes of geographic inquiry?

Biological geography, or biogeography, is the study of the distribution of plants and animals across the planet, focusing on the geographic patterns and reasons behind their distribution, which differs from the focus on human activities in human geography and the physical features in physical geography.

Outlines

00:00

🌍 Introduction to Geographic Subdivisions

Dr. Heath Robinson introduces the video series on 'What is Geography?' He discusses the foundational question of geography, 'where?', and proceeds to explore ways to subdivide the field. The first method of subdivision is by region or place, and the second is by theme. Three major themes are identified: physical geography, human geography, and biological geography. Physical geography encompasses the study of natural features like lakes, rivers, mountains, and deserts. Geomorphologists within this field focus on the processes that shape the earth's landforms and topography. The video distinguishes physical geography from geology, highlighting the importance of understanding the interplay between the two disciplines.

05:04

🏛️ Economic and Business Geography

The second paragraph delves into human geography, starting with economic geography. It emphasizes the importance of spatial variables in economic processes, such as trade routes and unemployment patterns. Economic geographers analyze geographic patterns to understand regional disparities in economic indicators. The paragraph also touches on business geography and marketing geography, using the example of a building that consistently fails to sustain businesses despite hosting various types. The discussion points out the relevance of location in determining business success, a critical consideration for entrepreneurs and those looking to establish franchises.

10:08

🗳️ Political Geography and Its Subfields

The third paragraph continues the exploration of human geography with a focus on political geography. It discusses the strong ties between political processes and geography, particularly in the context of the United States, where elections and political representation are geographically defined. The video mentions the significance of electoral geography during presidential elections, where states are colored to reflect the majority vote. Beyond electoral geography, political geography also includes the study of geopolitics and international conflict, which have profound geographic components. The paragraph concludes by briefly mentioning other subfields within human geography, such as cultural, population, urban, and transportation geography, each with its unique focus on the spatial aspects of human activities and interactions.

Keywords

💡Geography

Geography is the study of the Earth's landscapes, peoples, places, and environments. It is a discipline that seeks to understand the Earth as a whole, focusing on the spatial distribution of phenomena and the relationships between people and their environments. In the video, geography is the central theme, with the host, Dr. Heath Robinson, exploring various ways to subdivide the field to better understand the world.

💡Subdivide

To subdivide, in the context of geography, means to break down the broad field into more specific areas or themes for focused study. The video discusses three major ways to subdivide geographic inquiry: by region, by theme, and another method to be discussed in a subsequent video. This approach allows for a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the world's complexities.

💡Physical Geography

Physical geography is a branch of geography that focuses on the study of natural features of the Earth's surface, such as lakes, rivers, mountains, and deserts. It includes the study of geomorphology, which examines the processes that shape the Earth's landforms. In the video, Dr. Robinson explains that physical geography is one of the three major themes within geographic inquiry, highlighting its importance in understanding the Earth's physical features.

💡Geomorphology

Geomorphology is the scientific study of landforms and the processes that shape them. It is a sub-discipline within physical geography. The term is derived from 'geo' meaning 'earth', 'morph' meaning 'form', and 'ology' meaning 'the study of'. In the video, geomorphologists are described as being particularly interested in the processes that create different landforms and topographic features.

💡Human Geography

Human geography is a branch of geography that focuses on the study of the spatial aspects of human societies, including where people live and how they interact with the environment. It encompasses various subfields such as economic geography, political geography, and urban geography. The video discusses human geography as one of the major themes within geographic inquiry, emphasizing its relevance to understanding human activities and their spatial implications.

💡Economic Geography

Economic geography is a subfield of human geography that examines the spatial aspects of economic activities, such as trade routes, unemployment patterns, and business locations. It considers how economic processes are influenced by location and spatial variables. In the video, Dr. Robinson uses the example of a building that consistently fails to sustain businesses to illustrate the importance of economic geography in understanding the geographic patterns of economic success and failure.

💡Political Geography

Political geography is a subfield of human geography that studies the relationship between political processes and geographic space. It includes the study of electoral patterns, geopolitical conflicts, and the geographic aspects of political boundaries. The video mentions political geography as a significant area of study, noting that political processes, especially in the United States, are highly tied to geography.

💡Cultural Geography

Cultural geography is a branch of human geography that focuses on the study of cultural phenomena and how they vary across geographic space. It seeks to understand why different cultures develop in the locations they do. The video briefly mentions cultural geography as one of the many subdivisions within human geography, highlighting its role in understanding the diversity of cultures across the world.

💡Population Geography

Population geography is a subfield of human geography that studies the distribution, structure, and change of populations. It examines how population characteristics, such as age and density, vary across different geographic locations. In the video, Dr. Robinson discusses how population geography can provide insights into the variabilities of population distribution and its implications for understanding human settlements.

💡Urban Geography

Urban geography is a subfield of human geography that focuses on the study of cities and urban areas. It examines the structure, organization, and dynamics of urban spaces. The video touches on urban geography as an important area of study, with Dr. Robinson sharing his experiences visiting different cities in Spain and the unique characteristics that each city exhibits.

💡Biological Geography

Biological geography, also known as biogeography, is a branch of geography that studies the distribution of plants and animals across the Earth's surface. It seeks to understand why certain species are found in specific geographic locations and how they interact with their environments. The video mentions biological geography as one of the major themes within geographic inquiry, emphasizing its importance in understanding the geographic distribution of life on Earth.

Highlights

Geography can be subdivided into different ways, including by region or place and by theme.

The first way to subdivide geography is by region, focusing on a specific place or location.

The second major way to subdivide geography is by theme, which includes physical, human, and biological geography.

Physical geography involves the study of natural features like lakes, rivers, mountains, and deserts.

Geomorphologists within physical geography study the processes that create landforms and topographic features.

Physical geography is distinguished from geology, which focuses on subsurface processes of the planet.

Human geography encompasses economic, political, cultural, population, urban, and transportation geography.

Economic geography studies the spatial variables of economic processes, such as trade routes and unemployment patterns.

Business geography focuses on the locational factors that affect the success or failure of businesses.

Political geography is tied to the electoral process and the geographic delineation of political units.

Cultural geography examines the reasons behind the diversity of cultures in different locations.

Population geography looks at the distribution, characteristics, and density of populations across the globe.

Urban geography is the study of city structures and the unique characteristics of different cities.

Transportation geography involves the analysis of road systems and the geographic aspects of travel.

Biological geography, or biogeography, studies the distribution of plants and animals and their impact on the planet.

The distribution of flora and fauna is not uniform across the planet, highlighting the importance of biogeography.

Geography's subdivisions reflect the complex interplay between different aspects of our world.

Transcripts

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Hello everyone! Welcome back to the video series on "What is

Geography?" I'm Dr. Heath Robinson. You know, first we started talking

about what the most basic question of geography was, which is "where?"

Now, we are going to about different ways we can subdivide

geography. We already said that if you conceptualize the core

of geography as being this holistic and comprehensive

understanding of the entire world, that because that

is a rather large subject to tackle, one way we could go

about subdividing that is to specialize in a particular

place or location. So that, we will day is our first

way that we can subdivide geography. We've got three major ways

to subdivide geographic inquiry. The first way

to subdivide geographic inquiry is by region. What are the other

ways? The second major way that we could subdivide geography

is by theme. And I would say that there are three

major different themes within geographic inquiry.

I would say there is physical geography, there is human geography

and there is biological geography.

Biological geography, also called biogeography in different contexts.

So let's look at each one of those in more detail, really investigating

this theme way to subdivide geography. Physical

geography. What is physical geography? Physical geography

is the study of lakes, of rivers, or mountains, of

deserts, all of those things that many people will already think of when

they think of studying geography—oceans—those sorts of

things. Those physical features of our planet. Also within physical

geography, you also find geomorphologists.

Let's look at that word "geo" "morphology". We see "geo" again,

which means "earth", then we get "morph" which means "form" and then

we get "ology" which means "the study of". "Geo"

"morph" "ology". Geomorphologists are particularly interested in

the processes which bring about all the different landforms

and topographic features of our planet. We can compare

and contrast physical geography and geomorphology

with geology. Right? "Geo", we see

this again—"geo" "ology". "Geo" earth "ology" "the study of".

Geology, that discipline means "the study of the earth."

Well, so if we are thinking in terms of our centroid conceptualization of all

of these different disciplines then basically the centroid for

physical geography is talking about the forms and the features

of the earth's surface. And if you are talking about the centroid of

geology, then you are talking about a centroid that is

centered around the subsurface processes of the planet.

Now, clearly, there is interaction. This is a great example

of one of those situations where you don't want to come up with

a very rigid definition of what

geology is, verses what physical geography is because there's

so much interplay between them. Okay. What about human geography?

Human geography is another huge subfield of geography.

There are many different sub-subfields within human geography. Let me

talk about a few of them. One of the major subfields within human

geography is economic geography. Lots and lots of people study

economic geography. It is not the case that the economics

the economics processes of our planet occur without reference to

location, without spatial variables. So you are studying the economy,

but you're incorporating all of these different spatial variables, then you are studying

economic geography. Things like trade routes.

Trade occurs in specific patterns. The different routes that

the oil takers take across all of the planet. That kind of thing is economic

geography. What about something like unemployment. You might

study that as an economic geographer. So what if, for example,

you get an unemployment figure for the entire United States. You get

okay, at this particular time, so you get that particular number

is an average across the entire United States, but, that may be very useful

to you, but in other cases, it may not be. You may need a lot more detail,

than that. If that is an average across the United States at a given time,

then you know that in some places the unemployment figure is going to be higher

than that. And in other places the unemployment is going to be much lower than that.

So of you are an economic geographer, you would be interested in, okay so

what's the geographic pattern here, across the United States for unemployment.

Where is unemployment higher than average? Where

is unemployment lower than average? Why

is unemployment higher than average in this particular location, when it is lower than average in

other locations. An economic geographer would be very very

interested in that. We study that kind of thing a lot in geography. If you aggregate

information, sure it is useful, but it can be much more useful

if you start to study the pattern of different phenomena

that is not aggregated across this huge area, but instead you start to see

variations across areas, and that can be very very interesting.

Within economic geography you can put another subdivision

within that and talk about business geography or marketing geography

which are very very important. Let me give you a great example

of economic geography as far as business geography goes. Everybody

can probably think of a particular building in their hometown

or wherever they are living that has had all different

kinds of business in it. It has been everything. But it's

always closed. It's been a restaurant, and it may have been several

different kinds of restaurants, it may have been a Mexican restaurant, a Chinese restaurant,

a country cooking restaurant, all of these different kinds of things, and its

always closed. Then it has been a used car dealership. Then its been a

cleaners. It has been all kinds of things, but

whatever goes into that particular building, it is open for three to six

months, and when whatever it is, is out of business. Well, clearly

whatever it is about that that building, the variable that is important is not

what type of business you put in there. An economic geographer

who is specifically specializing in business geography would be very interested in

knowing what is it about that particular location that

is so bad for business. It must be that location

that a business, whatever it is, for whatever reason, can't get established there.

Finding out that reason would be sort of a business geography

economic geography kind of a thing. And if you are thinking about starting

a business, then people consider business geography.

You may know that in order to start a particular kind of buiness

you are going to need a certain number of people, they need a certain income level, you need a

certain type of, all of these different kinds of things for your particular

demographics in order to make a business of your kind successful. And so before

you just buy a particular place to put your business, you

don't do that randomly, right? You don't want to locate your business randomly. Probably

you're going to search out a particular location, a great location

for your particular business, and in doing that you are considering economic

geography. And if you want to go get a franchise, if you are interested

in a franchise for a particular kind of restaurant or any type of business, you know sometimes

it is not the case that they will say you want a franchise, here you go, put it wherever you want.

You know, they will have very specific

locational requirements for the kinds of places that a franchise of their

particular kind can go, because they know the kinds of places where their

franchise will be successful, and know the kinds of places where it is not successful.

You here a lot—location, location, location. Well, then what are you talking about?

You're talking about geography in that context. Other subdivisions

of human geography—political geography. This is another huge

subdivision. You know a lot of people when they hear "political geography" or they think about

politics, especially in the United States, they think about elections.

And actually, in the United States it is very much the case that our

political process, our electoral process, is highly tied to geography.

Think about Congress. Right? It is not the case

that we elect a whole bunch of people to be in the House of Representatives

and in the Senate, and elect them at large across the United States and say

you know, go everybody and try your best to represent

everybody in the United States to the best of your ability and create

laws and do your congressional business. That's not the case. We are

operating in an extremely, highly geographic, political environment.

When you are electing senators, each senator is specifcally

elected to represent a particular location. Our political units

are delineated by geography. You have all of the different boundaries of all of the different states

and you get two senators per state, right? And so those senators are

supposed to represent the state. It becomes even more local when you are talking about the House of

Representatives. There are all kinds of maps that are drawn up for congressional

districts. We say, now you go to Congress and you represent

this particular district to the best of your capability. The people who live within

this district and then negotiate compromises and so forth with

everyone else who is representing their district within the

Congress. Right? And we go to great expense, great effort,

to draw all of these political boundaries every time a census comes out,

and so forth. So, our political process, especially in the United States,

but it's true all over the world that you can find location and geography

in political processes. I know that especially in

the United States they think of those maps on presidential election night

and that you have seen leading up the presidential election, where every

state is colored either blue or red, depending on whether the majority

of the people in that state voted for the Democratic candidate or the Republican

candidate. And people's different estimations for which way it is going to go.

One way or another. That when you think about an American political

process in that case, you think about electoral geography.

You think about the geography of these campaigns.

Political geography is much broader than just electoral geography though.

You can think of all of the different impacts on space

and place and geography on geopolitics, international

conflict. All of these things have very very strong

geographic components. And so if you are interested in the study of political geography

you can specialize in those sorts of things, and geography

does absolutely have a long history in the study of

international politics. There are other subdivisions in human geography. We can

talk about cultural geography, population geography.

Urban geography. Transportation geography.

All of those are huge subfields within

human geography. We'll just talk about them in brief. Obviously cultures

are not uniform across the world. You want to study

that why different cultures are they way they are in the particular locations they

are. You are studying cultural geography. Huge subfield.

Population geography. Very similar to what I was talking about with the economics,

yes, I can definitely give you a population

number for the entire planet at this particular time. The population of the planet

is this, or as near as can be estimated, right? And I can probably even

give you, I could certainly give you a figure for the

population density of the planet, but you know that number is going to

be of fairly limited utility to your because there is tremendous

variability in where people live, in the densities

of population in different locations around the planet. What the

characteristics of the population are. Age is a big one right now.

There are certain places where lots of people in the population are younger, there are lots of places where

the age of the population is much older, and it is certainly the case that if you

are in location that has an older population, you have different kinds of issues

to deal with than if you have a population that is much younger.

And so, once you start to think about all of these different variabilities in the population

that occur across the planet, you are involved in population

geography. Urban geography.

Some geographers specialize in studying cities. Cities can be so interesting.

Once you really get into studying cities, the structure of

cities, there is so much to learn. You know, I was recently in

Spain and I want to a bunch of different cities within Spain and it

was very interesting to talk to some of the people who lived in Spain

about what cities they thought best represented Spain.

You know every city was different, but there's a different feel

in all of these different cities that I went to, and then different people who lived in the different

cities would tell me why their particular city was most

representative of Spain, why this city particularly

exhibited the characteristics they most identified with Spain, and then

somebody else in another city would tell me why their particular city was

the city you needed to go to, to understand Spain.

Transportation geography. I have several friends who are interested in transportation

geography. Obviously, where you are, where you're going

is geographic in nature. How you get there, especially if you are talking about

roads systems. That is lots of network analysis. I talk about that

in my geographic information systems class. There is tremendous amount

of geography in transportation. What about

biological geography or biogeography. Biological

geography is about the study of plants and animals, the distribution of

plants and animals across the planet is not uniform. It is not the case that you find

the same types and same numbers of plants and animals across the entire planet.

There is definitely a geographic distribution to plants and animals

across the planet. If you are interested in where different

planets and animals are, why the got there and

what effect they are having on different things then you may be interested in biogeography.

Alright, well those are two of the major ways

we can subdivide geography, by region or place, and then

by theme. There is still one more, and we'll talk about

that in the next video. See you then.

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