General Geography Book Pdf

[Lynn Hepler]

TheGeography (BS) - General Geography degree provides you with a broad understanding of geography in a strong liberal arts context. It does not require a language, but rather 15 hours of ancillary courses to complete a concentration of your choosing.

Employment: Students graduate career-ready, and over 90% are hired into the GIS or planning job markets. Employers include the U.S. Government, State of North Carolina, the Nature Conservancy, National Geographic Society, and local governments throughout North Carolina.

Dr. Derek J. Martin has been working with a team of students on a monitoring project on the Watauga River. In this video, he and the students talk about the research and how they have adapted their fieldwork during COVID-19.

Appalachian is committed to introducing students to different cultures and teaching them how to live and interact in a global society. There are currently faculty led trips to study planning and community development in Ecuador and Peru. Dr. Baker Perry also takes 15 students to study climate change in the Andean region each summer.

The Department of Geography and Planning promotes the understanding of the spatial dimensions of human behavior within the physical and cultural systems of the earth and the role of planning in achieving improvement in those systems. It offers degrees in geography and in community and regional planning.

The College of Arts and Sciences at Appalachian State University is home to 17 academic departments, two centers and one residential college spanning the humanities and the social, mathematical and natural sciences. The college is dedicated to providing instruction and research essential to the university's mission and seeks to cultivate the habits of inquiry, learning and service among all its constituents.

Of course, the Greeks were not the only people interested in geography, nor were they the first. Throughout human history, most societies have sought to understand something about their place in the world, and the people and environments around them. Mesopotamian societies inscribed maps on clay tablets, some of which survive to this day. The earliest known attempt at mapping the world is a Babylonian clay tablet known as the Imago Mundi. This map, created in the sixth century B.C.E., is more of a metaphorical and spiritual representation of Babylonian society rather than an accurate depiction of geography. Other Mesopotamian maps were more practical, marking irrigation networks and landholdings.

During the Middle Ages, geography ceased to be a major academic pursuit in Europe. Advances in geography were chiefly made by scientists of the Muslim world, based around the Middle East and North Africa. Geographers of this Islamic Golden Age created an early example of a rectangular map based on a grid, a map system that is still familiar today. Islamic scholars also applied their study of people and places to agriculture, determining which crops and livestock were most suited to specific habitats or environments.

Through the 13th-century travels of the Italian explorer Marco Polo, European interest in spices from Asia grew. Acquiring spices from East Asian and Arab merchants was expensive, and a major land route for the European spice trade was lost with the conquering of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire. These and other economic factors, in addition to competition between Christian and Islamic societies, motivated European nations to send explorers in search of a sea route to China. This period of time between the 15th and 17th centuries is known in the West as the Age of Exploration or the Age of Discovery.

With the dawn of the Age of Discovery, the study of geography regained popularity in Europe. The invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s helped spread geographic knowledge by making maps and charts widely available. Improvements in shipbuilding and navigation facilitated more exploring, greatly improving the accuracy of maps and geographic information.

Greater geographic understanding allowed European powers to extend their global influence. During the Age of Discovery, European nations established colonies around the world. Improved transportation, communication, and navigational technology allowed countries such as the United Kingdom to establish colonies as far away as the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Africa. This was lucrative for European powers, but the Age of Discovery brought about nightmarish change for the people already living in the territories they colonized. When Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, millions of Indigenous peoples already lived there. By the 1600s, 90 percent of the Indigenous population of the Americas had been wiped out by violence and diseases brought over by European explorers.

Geography was not just a subject that enabled colonialism, however. It also helped people understand the planet on which they lived. Not surprisingly, geography became an important focus of study in schools and universities.

Geography also became an important part of other academic disciplines, such as chemistry, economics, and philosophy. In fact, every academic subject has some geographic connection. Chemists study where certain chemical elements, such as gold or silver, can be found. Economists examine which nations trade with other nations, and what resources are exchanged. Philosophers analyze the responsibility people have to take care of Earth.

The age-old practice of mapping still plays an important role in this type of exploration, but exploration can also be done by using images from satellites or gathering information from interviews. Discoveries can come by using computers to map and analyze the relationship among things in geographic space, or from piecing together the multiple forces, near and far, that shape the way individual places develop.

Studies of the geographic distribution of human settlements have shown how economic forces and modes of transport influence the location of towns and cities. For example, geographic analysis has pointed to the role of the United States Interstate Highway System and the rapid growth of car ownership in creating a boom in U.S. suburban growth after World War II. The geographic perspective helped show where Americans were moving, why they were moving there, and how their new living places affected their lives, their relationships with others, and their interactions with the environment.

These examples of different uses of the geographic perspective help explain why geographic study and research is important as we confront many 21st century challenges, including environmental pollution, poverty, hunger, and ethnic or political conflict.

Because the study of geography is so broad, the discipline is typically divided into specialties. At the broadest level, geography is divided into physical geography, human geography, geographic techniques, and regional geography.

Geomorphology is the study of landforms and the processes that shape them. Geomorphologists investigate the nature and impact of wind, ice, rivers, erosion, earthquakes, volcanoes, living things, and other forces that shape and change the surface of Earth.

Pedologists study soil and how it is created, changed, and classified. Soil studies are used by a variety of professions, from farmers analyzing field fertility to engineers investigating the suitability of different areas for building heavy structures.

Biogeographers study the impact of the environment on the distribution of plants and animals. For example, a biogeographer might document all the places in the world inhabited by a certain spider species, and what those places have in common.

Today, oceanographers conduct research on the impacts of water pollution, track tsunamis, design offshore oil rigs, investigate underwater eruptions of lava, and study all types of marine organisms from toxic algae to friendly dolphins.

Human geographers also study how people use and alter their environments. When, for example, people allow their animals to overgraze a region, the soil erodes and grassland is transformed into desert. The impact of overgrazing on the landscape as well as agricultural production is an area of study for human geographers.

Finally, human geographers study how political, social, and economic systems are organized across geographical space. These include governments, religious organizations, and trade partnerships. The boundaries of these groups constantly change.

The main divisions within human geography reflect a concern with different types of human activities or ways of living. Some examples of human geography include urban geography, economic geography, cultural geography, political geography, social geography, and population geography. Human geographers who study geographic patterns and processes in past times are part of the subdiscipline of historical geography. Those who study how people understand maps and geographic space belong to a subdiscipline known as behavioral geography.

Cultural geographers study how the natural environment influences the development of human culture, such as how the climate affects the agricultural practices of a region. Political geographers study the impact of political circumstances on interactions between people and their environment, as well as environmental conflicts, such as disputes over water rights.

Some human geographers focus on the connection between human health and geography. For example, health geographers create maps that track the location and spread of specific diseases. They analyze the geographic disparities of health-care access. They are very interested in the impact of the environment on human health, especially the effects of environmental hazards such as radiation, lead poisoning, or water pollution.

Specialists in geographic techniques study the ways in which geographic processes can be analyzed and represented using different methods and technologies. Mapmaking, or cartography, is perhaps the most basic of these. Cartography has been instrumental to geography throughout the ages.

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