So, welcome to your introductory geography lecture. We’ll begin with some basics. Firstly, what do we learn by studying geography?

Well, we learn a great deal about all the processes that have affected and continue to affect the earth surface. But we learned far more than that, because studying geography also inform us about the different kinds of relations that develop between a particular environment and the people that live there.

Okay, we like to think of geography as having two main branches. There is the study of the nature of our planet——its physical features, what it actually looks like——and then there is the study of the ways in which we choose to live, and of the impact of those on our planet. Our current use of carbon fuels is a good example of that.

But there are specific study areas to consider too. And we will be looking at each of these in turn throughout this semester. These include bio-physical geography, by which I mean the study of the natural environment and all its living things. Then there is topography——that looks at the shapes of the land and oceans. There is the study of political geography, and social geography too, of course, which is the study of communities of people. We have economic geography——in which we examine all kinds of resources and their use——agriculture, for example. Next comes historical geography——the understanding of how people and their environments and the ways they interact have changed over a period of time. And urban geography, an aspect I am particularly interested in, which takes, as its focus, the location of cities provide, and migration of people to and from such cities. And lastly, we have cartography. That is the art and science of net making. You will be doing a lot of that.

So to summarize before we continue, we now have our key answer...studying this subject is important because without geographical knowledge, we would know very little about our surroundings and we wouldn’t be able to identify all the problems that relate to them. So by definition, we wouldn’t be in an informed position to work out how to solve any of them.