geography

Geography is the study of the Earth's surfaces, their features, and the relationships among places, people, and environments. It seeks to explain where things are, why they occur there, and how processes at different scales—local, regional, and global—shape the arrangement of the world.

Geography is often divided into physical and human geography. Physical geography studies climate, landforms, water, soils, vegetation, and natural hazards. Human geography analyzes where and why people live and how they organize economies, politics, and culture. Subfields include cartography, GIS and remote sensing-based geospatial analysis, and interdisciplinary areas such as environmental, economic, political, cultural, health, and transportation geography.

Methods include fieldwork, spatial analysis, mapping, and modeling. Data sources span maps, satellite imagery, weather stations, census data, and field observations. Technological advances in GIS, GPS, and remote sensing enable analysis at scales from local to global.

Geography has ancient roots in cartography and regional description and has grown into a broad discipline that informs urban planning, resource management, disaster risk reduction, and climate and environmental policy by revealing patterns of space and place.