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Geography facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts
World map 2004 CIA large 1.7m whitespace removed
A map of the Earth

Geography is the study of the Earth and its features, its inhabitants, and its phenomena. The word geography comes from the Greek words gê ("Earth") and graphein ("to write, draw"). It means "to write and draw about the Earth". The word was first used by a scientist called Eratosthenes (276-194 B.C.).

Its features are things like continents, seas, rivers and mountains. Its inhabitants are all the people and animals that live on it. Its phenomena are the things that happen like tides, winds, and earthquakes.

A person who is an expert in geography is a geographer. A geographer tries to understand the world and the things that are in it, how they started and how they have changed.

Geography is divided into two main parts called physical geography and human geography. Physical geography studies the natural environment and human geography studies the human environment. The human environmental studies would include things such as the population in a country, how a country's economy is doing, and more. There is also environmental geography.

Geographers need to know a lot about maps because maps are very important for understanding geography. Geographers use maps a lot, and often make them. Making maps is called cartography, and similarly, people who make maps are cartographers.

Natural environment

Tropical.ciclone.of.southern.brazil
A tropical cyclone off Brazil

Geographers studying the natural environment or physical geography may look at:

Human environment

Menschentraube
A crowd of people around a band.

Geographers studying the Human environment may look at:

Notable geographers

Main articles: List of geographers and List of Graeco-Roman geographers
Ptolemy 16century
Ptolemy "the Alexandrian", as depicted in a 16th-century engraving
Gerardus Mercator3
Gerardus Mercator
KwanMeiPo
Mei-Po Kwan
  • Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) – published Cosmos and founder of the sub-field biogeography.
  • Anne Kelly Knowles (Born 1957) – influential in the use of GIS and geographic methods in History.
  • Carl O. Sauer (1889–1975) – cultural geographer.
  • Carl Ritter (1779–1859) – occupied the first chair of geography at Berlin University.
  • Cynthia Brewer  – cartographic theorist that created the web application ColorBrewer.
  • Dana Tomlin  – originator of map algebra
  • Doreen Massey (1944–2016) – scholar in the space and places of globalization and its pluralities; winner of the Vautrin Lud Prize.
  • Ellen Churchill Semple (1863–1932) – first female president of the Association of American Geographers.
  • Eratosthenes (c. 276–c. 195/194 BC) – calculated the size of the Earth.
  • Ernest Burgess (1886–1966) – creator of the concentric zone model.
  • George F. Jenks (1916-1996) – influential in computer cartography and thematic mapping
  • Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594) – cartographer who produced the mercator projection
  • Mark Monmonier (born 1943) – cartographic theorist who wrote numerous books contributing to Geographic Information Systems.
  • Mei-Po Kwan (born 1962) – contributed significantly to the use of GPS and real-time mapping within GIS
  • Michael Frank Goodchild (born 1944) – GIScience scholar and winner of the RGS founder's medal in 2003.
  • Muhammad al-Idrisi (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد الإدريسي; Latin: Dreses) (1100–1165) – author of Nuzhatul Mushtaq.
  • Nigel Thrift (born 1949) – originator of non-representational theory.
  • Paul Vidal de La Blache (1845–1918) – founder of the French school of geopolitics, wrote the principles of human geography.
  • Ptolemy (c. 100–c. 170) – compiled Greek and Roman knowledge into the book Geographia.
  • Roger Tomlinson (1933 – 2014) – the primary originator of modern geographic information systems.
  • Sir Halford Mackinder (1861–1947) – co-founder of the LSE, Geographical Association.
  • Strabo (64/63 BC – c. AD 24) – wrote Geographica, one of the first books outlining the study of geography.
  • Waldo Tobler (1930–2018) – coined the first law of geography and second law of geography.
  • Walter Christaller (1893–1969) – human geographer and inventor of Central place theory.
  • William Morris Davis (1850–1934) – father of American geography and developer of the cycle of erosion.
  • Yi-Fu Tuan (1930–2022) – Chinese-American scholar credited with starting Humanistic Geography as a discipline.

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See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Geografía para niños

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