Physical Geography
This branch studies Earth’s natural features, processes, and environments.
Physical geography
This branch studies people, cultures, populations, and settlements.
Human Geography
This field focuses on creating and studying maps
Cartography
This theme answers the question, “Where is it?”
Location
A geographer studies mountains, rainfall, and rivers in South America.
Physical Geography
Someone who studies climate, landforms, bodies of water, soil, plants, and animals is a...
Physical Geographer
Which type of geographer investigates where people live and why they settle in certain places.
Human Geographer
This field studies the weather.
Meteorology
This theme describes a location’s physical and human characteristics
Place
A geographer studies languages, religion, and population in Eastern Europe.
Human Geographer
This field of physical geography studies water, including rivers, lakes, groundwater, and oceans.
Hydrology
This field of human geography studies population size, growth, and movement.
Population geography
The study of Earth’s water—including oceans, rivers, lakes, ice, and groundwater is called...
Hydrology
This theme explains how people, products, and ideas travel from place to place
Movement
People build irrigation canals to bring river water to their crops is an example of...
Human-Environment Interaction
Explain why climate is a physical-geography topic.
Climate describes long-term weather patterns that occur naturally in an area.
This field of human geography studies culture, including language, religion, traditions, and ways of life.
Cultural geography
This field studies the climate.
Climatology
This theme examines how people depend on, adapt to, and modify their environment.
Human-Environment Interaction
People move to an area with fertile soil so they can farm.
Identify the physical factor and the human factor.
Physical - Fertile soil
Human - people settle and farm there
Explain why a scientist studying a volcano, an earthquake, and erosion is using physical geography.
These are natural Earth processes and features.
Explain why a geographer studying trade between cities is using human geography.
Trade involves people moving goods, money, and resources between places.
The study of human economic activities and patterns
Economic Geography
A community builds homes on stilts because floods occur often. Which theme is shown, and how are people responding?
Human-environment interaction; people are adapting to flooding.
A map shows a river, mountains, capital cities, borders, and major roads. Explain why geographers might need both physical and human geography to study it.
Physical - Rivers and mountains
Human - Cities, borders, and roads