Branching Out
The study of the world, its people, and the landscapes they create.
What is geography?
North, South, East, and West are known as these types of directions.
What are cardinal directions?
This branch of geography studies the Earth's natural features, like mountains, weather, and plants.
What is physical geography?
This geographic theme answers the question "Where is it?" and can be described using exact map coordinates or nearby landmarks.
What is Location?
Geographers study the world at these three main levels, ranging from your neighborhood to the entire planet.
What are local, regional, and global?
This type of science studies people and how they get along with each other.
What is a social science?
This is the word for the science of making maps.
What is cartography?
This is the study of water on Earth, like how it moves through rivers and oceans.
What is hydrology?
This theme explains how people, products, and ideas travel all across the Earth's surface.
What is Movement?
This is the smallest level a geographer use.
What is the local level?
These are the two primary, main branches of geography.
What are physical and human geography?
Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest are known as these types of directions.
What are intermediate directions?
If you are studying the weather and what causes storms, you are studying this science.
What is meteorology?
This theme answers the question "What is it like there?" by looking at a spot's natural features, like mountains, and its human features, like language.
What is Place?
When a geographer studies how the internet connects people across the entire planet, they are working at this massive level.
What is the global level?
This branch of geography focuses on the world's people, communities, landscapes, and cultures.
What is human geography?
This tool on a map shows you how the distance on paper compares to the actual distance in the real world.
What is a scale?
Saying that your school is "next to the grocery store" or "ten minutes from the park" is an example of this.
What is relative location?
This theme describes a group of different places that are lumped together because they share something in common, like a desert area or a school district.
What is a Region?
At this level, geographers look at your neighborhood, your town’s traffic patterns, or where people shop in your city.
What is the local level?
This term describes all the human and physical features that make a place look unique.
What is a landscape?
Giving your exact street address or your latitude and longitude coordinates is an example of this kind of location.
What is absolute location?
This imaginary line wraps around the Earth, dividing the planet into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
What is the equator?
Building a house with a steep, pointy roof so heavy winter snow easily slides off the top is an example of this theme.
What is Human-Environment Interaction?
Looking at a whole state or a big area with common features means you are studying at this mid-sized level.
What is the regional level?