Introduction to Geography
Senior 1 · Geography
Introduction to Geography
Lesson 1 of 3
20 min
Study the photograph below before you read on. It was taken in the hills above Lake Kivu, near Karongi in the Western Province. Write down three things that nature made and three things that people made. Then ask one question that begins with "Why".
Your lists probably included natural features such as hills, a valley, soil and haze in the air, and human features such as terraces, banana gardens, paths and houses. A geographer then asks how the two are connected:
These four questions are the heart of the subject. Geography studies places, the people in them and the links between people and their natural surroundings.
Definition
Geography: the study of the Earth's surface: its natural features, the people who live on it, and how people and the natural environment affect each other. The word comes from two Greek words, geo (the Earth) and graphein (to write or describe), so it means "describing the Earth". Example: explaining why most of Rwanda's tea is grown on the high, wet hills of the west and south-west is a geography question.
Definition
Environment: everything that surrounds a living thing and affects it: the land, water, air, climate, plants and animals (the natural environment) and the buildings, roads, farms and towns that people have made (the built or human environment). Example: a wetland in Kigali is part of the natural environment; the road beside it is part of the built environment.
The Greek scholar Eratosthenes (about 276 to 194 BC), who ran the great library at Alexandria in Egypt, is said to have been the first to use the word "geography". He is famous for measuring the size of the Earth without leaving Egypt.
Worked example
How Eratosthenes measured the Earth
At noon on midsummer's day the Sun shone straight down a well at Syene (today Aswan), so it cast no shadow. At the same moment in Alexandria, about 5,000 stadia to the north, a vertical stick cast a shadow showing that the Sun's rays were away from the vertical.
Step 1 The angle between the two places, measured at the centre of the Earth, is also .
Step 2 A full circle is , so the distance Syene to Alexandria is of the way round the Earth.
Step 3 The whole circumference is therefore
Answer. About 250,000 stadia. Historians still argue about the length of a stadion, but the answer is close to the modern value of about 40,000 km.
Geography is a wide subject, so it is divided into branches. Figure 1 shows the three main ones.
Figure 1. The three branches of geography. Environmental geography sits where the physical and human branches meet.
| Branch | What it studies | A question it could ask about Rwanda |
|---|---|---|
| Physical geography | Natural features and processes: relief, rocks and soils, weather and climate, rivers and lakes, vegetation and wildlife | Why is the west of Rwanda wetter and cooler than the east? |
| Human geography | People and what they do: population, settlements, farming, mining, industry, trade, transport, tourism | Why is Rubavu District more crowded than most of the Eastern Province? |
| Practical geography | The skills geographers use to collect and show information: maps, fieldwork, statistics, graphs, photographs, satellite images, GIS | How can a map of landslide scars help decide where new houses may be built? |
Definition
Physical geography: the branch that studies the natural environment and the processes that shape it. Its sub-branches include geomorphology (landforms), climatology (climate), hydrology (water), pedology (soils) and biogeography (plants and animals). Example: explaining how the Virunga volcanoes were formed.
Definition
Human geography: the branch that studies people: where they live, how they earn a living, how they move and how they use the land. Example: studying why people move from rural districts to Kigali.
Definition
Practical geography: the branch that teaches the skills of the subject: reading and drawing maps, fieldwork, collecting and presenting data, and interpreting photographs and satellite images. It is also called geographical techniques. Example: drawing a sketch map of your school compound.
Worked example
Worked example: which branch? Decide which branch of geography each topic belongs to, and give a reason.
Return to the photograph of the hills near Karongi. Three geographers visit the same slope.
None of them can explain the landscape alone. The terraces exist because of the slope and rain (physical) and because farmers need food and money (human). That link between people and nature is what makes geography a single subject.
What is Geography? Crash Course Geography #1, by CrashCourse (10 min). Watch for how the presenter explains that geography asks "where" and "why there" about both natural and human features.
A classmate says: "Geography is just learning the names of capital cities and rivers." Use the Karongi case study to explain, in three or four sentences, why this is only a small part of the subject.
Tip
Geo = Earth, graphy = describing. Sort any topic with one question: is it made by nature (physical), made by people (human), or is it a skill for studying either (practical)?
Practice
Remember
Sources and credits
The lesson text, diagram, table, worked examples and practice are written by Ganzaa.
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
