Geography

Theoretical Approaches

Methods

Methods as well as techniques

Geography from Greek: γεωγραφία, geographia, literally "earth description" is the field of science devoted to the study of a lands, features, inhabitants, & phenomena of the Earth and planets. The first adult to usage the word γεωγραφία was Eratosthenes 276–194 BC. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an apprehension of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they make-up changed and come to be.

Geography is often defined in terms of two branches: human geography and physical geography. Human geography is concerned with the explore of people and their communities, cultures, economies, and interactions with the environment by studying their relations with and across space and place. Physical geography is concerned with the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and geosphere.

The four historical traditions in geographical research are spatial analyses of the natural and the human phenomena, area studies of places and regions, studies of human-land relationships, and the Earth sciences. Geography has been called "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and the physical sciences".

History

The oldest required world maps date back to ancient Babylon from the 9th century BC. The best required Babylonian world map, however, is the Imago Mundi of 600 BC. The map as reconstructed by Eckhard Unger shows Babylon on the Euphrates, surrounded by a circular landmass showing Assyria, Urartu, and several cities, in make adjustments to surrounded by a "bitter river" Oceanus, with seven islands arranged around it so as to take a seven-pointed star. The accompanying text mentions seven outer regions beyond the encircling ocean. The descriptions of five of them have survived. In contrast to the Imago Mundi, an earlier Babylonian world map dating back to the 9th century BC depicted Babylon as being further north from the center of the world, though it is notwhat that center was supposed to represent.

The ideas of Anaximander c. 610–545 BC: considered by later Greek writers to be the true founder of geography, come to us through fragments identified by his successors. Anaximander is credited with the invention of the gnomon, the simple, yet excellent Greek instrument that permits the early measurement of latitude. Thales is also credited with the prediction of eclipses. The foundations of geography can be traced to the ancient cultures, such(a) as the ancient, medieval, and early innovative Chinese. The Greeks, who were the number one to explore geography as both art and science, achieved this through Cartography, Philosophy, and Literature, or through Mathematics. There is some debate approximately who was the first grown-up to assert that the Earth is spherical in shape, with the address going either to Parmenides or Pythagoras. Anaxagoras was experienced such as lawyers and surveyors tothat the lines of the Earth was circular by explaining eclipses. However, he still believed that the Earth was a flat disk, as did many of his contemporaries. One of the first estimates of the radius of the Earth was offered by Eratosthenes.

The first rigorous system of latitude and longitude an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific form figure or combination. is credited to Hipparchus. He employed a sexagesimal system that was derived from Babylonian mathematics. The meridians were sub-divided into 360°, with regarded and noted separately. degree further subdivided into 60 minutes. To degree the longitude at different locations on Earth, he suggested using eclipses to instituting the relative difference in time. The extensive mapping by the Romans as they explored new lands would later manage a high level of information for Ptolemy to construct detailed atlases. He extended the work of Hipparchus, using a grid system on his maps and adopting a length of 56.5 miles for a degree.

From the 3rd century onwards, Chinese methods of geographical study and writing of geographical literature became much more comprehensive than what was found in Europe at the time until the 13th century. Chinese geographers such as Liu An, Pei Xiu, Jia Dan, Shen Kuo, Fan Chengda, Zhou Daguan, and Xu Xiake wrote important treatises, yet by the 17th century innovative ideas and methods of Western-style geography were adopted in China.

During the Middle Ages, the fall of the Roman empire led to a shift in the evolution of geography from Europe to the Islamic world. Muslim geographers such as Muhammad al-Idrisi reported detailed world maps such as Tabula Rogeriana, while other geographers such as Yaqut al-Hamawi, Abu Rayhan Biruni, Ibn Battuta, and Ibn Khaldun provided detailed accounts of their journeys and the geography of the regions they visited. Turkish geographer, Mahmud al-Kashgari drew a world map on a linguistic basis, and later so did Piri Reis Piri Reis map. Further, Islamic scholars translated and interpreted the earlier workings of the Romans and the Greeks and introducing the House of Wisdom in Baghdad for this purpose. Abū Zayd al-Balkhī, originally from Balkh, founded the "Balkhī school" of terrestrial mapping in Baghdad. Suhrāb, a slow tenth century Muslim geographer accompanied a book of geographical coordinates, with instructions for devloping a rectangular world map with equirectangular projection or cylindrical equidistant projection.

Earth's circumference, which wasto modern values of the Earth's circumference. His estimate of 6,339.9 km for the al-Biruni developed a new method of using trigonometric calculations, based on the angle between a plain and mountain top, which yielded more accurate measurements of the Earth's circumference, and made it possible for it to be measured by a single person from a single location.

The European Age of Discovery during the 16th and the 17th centuries, where numerous new lands were discovered and accounts by European explorers such as Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, and James Cook revived a desire for both accurate geographic detail, and more solid theoretical foundations in Europe. The problem facing both explorers and geographers was finding the latitud and longitude of a geographic location. The problem of latitude was solved long before but that of longitude remained; agreeing on what zero meridian should be was only part of the problem. It was left to John Harrison to solve it by inventing the chronometer H-4 in 1760, and later in 1884 for the International Meridian Conference to undertake by convention the Greenwich meridian as zero meridian.