Intro to Human Geography

Today in class, our key question was 'What is Human Geography?'.  The goal of learning this was to understand what we'll learn about throughout the school year.  The first learning objective was to define geography, human geography and physical geography.  Geography is the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of the Earth and the planets.  Human geography is the study of people and their communities, cultures, economics and interactions with the environment by studying their relations with and across space and place.  Physical geography is the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and geosphere, as opposed to a cultural or built environment which is the study of human geography.  We also learned in class that the atmosphere is the air, hydrosphere is the water, biosphere is the living organisms and geosphere is the rocks, sand particles and minerals.  The second learning objective was to understand the difference between human and physical geography.  The difference is that human is about the cultural environment whereas physical deals with the natural environment. The last learning objective was to identify three types of maps that geographers use.  The first was political, which shows mainly just boundaries.  Next was the physical map, which shows the features of places on the map.  The last is the thematic map, which tells a story just by looking at it.  Todays class taught me what human geography is.