Geography Definition Us History

The west region western u s mostly west of the great plains and including alaska arizona california hawaii idaho montana nevada new mexico oregon utah washington and wyoming.

Geography definition us history. Virgin islands guam and american samoa and minor outlying possessions the united states shares land borders with canada and mexico and maritime borders with russia cuba. The modern academic discipline of geography is rooted in ancient practice concerned with the characteristics of places in particular their natural environments and peoples as well as the relations. Geography derives from the greek γεωγραφία geographia a literal translation of which would be to describe or write about the earth. Geographers explore both the physical properties of earth s surface and the human societies spread across it they also examine how human culture interacts with the natural environment and the way that locations and places can have an impact on people.

In more recent developments geography has become a distinct academic discipline. The first european to arrive in the area was christopher columbus and the first to make landfall was ponce de leon who landed at florida. In 1962 he defined geography as both science and art social geographer j. Historical geography is the branch of geography that studies the ways in which geographic phenomena have changed over time.

Join your state s geography education alliance for professional development opportunities and more. Broek worked in the area of the field of how man affects the earth not just the other way around and in 1965 said geography s purpose was to understand the earth as the world of man. Darby a historical geographer was radical in that his area of interest was geographical change over time. Geography the study of the diverse environments places and spaces of earth s surface and their interactions.

The history of geography includes many histories of geography which have differed over time and between different cultural and political groups. Except the eastern seaboard has been the west at some point in american history. It is a synthesizing discipline which shares both topical and methodological similarities with history anthropology ecology geology environmental studies literary studies and other fields although the majority of work in historical geography is considered human. Virtually every part of the u s.

The term united states when used in the geographical sense is the contiguous united states the state of alaska the island state of hawaii the five insular territories of puerto rico northern mariana islands u s. What is geography why is it important. What is geography why is it important and what can you do to learn or teach more about it. Brief overview of the history of united states the area that is today the united states was inhabited for thousands of years by various tribal peoples.