They may engage in studies such as acid rain monitoring, soil erosion control, watershed management, or the El Nino to name a few. Human geographers will concentrate on the features and phenomena resulting from people's activities and characteristics. They may investigate overpopulation in metropolitan areas, territorial disputes, trade between countries, or the ethnic make-up of a neighborhood. Geography is in essence, the where and why aspect of science. Naturally, when people think of geography they also think of maps.
Maps are the backbone of geography.
They visually showcase the various forms of geographic information. Traditionally, as geographers gathered observations on their subjects, they would construct the data into a map to demonstrate its behavior over a location. They now employ techniques such as satellite images taken from hundreds of miles above earth, theodolites used to measure the slopes of streams, computer programs that can merge data into geographic information systems and many other new instruments being developed daily to assist the geographer with a better understanding of our planet Earth.