Given the broad scope of the geographical charge, it is no surprise that geographers have many different approaches to studying the world based upon conceptual emphasis guiding their study. At the most basic level, geography can be broken into two complementary pursuits, physical and human geography. For example, the physical geographer in the Amazon river basin might be interested primarily in the ecological diversity of the tropical rain forest or how the destruction of that dense vegetation changes the local climate or hydrology. The human geographer, on the other hand, might focus on the social and economic factors explaining migration of settlers into the rain forest or the tensions and conflicts over land and resources between these people and indigenous peoples. Approaches to geography All geographers collect and analyze geographic information, but they focus on different topics and employ different analytical approaches.
Systems are interdependent groups of items that interact in a regular way to form a unified whole.
The diagram to the right outlines a few other such relationships in this systematic approach in geography. Thinking spatially means asking the question 'where' about a phenomenon, and describing or developing your answer around this question. Finally, and most pertinent to our class, we can use area analysis which integrates the geographic features of an area or place in a method of study. Each place in the world occupies a unique location and features a unique combination of human behavior and environmental processes that give it a special character. For purposes of geographic study, we divide the earth into regions , which are areas defined by one or more distinctive characteristic or features, such as climate, soil type, language, or economic activity.