The Geography Portal
Geography (from Greek: γεωγραφία, geographia, literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of the Earth. The first person to use the word γεωγραφία was Eratosthenes (276–194 BC). Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be. While geography is specific to Earth, many concepts can be applied more broadly to other celestial bodies in the field of planetary science.
Geography is often defined in terms of two branches: human geography and physical geography. Human geography is concerned with the study 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. Both branches make use of similar geographic philosophies, concepts, and tools and often have significant overlap. One such concept, the first law of geography, proposed by Waldo Tobler, is "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things."
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". (Full article...)
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Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
- Photo of McNish cropped from the 1914–1917 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition crew photo.
- Dunnottar Castle in the Mearns occupies one of the best defensive locations in Great Britain. The site was in use throughout the High Middle Ages, and the castle itself dates to the fourteenth century.
- Crean on the Endurance Expedition, February 1915
- Calabozos is a Holocene caldera in central Chile's Maule Region (7th Region). Part of the Chilean Andes' volcanic segment, it is considered a member of the Southern Volcanic Zone (SVZ), one of the three distinct volcanic belts of South America. This most active section of the Andes runs along central Chile's western edge, and includes more than 70 of Chile's stratovolcanoes and volcanic fields. Calabozos lies in an extremely remote area of poorly glaciated mountains.
Calabozos and the majority of the Andean volcanoes formed from the subduction of the oceanic Nazca Plate under the continental South American continental lithosphere. The caldera is in a transitional region between thick and thin lithosphere, and is probably supplied by a pool of andesitic and rhyolitic magma. It sits on a historic bed of volcanic and plutonic sedimentary rock (rock formed within the Earth) that in turn sits on top of a layer of merged sedimentary and metamorphic rock. (Full article...) - The siege of Nice by a Franco-Ottoman fleet in 1543 (drawing by Toselli, after an engraving by Aeneas Vico)
- The Sultanate of Singora was a heavily fortified port city in the deep south of Thailand.
In this month
- 3 August 1958 – First naval vessel to reach the North Pole, the USS Nautilus
- 13 August 1935 – Formation of the Geographic Institute Agustín Codazzi
- 13 August 1894 – Incorporation of Morrison, Oklahoma
- 30 August 1844 – Birth of Friedrich Ratzel (pictured), German geographer and ethnographer
Vital article
Vital articles to understand Geography.
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surface is made up of the ocean, dwarfing Earth's polar ice, lakes, and rivers. The remaining 29% of Earth's surface is land, consisting of continents and islands. Earth's surface layer is formed of several slowly moving tectonic plates, interacting to produce mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Earth's liquid outer core generates the magnetic field that shapes Earth's magnetosphere, deflecting destructive solar winds. (Full article...)
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- Map: Strebe, using GeocartThe Mollweide projection is an equal-area, pseudocylindrical map projection generally used for global maps of the world or night sky. The projection was first published by mathematician and astronomer Karl Mollweide of Leipzig in 1805 but reinvented and popularized in 1857 by Jacques Babinet. The projection trades accuracy of angle and shape for accuracy of proportions in area, and as such is used where that property is needed, such as maps depicting global distributions.
- Photo credit: Joaquim Alves GasparIllustration of the Ptolemaic geocentric model of the Universe (the theory that the Earth is the center of the universe) by Portuguese cosmographer and cartographer Bartolomeu Velho. Taken from his treatise Cosmographia, made in Paris, 1568. Notice the distances of the bodies to the centre of the Earth (left) and the times of revolution, in years (right).
- Map of Vatican CityMap: ThoroeA map of Vatican City (click for full resolution), highlighting notable buildings and the Vatican Gardens. The world's smallest independent state and the episcopal see of the Pope, Vatican City is entirely surrounded by the Italian city of Rome. As such, its geography is primarily urban and its climate similar to Italy's.
- Map credit: Fernão Vaz DouradoA pre-Mercator nautical chart of West Africa from 1571, by Portuguese cartographer Fernão Vaz Dourado. It is done using the so-called "plane chart model", where observed latitudes and magnetic directions were plotted directly into the plane, with a constant scale, as if the Earth were flat.
- Map: Strebe, using GeocartThe General Perspective projection is a map projection used in cartography in which the Earth is depicted as viewed from a finite distance above its surface. If the view precisely faces the center of the Earth, the projection is a vertical perspective projection; otherwise, it is a tilted perspective projection. Here is shown a vertical perspective from an altitude of 35,786 km over (0°, 90°W), corresponding to a view from geostationary orbit. Due to the horizon as seen from the viewpoint position, the projection always shows less than half of the Earth's surface: in this case neither of the North and South Poles is visible.
- Map: Strebe, using GeocartThe Tobler hyperelliptical projection is a family of equal-area pseudocylindrical map projections first described by Waldo R. Tobler in 1973. The imagery used for the map is derived from NASA's Blue Marble summer months composite, with oceans lightened to enhance legibility and contrast.
- Map: Strebe, using GeocartThe Chamberlin trimetric projection is a map projection where three points are fixed on the globe and the points on the sphere are mapped onto a plane by triangulation. It was developed in 1946 by Wellman Chamberlin for the National Geographic Society. It is neither conformal nor equal-area, but rather attempts to minimize distortion of distances everywhere with the side-effect of balancing between areal equivalence and conformality.
- Photo credit: NASAThe world's largest compass rose, drawn on the desert floor at Edwards Air Force Base in California, United States. Painted on the dry lake near Dryden Flight Research Center, it is inclined to magnetic north and is used by pilots for calibrating heading indicators.
- Map: Strebe, using GeocartThe Winkel tripel projection is a modified azimuthal map projection proposed by Oswald Winkel in 1921. The arithmetic mean of the equirectangular projection and the Aitoff projection, it was intended as a compromise between minimizing three kinds of distortion: area, direction and distance.
The imagery used for the map is derived from NASA's Blue Marble summer months composite, with oceans lightened to enhance legibility and contrast. - Map: Strebe, using GeocartThe Lambert conformal conic projection is a conic map projection used for aeronautical charts, portions of the State Plane Coordinate System, and many national and regional mapping systems. It is one of seven projections introduced by Johann Heinrich Lambert in 1772. Conceptually, the projection seats a cone over the sphere of the Earth and projects the surface conformally onto the cone. The cone is unrolled, and the parallel that was touching the sphere is assigned unit scale. By scaling the resulting map, two parallels can be assigned unit scale, with scale decreasing between them and increasing outside them. Unlike other conic projections, no true secant form of this projection exists.
- Earth at nightPhoto credit: NASA and NOAAEarth at night.
The northernmost settlement on Earth is Alert, Ellesmere Island, Canada. The southernmost is the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, in Antarctica. - Map: Strebe, using GeocartThe Albers projection is a conic, equal area map projection, named after Heinrich C. Albers, that uses two standard parallels. Although scale and shape are not preserved, distortion is minimal between the standard parallels. This map is used by such agencies as the United States Geological Survey, the United States Census Bureau, and the governments of British Columbia and Yukon.
- Map: Strebe, using GeocartThe Littrow projection, created by Joseph Johann Littrow in 1838, is a conformal retroazimuthal map projection. It allows direct measurement of the azimuth from any point on the map to the center.
- Map credit: Heinrich C. BerannYellowstone National Park is an American national park located mostly in Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially the Old Faithful geyser, one of its most popular landmarks. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is the most abundant. The park is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion. In 1978, Yellowstone was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
This picture is a stylized panoramic map of Yellowstone National Park as viewed from the northeast, created in 1991 by Austrian painter and cartographer Heinrich C. Berann for the National Park Service. Yellowstone Lake and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone are in the center, while Old Faithful is visible on the right, next to a brown building representing the Old Faithful Inn. Jackson Lake and the peaks of the Teton Range are depicted in the background. - Map credit: Heinrich C. BerannNorth Cascades National Park is an American national park in the state of Washington. At more than 500,000 acres (200,000 ha), North Cascades National Park is the largest of the three National Park Service units that comprise the North Cascades National Park Complex. North Cascades National Park consists of a northern and southern section, bisected by the Skagit River that flows through Ross Lake National Recreation Area. Lake Chelan National Recreation Area lies on the southern border of the south unit of the park. In addition to the two national recreation areas, other protected lands including several national forests and wilderness areas, as well as Canadian provincial parks in British Columbia, nearly surround the park. North Cascades National Park features the rugged mountain peaks of the North Cascades Range, the most expansive glacial system in the contiguous United States, the headwaters of numerous waterways, and vast forests with the highest degree of flora biodiversity of any American national park.
This picture is a panoramic map of North Cascades National Park, as viewed from the east, created in 1987 by Austrian painter and cartographer Heinrich C. Berann for the National Park Service.
Featured biography
Featured biography articles in geography
Georg Forster at age 26, by J. H. W. Tischbein, 1781
Johann George Adam Forster, also known as Georg Forster (German pronunciation: [ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈfɔʁstɐ], 27 November 1754 – 10 January 1794), was a German naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist and revolutionary. At an early age, he accompanied his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, on several scientific expeditions, including James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific. His report of that journey, A Voyage Round the World, contributed significantly to the ethnology of the people of Polynesia and remains a respected work. As a result of the report, Forster, who was admitted to the Royal Society at the early age of twenty-two, came to be considered one of the founders of modern scientific travel literature.
After returning to continental Europe, Forster turned toward academia. He taught natural history at the Collegium Carolinum in the Ottoneum, Kassel (1778–84), and later at the Academy of Vilna (Vilnius University) (1784–87). In 1788, he became head librarian at the University of Mainz. Most of his scientific work during this time consisted of essays on botany and ethnology, but he also prefaced and translated many books about travel and exploration, including a German translation of Cook's diaries. (Full article...)More featured biographies
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Did you know
Did you know it about Geography?
- ... that during the collision of India with Asia, the southern part of the Tibetan Plateau achieved its high elevation before the northern part?
- ... that Johann Reinhold Forster's 1778 book Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World has been described as "the beginning of modern geography"?
- ... that the first known paravian dinosaurs were from China, but they now live on every continent?
- ... that the dark and fatalistic humour of Canadian comedians has been attributed to the dangers of Canada's climate and geography?
- ... that although Constance Kies was a nutrition scientist, she majored in English, and minored in history, geography, library science, and home economics?
- ... that glaciation in Wisconsin 17 thousand years ago helped create its unique geography?
Places around you
Top 10 WikiProject Geography Popular articles of the month
This following Geography-related articles is a most visited articles of WikiProject Geography, See complete list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Geography/Popular pages.
- A map of the United States showing its 50 states, federal district and five inhabited territories. Note that Alaska, Hawaii, and territories are shown at different scales and that the Aleutian Islands and the uninhabited northwestern Hawaiian Islands are omitted from this map.
- Europe is a landmass, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. Comprising the westernmost peninsulas of Eurasia, it shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Asia and Africa. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and Asia to the east. Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. Although much of this border is over land, Europe is almost always recognised as its own continent because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe can also be viewed as a subcontinent of Eurasia, and referred to as the European subcontinent. (Full article...)
- Generation Z (or Gen Z for short), colloquially known as zoomers, is the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials and preceding Generation Alpha. Researchers and popular media use the mid to late 1990s as starting birth years and the early 2010s as ending birth years. Most members of Generation Z are children of Generation X. (Full article...)
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