What is geography?

Geography turns out to be much more significant than many of us realize. It is much more than knowing facts and figures. Geography is about spatial patterns and processes. It is about frontiers, centers and peripheries, about tourists, terrorists and refugees, about trade of food, clothes, drugs and digital data, about population growth, El Nino, tsunamis and earthquakes. It is the fascinating story of an ever-changing world. Without geography you get lost.

Geography and GIS

Modern geographers use Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The capability of GIS to incorporate numerous data sets as mapped layers and to display these quickly and efficiently may help people to visualize relationships between and among spatial phenomena. It has the added ability to simultaneously analyze multiple layers of spatial information. Thus, GIS provides a means of integrating vast amounts of data and informationalizing it (transforming metrics to meaningful relationships) to allow students to understand and address significant contemporary problems such as urban conflicts, pollution, and the diffusion of diseases.

The GIS Division of a city is asked by the fire chief to produce a map showing residential structures more than 300 feet from a fire hydrant and more than a mile from a fire station. This map is easy for the GIS team to produce since this data is stored in the computer and it just takes a few commands to produce a map for the chief showing these critical areas of the city.

There are a myriad of uses for GIS. GIS is an exciting and practical use of geography, which will become increasingly important in teaching geography.

See also GIS in schools.

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