Geography and Its Branches

In the beginning, geography is largely associated with the names of places and cartography. Because of this, it is easy to think that a geographer’s main concern is about drawing maps. In actuality, it is rather more complicated than that. A geographer may have been trained in both cartology and toponymy. Their primary study, however, concerns with the matter of space and temporal database distribution of features, processes, and phenomena as well as the relationships between human and nature. Geography is interdisciplinary because space and place is directly connected with a string of other topics and subjects such as animals and plants, climate, health, and economics. As a field of science, geography has traditionally been categorized into two large subgroups: physical geography and human geography. Physical geography deals with the study of natural environment and the way landforms, water, soil, climate, and organisms interact with each other. Human geography examines the way humans influence, manage, view, and create or build space and environment.

A third subgroup would then manifest as a result of the difference between the two previous categories: the environmental geography. In environmental geography, both physical and human geographies merge, with the interactions between humans and environment as its main focus of study.
Geography is a broad term of field of study. Besides the two aforementioned main divisions, geography has branches and sub-branches with their own focused subjects.
1. Physical geography
Physical geography is geography in its Earth science form. It examines problems found in biosphere (flora and fauna patterns of global scope), pedosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere. Areas of studies under this category include: biogeography, climatology and meteorology, coastal geography, environmental management, geodesy, geomorphology, glaciology, hydrology and hydrography, landscape ecology, oceanography, pedology, palaeogeography, as well as quaternary science.
2. Human geography
Human geography examines processes and patterns that shape human society. It is related to many aspects including economics, social, cultural, political, and human. Disciplines under this category include: cultural geography, health geography, historical and time geography, political geography and geopolitics, population geography and demography, religion geography, social geography, transportation geography, tourism geography, as well as urban geography.
Approaches toward human geography are presented in various methods including:
a. Behavioral geography
b. Feminist geography
c. Culture theory
d. Geosophy
3. Integrated geography
Areas it commands include: political ecology, sustainability, environmental management, and emergency management.
4. Geomatics
Geomatics is an application of computers to cartography and topography.
5. Regional geography