Human geography
Human geography is the social science focused on the study of societies and their territories; It also studies human beings and their reactions to their environment, both in the static aspect of their organization and in the dynamic aspect of the changes they experience.[11] Human geography contains several divisions:
Population geography: studies the patterns "Pattern (geography)") and processes involved in the study of the population of different spaces; its distribution, its natural dynamism and migratory movements, as well as demographic problems (rural depopulation or rural exodus, international migratory flows, aging, among others). Its science is related to demography. And the difference between the two sciences focuses on a distinction in point of view: demography studies the population from the perspective of statistics, while population geography studies it taking into account the spatial distribution of the population and its characteristics.
Rural Geography: studies the rural world and rural spaces, the economic activities carried out in them (agriculture, livestock, tourism), the types of settlement and the problems of these areas (depopulation, economic problems, environmental problems, etc.). Related sciences include agronomy, rural sociology and economics.
Urban geography: studies cities and urban regions, their morphology (plan, structure, buildings, sectors, ecological processes), their socioeconomic characteristics, their changes and problems. Related sciences include urban planning and urban sociology.
Medical geography: studies the effects of the environment on people's health and the geographical distribution of diseases, also including the study of environmental factors that influence their spread (epidemics, pandemics, endemics). Its related science is medicine.
Transportation Geography: deals with transportation systems as part of the organization of geographic spaces. Its main study topics are the configuration and characteristics of transportation networks, the flows that occur on these networks and problems related to transportation, such as congestion, pollution, their role in the socioeconomic development of the geographic spaces in which they are integrated, etc. Related disciplines include the history of transportation and transportation economics.
Economic geography: studies the economic activities that take place in different spaces, the location of economic activities and economic problems (uneven geographic development, globalization, relocation of activities, etc.). For Krugman it is the "branch of economics" about the "location of production in space."[12] It has disciplines related to regional economics and economic history. It encompasses more specialized subdisciplines such as:
• - Industrial Geography: focused on spaces with strong industrial content, their characteristics, changes and problems.
• - Geography of services: studies the tertiary activities that occur in different spaces.
• - Tourist geography: studies the tourist potential of the territories, the development patterns and changes in tourism, the models of tourist development and the problems of these spaces.
Political geography: studies politics in various spaces, the organization and characteristics of states (borders, territorial disputes, capital status, political-administrative structure, electoral system, etc.) and international relations of conflict or domination. Political science, sociology and political history are presented as related sciences.
Social geography: focuses on various social aspects of the spaces studied such as social divisions, education, poverty, gender relations, ethnicity, etc.
Geography of aging or gerontological geography: analyzes the socio-spatial implications of population aging based on understanding the relationships between the physical-social environment and older people, at different scales, micro (housing), meso (neighborhood) and macro (city, region, country), etc. The contribution of geographers of aging, such as Graham D. Rowles, are contributing to environmental gerontology by understanding the environmental aspects of gerontology in developed and developing countries.
Cultural geography: studies diverse cultures, the dissemination of cultural elements, cultural representations, cultural landscapes as well as the transformations that cultures cause in their environment. The related science par excellence of cultural geography has been anthropology. Cultural geography also studies those activities that are international in some countries such as the day of the llenita in Venezuela [13].
Historical geography: studies the characteristics and evolution of historical spaces, their morphology and territorial organization as well as their social configuration. Its science is related to history.
Physical geography
Physical geography (once known as physiography, a term now rarely used) is the branch of geography that systematically and spatially studies the earth's surface considered as a whole and, specifically, natural geographic space.
Physical geography is concerned, according to Strahler, with processes that are the result of two great flows of energy: the flow of solar radiation that directs surface temperatures along with the movements of fluids, and the flow of heat from the interior of the Earth that manifests itself in the materials of the upper strata of the Earth's crust. These flows interact on the Earth's surface, which is the field of the physical geographer.[14] Thus, physical geography is the branch of geography that studies the physical environment. The main elements that structure the physical environment correspond to the relief, terrestrial waters, climate, vegetation, fauna and soil; and the study of each of these has given rise to various Earth sciences, among which are:.
• - Climatology deals with the study of climate, which is the long-term behavior of the atmosphere in a given geographic location, and should not be confused with meteorology, which studies short-term weather. It is closely related to meteorology, which specifically studies weather from a physical point of view. It encompasses more specialized subdisciplines:
- Synoptic climatology. The adjective synoptic refers specifically to atmospheric data corresponding to a fairly extensive surface (one million km² or more), which is why this branch is dedicated to the determination of large climatic groups in large sectors of the Earth's surface.
*Topoclimatology (climatology of a specific place).
- Urban climatology, which studies the urban climate (refers to climates modified locally by urban activities).
- Agroclimatology, which studies the climate in relation to its characteristics that affect the development of crops.
• - Geomorphology studies the terrestrial relief in a descriptive and explanatory manner, which is the result of a dynamic balance—which evolves over time—between constructive and destructive processes, a dynamic that is known generically as the geographic cycle, a theory proposed by William Morris Davis. An important work in this field is that of Jean Tricart The epidermis of the Earth[15] whose title makes us see his conception of geomorphology as a branch of the general geographical study of the Earth. The term geomorphology comes from the Greek: Γηος, that is, geos (Earth), μορφή or morphos (form) and λόγος, logos (study, knowledge), that is, study of relief forms. It encompasses more specialized subdisciplines such as:
- Fluvial geomorphology is responsible for the study of the forms caused by the river dynamics itself: erosion, transport and sedimentation.
Biogeography
• - Biogeography studies the distribution of living beings on Earth, as well as the processes that have originated them, that modify them and that can make them disappear, also including their relationship with the environment. Among its branches are:
• - Phytogeography is the branch of Biogeography that studies the relationship between the Earth's surface and plants and the distribution patterns of the latter on the planet.
• - Zoogeography, which is concerned with knowing how animals influence the Earth's surface and their distribution patterns on the planet.
• - Island Biogeography is a subfield of ecology that establishes and explains the factors that affect the species richness of natural communities. In this context an island can be any area of habitat surrounded by areas unsuitable for the species; They may not be true islands surrounded by ocean, but also mountains surrounded by deserts, lakes surrounded by land, forest fragments surrounded by human-altered landscapes, etc.
• - Phylogeography is the study of historical processes that might be responsible for the contemporary geographic distributions of individuals. This is achieved by taking into account the geographical distribution of individuals according to the pattern associated with a gene genealogy.