Introduction to Physical Geography | Physical Geography with Professor Patrich
Estimated read time: 1:20
Summary
In this engaging online geography course, Professor Jeremy Patrich introduces students to the complex and fascinating field of geography. Moving beyond the trivial notion of geography as a mere study of states and capitals, this presentation explores the discipline's foundational theories, critical thinking aspects, and its relevance across various domains. From understanding Earth’s physical and cultural landscapes to the historical figures who shaped modern geography, this lesson offers a comprehensive introduction to viewing the world through a geographer’s lens.
Highlights
Introduction to how geography is beyond simple trivia and explores Earth's comprehensive features. 📚
Explanation of physical versus cultural geography and their importance in academic studies. 🌱
Importance of fieldwork and spatial analysis in understanding geography better. 🏞️
Discussion on notable geographers and their contributions to the field. 🌟
Geography as a tool for critical thinking and deeper exploration of environmental questions. 🔍
Key Takeaways
Geography is more than just memorizing states and capitals; it's a dynamic study of Earth’s physical features, atmosphere, and human interactions. 🌍
Two broad categories of geography exist: physical and cultural, but both are interconnected in analyzing spatial and environmental structures. 🗺️
Understanding geography involves utilizing spatial analysis, fieldwork, and earth sciences to grasp how human and natural worlds interact. 🔍
Historical figures like Eratosthenes, James Hutton, and Ellen Semple among others, have laid crucial groundwork for understanding and advancing geography as a discipline. 📜
Geography aids in critical thinking by encouraging students to ask 'why' and explore the multifaceted layers of human and natural environments. 🤔
Overview
Geography is often misunderstood as just the study of maps, capitals, and states, but this subject is vast, covering physical features, atmosphere, and human geographical aspects. The introductory lecture by Professor Patrich dismantles this narrow view, inviting students into a dynamic learning journey that explores the discipline's multifaceted nature.
By discussing the two primary branches of geography - physical and cultural - and their intersections, Professor Patrich underscores the importance of integrating fieldwork with theoretical study. Students learn the significance of spatial analysis, how geography interacts with other disciplines like sociology and anthropology, and why engaging with geography can offer fresh insights into global dynamics.
Central to the presentation are the contributions of historical geographers and the critical thinking skills these pioneers developed. From Eratosthenes' founding contributions to Ellen Semple's progressive fieldwork, these figures highlight the practical and investigatory spirit that geography embodies, encouraging students to question, analyze, and appreciate the complex world they navigate.
Chapters
00:00 - 10:00: Introduction to Geography and its Importance The chapter serves as an introduction to the field of Geography, emphasizing that it extends beyond simple knowledge of states and capitals. It sets the stage for a deeper exploration into the subject, highlighting that Geography encompasses much more than often perceived. The course aims to alter common misconceptions and provide students with a comprehensive understanding of what Geography truly entails.
10:00 - 21:40: Key Figures in Geography and Their Contributions This chapter introduces key figures in the field of geography and their significant contributions, setting the foundation for the discipline. It also touches upon the concept of geography as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, which encompasses the study of Earth's physical features, atmospheric phenomena, and human activities, including their interactions with population distribution, resources, and land. The chapter ends with a focus on critical thinking in geographical studies.
21:40 - 25:00: Geography as a Critical Thinking Discipline In this chapter, the concept of geography as a discipline of critical thinking is explored. A diagram referred to as the 'circle of geography' is discussed. This diagram demonstrates the relationship between geography and other fields. Inside the circle represents the traditional realm of geography, while outside reflects its interdisciplinary connections with fields like history, identified here as historical geography. The author emphasizes the subjective nature of how geography is identified and understood across different domains.
Introduction to Physical Geography | Physical Geography with Professor Patrich Transcription
00:00 - 00:30 Hello, and welcome to your
online geography course. This presentation is our first one
for the semester. So it's pretty exciting. It's going to
introduce "Well, what is Geography?" I think that a lot
of people when they enroll in the introduction to geography
course, assume that this has to do with states and capitals and
kind of some of that trivial stuff that you do on Thursday
nights, you know, at your local hangout. But sure, geography
does include some of that. But it's a lot more than that. And
so really, this presentation is
00:30 - 01:00 to discuss what is geography,
the people who set the foundation for geography and
then we look a little bit more into critical thinking. So let's
begin. So the first part is, you know, I pulled this from the
Oxford Dictionary, what is the definition of geography as a
whole? So geography is the study of the physical features of
Earth. It's also a study of the atmosphere, human activity,
looking at how that is affected or affected by distribution of
population resources, land, and
01:00 - 01:30 even just industry. So this
diagram is kind of like the circle of geography, this guy
right here. And the reason I'm including this is to really show
you that, you know, on the inside of the circle in the
realm of geography, this is what I look at as discipline. This is
what I identify it. On the outside is probably what you
identify it. So maybe you're a history major. Well, I look at
that as historical geography.
01:30 - 02:00 Maybe you are a marine
scientist, well, I look at it as marine geography, or maybe you
look at it as anthropology, or even sociology and I look at
that as cultural geography. So geography itself, as you can
tell, is a very dynamic and multifaceted topic that covers a
lot of different areas. And it's really important to have a good
foundation of geography, in your your background academia because
it gives you an opportunity to
02:00 - 02:30 be able to look at the spatial
landscape and make correlations and relate it to other places.
So that being said, how do we see it as a geographer? How do I
see things? Well, there's technically two very broad
families of geography, there's physical geography, and then
there's more of the cultural aspect. Now, that being said,
you know, you are enrolled in the physical geography course,
but it's still important to talk about the broader spectrum of
the word. Geographers also look
02:30 - 03:00 at things as spatial analysis,
as fieldwork, and as an earth science. So spatial analysis
while looking at this map of Los Angeles, I'm looking at the way
that the roads have been distributed, and I'm looking at
how we're the location of the Baldwin hills, which is right up
in here. I'm looking at the names that were chosen for all
of these cities and towns. I'm looking at the broader spectrum.
Fieldwork is really me going out there walking the streets,
learning the architecture,
03:00 - 03:30 learning the language, learning
the restaurants, the food, the music, and then obviously the
physical landscape that really is within that. So being able to
go out there and do the field work is very important. And then
lastly, as you see this is earth science, how do we look at
things as an earth science? Well, I mean, we look at the
geology, we look at the statistical numbers of the
census, and that is a science, we're using those numbers to
understand a group of people. So how do we see the world? Well in
a very unique scope or lens, you
03:30 - 04:00 know, we look at the landscape,
the physical aspect, we look at the people and the culture. We
also look at it as a data set. We look at it as information
that has been collected. I often think of geography as the word
why, you know that's, that's a kind of a vague definition, but
I think of it as the word why. Why are buildings where they're
located? Why are mountains where they are, why is the ocean
level, changing the sea level
04:00 - 04:30 rise? Why are people moving to a
new community? Or why did they leave what push and pull factors
could affect a cultural landscape? So it's really an
inquisitive, critical thinking factors what geography is. The
next slide is looking at in academia. So when we look at
geography, and it's windy outside, in academia, how do we
look at these things? Well, we look at as a physical geography
course, we offer a human and
04:30 - 05:00 cultural geography, we look at
weather and climate, we look at world regional, so looking at
really the human and cultural geography of a landscape all
around. Looking at then California geography as a
specific topic. And then lastly, looking at GIS, how do we take
data and make maps with it and how do we understand that and
how do we interpret that data? How do we make those
observations in the field and interpret them into the
landscape and understand how
05:00 - 05:30 things work? So these are some
of the classes that lots of different colleges offer in the
100 level, I highly suggest that you know, if any of this seems
interesting you should certainly take them. But again, this is
physical geography, looking at the landscape, human and
culture, looking at music, food, people religion, even looking at
politics and stuff like that. Weather and climate
understanding how do we understand weather? How do we
understand long term climate?
05:30 - 06:00 How do we understand the world
and the interactions that we have within that? How do we
understand the Golden State that we live in? And lastly, how can
we take data and be able to manipulate this? GIS is perfect
for anyone who works in any type of retail, or academic or even
business sector. You want to make a map you want to look at,
you know, where's the best place to put a Starbucks, where's the
best place to put a home improvement store? We can
actually manipulate that data
06:00 - 06:30 and understand it. It's pretty
cool. We'll talk more about that later in the semester though. So
let's talk about the people of the discipline. So the people
that make that made and make geography what it is. So, for
the purpose of my courses, I put the dates on here and this is
very specific, I guess, I think because it makes it a complete
slide. I'm not going to ask you to memorize the exact date that
Eratosthenes passed away, just acknowledge that it was a long
time ago, but I'm more
06:30 - 07:00 interested in you being able to
match the name to the contribution to geography that
was created. So we'll start at the beginning. Eratosthenes. So,
Eratosthenes is really like the founder of what we identify as
geography. He invented the discipline of geography as we
see it today. He also created the grid system. What we
identify today is latitude and longitude. Our computers use it,
our cell phones use it, everything uses that grid
system, which is much like Excel. We'll talk more about
that later in a different
07:00 - 07:30 presentation, but he is the one
who created that grid system. He was also the first person to be
able to calculate the circumference of the earth by
utilizing a great circle. So, roughly based off of his
calculations, we assume that he understood that the Earth was
between 24,000 and 29,000 square miles in distance and
circumference, which he was closer to this number here. But
it was pretty good for being able to calculate angles. He
used the Pythagorean Theorem,
07:30 - 08:00 looking at noontime angles of
the sun and wells in two different locations. So we
understood the angle of the sun coming in, he understood the
shear angle of the shadow and the well. Understood the
distance between the two places. It was able to then calculate
the fact that if you have the sun for X amount of time and the
distance that travels, could you calculate along a great circle,
which is the greatest circle drawn on the globe, the distance
or circumference around the
08:00 - 08:30 Earth. So again, Eratosthenes,
he founded geography as a discipline. He created a grid
system And he was the first to be able to identify and
calculate the circumference of the earth. I like things of
three, it makes it easier for me to remember. So I'm gonna try to
really pinpoint those three pieces. I will move to James
Hutton. James Hutton is the father of modern geology. He was
born Edinburgh. Hutton created the theory of geology and
understanding that looking at
08:30 - 09:00 the Earth's crust, we can look
at the different layers and see that there is essentially
stratigraphy. And the farther down you go in the Earth's
crust, the older it should be. So he fundamentally designed
deep time, which is a phrase that we use in earth sciences,
to acknowledge that the earth is almost unfathomably old, it's
hard for us to understand how old earth really is. We can give
it a number, but what does that number really mean to us? So we
referenced deep time, which is a
09:00 - 09:30 process in which we can identify
the geologic timescales. So, James Hutton, father of modern
geology, he was also the creator of deep time and looking mostly
at just the geologic rock record. He was also an avid--
tried to be an avid fossil collector, but he did more
landscapes and understanding how the backup is for a quick
moment. James Hutton was off of the coast, he was he found some
rocks that had been tilted. And they're also layered. And that's
where he began to create the
09:30 - 10:00 theory and fundamental idea that
well, if these layers are continuous, they must have been
like this first. So the order must have been like this. Then
it was tilted. So you started putting this together to be
like, well, I can see that there is a story that is occurring.
There's been change. And you know, obviously he wasn't
effective at putting a date. He didn't have carbon data. You
didn't have absolute dating to put an exact date on these
changes, but he was able to put them in order and mushc like
stacking papers, if you stack a
10:00 - 10:30 bunch of papers, the one on the
bottom you put there first, I don't know when you put it
there, but it was there first. And the one on top is the most
recent. That's kind of the idea there. Moving forward, we look
at Alexander von Humboldt. So he was born in the Kingdom of
Prussia, not important, but it is for him at least. But he
really focused on botanical geography or what we identify as
biogeography. So, that was really important because he was
also the first to document human
10:30 - 11:00 induced climate change. So
obviously, climate change is a hot topic, a key word that is
used often in discussion. And we're looking at someone who, in
the 1800s, was able to identify the human impact on the
environment and seeing long term change in climate because of
that. So again, he-- his big things, he was, he laid the
foundation for biogeography. He also was the first to document
the human impact on climate by looking at lots of different
regions. Documenting leaves and
11:00 - 11:30 [inaudible] pods and going back
to these areas and seeing how when more and more people moved
in and they change the landscape, how did that change
the vegetation? How do they change the biology and stuff
like that? Moving forward, we look at Carl Ritter, so he's
considered the modern father of geography. He was the first
Department Chair of Geography in Berlin. And the big thing for
him is that he traveled-- aside from being the department chair
of geography and teaching in
11:30 - 12:00 academia. He was incredibly
progressive in his time, he went with a small group of people
down to Northern Western Africa on behalf of the British
government to negotiate treaties to stop the trans-Saharan slave
trade. So he looked at geography a little bit differently. He was
more of a he was definitely a physical geographer, but he
certainly had a cultural influence. I picked this quote
of his because I think it's really telling of how his
philosophy of geography was at
12:00 - 12:30 that time, so it says geography
has a comparative anatomy of the earth, looking at its rivers,
mountains, glaciers, so many distinct organ's each with its
own appropriate function. So he certainly understood geography
and our landscape and our earth as a system. And a system that
interacts with each other. And by removing part of that system,
the system will not work correctly or will have to make
adaptations to try to piece it together to fix itself. So I
thought that was kind of a cool
12:30 - 13:00 piece. But the big thing for him
is that he's obviously the father of modern geography,
looking at it as a discipline, being the first Department Chair
of Geography in Berlin. And then just the fact that his
philosophy is that the Earth itself is a system that works
together. It's like we do, right. We work together. That's
how we make progress. And move forward. Charles Lyell, so also
born Edinburgh. He actually authored a very important book
called "The Principles of
13:00 - 13:30 Geology." So he took everybody
before him, all of their research, all of their methods,
all of their ideologies and brought it together and created
a textbook with it, that is actually still available to
purchase. Although some of it is obviously antiquated and out of
date, because now we have more absolute technology that can
give us better dates and spectrums. But the big pieces
that he was able to explain Hutton's deep time, and to be
able to relate it more to our
13:30 - 14:00 environment within his book. He
was also the first to explain the correlation between
volcanoes and earthquakes. And his big contribution to
geography was that he understood stratigraphy which is again that
idea of how the earth layers on the Earth's crust haven't
deposited in the order. But he also did extensive research in
volcanics, glaciers, and actually worked a little bit
with Darwin on the theory of evolution. So there's Charles
Lyell. We'll look here with Ellen Semple. So she was
actually the first president of
14:00 - 14:30 the AAG, which is the
Association of American Geographers. She was a human
geographer, as her specialty. But the big thing for her is
that she was actually one of the first formal textbooks that was
written in the US. She authored two of the most used geography
textbooks in the United States. But what was interesting about
her, I mean, obviously, at this specific time, it was a huge-- it was very big in the science
world to be a woman and to be at
14:30 - 15:00 the head of science because, you
know, unfortunately, times very different then. So this was a
really big deal for her to be able to be the president of this
global organization, but her field technique research was
really unheard of, by anybody. I mean, she did research in the
Philippines, Japan, Egypt, Korea, she was all over Europe.
And taking that data, learning about the cultures learning of
the people learning about the landscape. Then bringing it back
into academia. And which was
15:00 - 15:30 great because it really built
for someone else on how we use geography in academics. But so
Ellen Semple, you know, she was the first president of one of
our biggest organizations that still exists today. She authored
textbooks that she did incredible amounts of field
research that no one had done regardless of the gender at that
time, which was really important. We move forward the
timescale itself, look at Alfred Wegener. So he was known for his
achievements in meteorology by
15:30 - 16:00 pioneering Polar Research. But
he also advanced theory of the continental drift. So you have
to imagine that we all look at a map we look at all the
continents, andwe can go okay, I get it. If I were to cut all the
continents out, I could stick them together, I can see where
they must have been together at one point, and you can pull them
apart to today's orientation. But that wasn't talked about in
the science community because we did not know how they would
possibly work. So it's been
16:00 - 16:30 assumed that while he was
studying glaciers, that he saw a large piece of ice calve off, or
break off, and float to the ocean. And thinking about just
that process. Well, if we have some form of liquid material
that's moving underneath our continental crust, would that be
enough to move the continents themselves? So, at a big
conference in 1912, he presented the continental drift theory
where essentially people said, we understand what you're
saying, we get it, but it
16:30 - 17:00 doesn't make sense. How can you
move an entire continent across the ocean? It doesn't make
sense. And so he actually he continued to do research and
actually died doing research, he froze to death unfortunately,
but not in vain. Fast forward into World War II when we
started looking at the the ocean by looking at sonar, we were
able to see these very large divergence zones, which would
then prove that, like a conveyor
17:00 - 17:30 belt system that would have been
enough to create that conveyor belt system that would move a
slab of rock with continents and oceans on top of it. And that
was when we realized that oh my gosh, he was right. Moving
forward, we'll look at Mary Arizona Baber. She was really
important for two reasons. One is that she was a geographer and
a geologist, best known for teaching pedagogy in academia,
but for her, the big thing was
17:30 - 18:00 field research. She realized
that experiential learning is really important in the field of
sciences. So what does that mean? Well, I can show you a
book of a mountain and I can explain how this mountain has
you know uplifted looking at its weathering processes and stuff
like that. But it's a lot more effective if I grab you, I pick
up a transplant you and then show you a mountain and say
look, we can talk about in a
18:00 - 18:30 classroom, but I can actually
show you how this works, I can show you how rivers transport
material, I can show you, you know, at the biogeography of an
area and how it can change based on the salinity of the local
water resource. So, you know, we're very thankful for her
contribution to geography as geography is a field science. We
love going outside, we love going out and doing field
research. Again, whether it be physical landscapes or whether
it be cultural, going out there
18:30 - 19:00 and trying new food and learning
about new cultures and new music and new style of dance. I mean,
it's so important to go out and get into the field. And then our
last geographer on this list, are there more? Lots more, and
I'll give you some notable mentions as well. But we'll do
Luna Leopold, because we'll mention him again later in the
term. He's known for his research looking at fluvial
geomorphology or understanding how water changes the earth and
how do we study that. So his big
19:00 - 19:30 contribution to geography was
that he wanted to create a new philosophy of water management,
because water is a very important resource. And
oftentimes in history, it was not used or regulated
appropriately. And, you know, water has a lot of power. You
know, it has a lot of money involved. It's, as you see,
according the slide here, to protect our water resources
because it has economical, social and political factors. If
you do not have water, you cannot have agriculture, you
cannot have livestock, you can't
19:30 - 20:00 have people. So you need to be
able to regulate the water you have. And the reality is, we
don't have a lot of fresh water on our planet. We circulate
through a lot of the same water and we have a lot of water
stored in the ocean, which is not pottable or drinkable. And
we have a lot of water stored in ice. But what we have is
freshwater that circulates through a hydrologic cycle is
really not a lot. So how do we regulate that? How do we store
water? How are we fair with that storage? You know, bring up that
word fair, because we find that
20:00 - 20:30 a lot of corporations, not to
mention names, but we'll say, a very famous water bottle
company. So they're known, especially in California to
purchase streams, and to then bottle all the water in that
stream. And then everyone else that was downstream of that
river source no longer has water because it's all being consumed
at the top right at source. So how is that fair? How do we
regulate that? How do we understand, you know, the the
impact of water? So that's what he was about. So we mentioned a
couple people, what was that,
20:30 - 21:00 nine people or so? That are
that were brought impactful pieces to geography. I do expect
that, you know, all those people, and they're just
primary, what do they bring to the table? Because we'll be
mentioning these people further on in the term. But notable
mentions that aren't on here, I mean, you've got people, such as
John Muir. John Muir, you may know as being the father of the
National Park System. He's the reason why Yosemite was saved as
a state park. You've got people
21:00 - 21:30 like Michael Jordan. He was a
geographer, I'm a geographer. But you've got also Philip
Playfair. He was the one who studied stromatolites and
understood that that's where Earth got its original
apportionment of oxygen through photosynthesis of a micro algae
that precipitates rock. So
21:30 - 22:00 there's lots of other people
that will go throughout the semester. But to begin with,
this is a good list of people that are really important to the
diversity and understanding of geography as a science. And
again, we'll mention a lot of them again, in other
presentations. So my last slide is looking at that, you know,
geography itself is a critical thinking course, we think
critically. Now, what's interesting about critical
thinking, is people often assume that that means something bad
like, "Oh, don't be so critical." But that's not what
critical thinking is about. Critical thinking is about
asking the right questions. And
22:00 - 22:30 it's about understanding what
you're asking and what it is that you want. So this is a
traditional scientific method. If we all thought this way, the
world would be very different. And it's hard for us to think
this way. You know, it's hard for us when we have social media
at our fingertips to be able to go and look at someone's post
and follow this process, because we don't do that, very rarely.
So let's use it as an example. Someone posts a post on
Facebook. It's like a screenshot of something that was shared,
that was shared, that was
22:30 - 23:00 shared. So you need to ask a
question, right? Well, I want to know if this is a credible post.
So you need to do some background research. And some of
that background research could include that you Snopes it, or
you Google some of the facts and figures. You do some research
about the person who posted it to begin with. And then you
construct a hypothesis. And maybe your hypothesis is that
this post is not credible, that there is some there are some
fallacies. Within those posts,
23:00 - 23:30 so you can test that with an
experiment, right? You can start click-- you can recollect the
data to see if it's true. Is that working? Yes or no? If it's
not, then you need to change the experiment that you're doing.
You can then maybe-- you did, maybe you find a post, you do
some research, you do your own numbers, you start collecting
your own data, and it's working. And then you have to then, you
know, with that data, construct a conclusion. Do you agree? Do
you disagree? Or do you want to
23:30 - 24:00 reject and re-modify? Maybe,
maybe it's like, well, you know, this worked out, but I need more
research, or I completely agree this is factual and true, or
this is totally bogus and not good. That's this idea. So if
you don't agree, then you go back, ask new questions, form a
new hypothesis and start over again. And that's okay. You
know, in a science, you know, there's this overshadowing fear
of failure. And failure s really
24:00 - 24:30 a wonderful thing. If you use
that information to make changes, because most of the
things that we know, were the results of a failed experiment.
So we were trying to find this, but we found that, and sometimes
that is much more important than what this would have been to
begin with. And then we can reconstruct our methods and
start over again. So all I'm asking you for our course is
that everything that we talked about, we use that scientific
method, we ask those questions, we construct a hypothesis, your
hypothesis is a funded idea with
24:30 - 25:00 research. And then when we're
done, then our result that we communicate is the theory. My
theory is that this person posts credible information, or my
theory is this person does not post credible information
because of my hypothesis, which was my question. So when we get
into more about what the theory is, we understand that the
phrase theory is not some just random idea. We went from here
and got all the way, as I move
25:00 - 25:30 it, all the way down here to the
bottom, before we can label it as a theory. And that means it's
already past all of this, it's been agreed upon by a scientific
community. So there's a lot more that goes into it than just I
have a theory, it doesn't work that way, I have a hypothesis.
That's what you need to say. So we'll go back here. So I know
this was a lot of information in a short amount of time. But I
hope that it will be helpful, be sure to watch it again, if you
need more help with that. But
25:30 - 26:00 again, geography, this is why I
love it. You know, it's so multifaceted, so many different
people, so many little nooks and crannies within our discipline
that can really cater to anyone. And if you appreciate going
outside, this is a perfect class for you because this is going to
teach you how to observe and interpret our landscape and
understand what it is that you stand facing. That being said,
don't forget to subscribe and like my channel and we'll talk
soon.