If you are studying Geography, the foremost thing you will come across is the Five Fundamental themes of geography. It is start and basic study of Geography. Five Themes of Geography are Location, Movement, Place, Region and Human-Environment Interaction. Below is the brief description of these five themes of Geography 1. Location:
Location is one of the five themes of Geography. Every point on this Earth where we step on has a location which is deteremined by lines of Latitude and Longitude. Lines of Latitude measure distances north and south of the Equator and lines of Longitude measure distances east and west of the Prime Meridian. Geographers use lines of latitude and longitude to detemine aboslute location or relative location.
- Absolute Location: Absolute location provides a definite reference to locate a place. Absolute location of a place is defined with latitude and longitude lines. This is the exact location of the place. In simple words, we can say that an absolute location is a Global Location (Latitude and Longitude) or a local location (Street Address).
- Relative Location: Relative location in geography describes a place with respect to its environment. It describes how a place is has connection with other places through water, land, time etc
2. Place:
Place is another themes of geography. Place describes human and physical characteristics of a location. Places further have physical and human characteristics
Physical characteristics include such things as the mountains, rivers, soil, beaches, wildlife, soil, animal and life of plants of a place. Places also have human characteristics. These characteristics describe actions of humans that are responsible to bring changes to the environment such as buildings, roads, clothing, and food habits.
3. Movement:
Movement is one of the 5 themes of geography. Humans are always moving but this doesnot mean that this theme is only about people moving from one place to another, it also deals with how and why people travel from one place to another. This theme actually describes movements and migrations across the planet. Alongside with moving people, also ideas move, fashions move, fads move, Goods move. What is an example of an idea that moves? Fashion? Fad? How do we depend on people in other places? How would our lives change if our movement options changed? What would happen if we start to travel by horses and camels? How do we move from one place to another? How do we actually get food?
4. Region:
A region is the basic unit of study in geography. A region is an area that is defined by unit on the earth's surface that has unifying characteristics. Those unifying characteristics can be physical, natural, human, or cultural. If we look a little deep, there are three types of regions
- Formal regions are defined by official boundaries, such as counties, Cities, States and countries.
- Functional regions are defined by a function. These regions are actually defined by their connections. For instance the circulation area for a major city area is the functional region of that paper.
- Vernacular regions are those regions that are defined by human's perception such as "The South," "The Midwest," or the "Middle East;" they have no formal boundaries and are defined with our perception.
5. Human-Environment Interaction:
This theme of geography defines how humans have positive and negative effects on environment. Human-environment interaction looks at the behavior between humans and their surroundings that how people get used to the environment and how they change it with their interactions. There are three concepts considered to human/environmental interaction:
- How do people depend on the environment? People depend on the environment. Rain falls occur, floods happens and many other factos that lead people to change their way of living ad thus they depend on their environment.
- How to people adapt to the environment? People adapt to the environment by wearing clothing that is suitable for summer and winter; rain and shine.
- How do people modify the environment? People modify their environment by heating and coolings buildings for comfort at different types of environment throughout the year
