Introduction

Physical geography studies weather, climate, paleo-climate, biomes, biodiversity, ecosystems, oceans, currents, land forms, orogeny (mountain building), tectonics including earthquakes, volcanoes, faults and continental drift, soils, hydrology, geology, environmental planning and protection  — among other things.

If we were going to do a good regional geography, we would examine all of these physical dimensions of change and stability taking note of which ones are particularly important in giving each region its character and set it off from other regions. We would look at flows of energy, materials, individual organisms as well as species, and how all of this changes over time. We would look at climate change, global warming, holes in the ozone, El Niño and other global phenomenon. We would study hazards such as drought, fire, flooding, storms, and what people do to mitigate these disasters. We would look at environmental potential and environmental problems and  we would map phenomena and trends. We would map the past. We would map correlations of things that we thought might be causally related. We would examine people's attitudes toward nature and the earth and predict the likely outcomes of their activities.

People are tremendously innovative and can use culture to alter their physical environment. But understanding physical geography allows us to determine environmental constraints and potentials of different places. Soil, water, disease organisms, plants and animals have tremendous economic potential and can even be used as weapons in social conflict.

This is an exciting time to study geography. The ways in which human societies create, alter and interact with their social and physical environments has become an increasingly pressing issue. For example:

• Catastrophic species loss — more species are dying out faster than at anytime in the history of the earth. This is largely because of human population pressure, rapid industrialization, increased human-generated pollution and habitat loss. Biodiversity is being greatly reduced because species are dying out at every level of the ecosystem — not predominately at the higher levels as occurred prehistorically in previous mass die-offs.

 
• Global warming and Kyoto — the nations of the world met at Kyoto and arrived at agreements to try to curb the production of green house gases that almost all earth scientists agree are the root cause of global warming. The current US administration has refused to ratify the Kyoto agreements despite the fact that the US is the world's single largest producer of green house gases. Instead, the administration has proposed that we continue to study the problem and take no action.

 
• Sustained political attack on environmental legislation by the current presidential administration in the US  is undermining past achievements in protecting air, water, natural habitats and environmental quality. Worldwide, through pressure from GATT and the WTO, similar anti-environment measures are being promoted for short-term gain over long-term environmental sustainability.