Physical geography

Main category: Geography Journals

Mental geography and earth science journals communicate and document the results of research carried out in universities and various other research institutions. Most journals cover a specific publish the research within that field, however unlike human geographers, physical geographers tend to publish in inter-disciplinary journals rather than predominantly geography journal; the research is normally expressed in the form of a

Historical evolution of the discipline

From the birth of geography as a science during the Greek classical period and until the late nineteenth century with the birth of anthropogeography (human geography), geography was almost exclusively a natural science: the study of location and descriptive gazetteer of all places of the known world. Several works among the best known during this long period could be cited as an example, from Strabo (Geography), Eratosthenes (Geographika) or Dionysius Periegetes (Periegesis Oiceumene) in the Ancient Age. In more modern times, these works include the Alexander von Humboldt (Kosmos) in the nineteenth century, in which geography is regarded as a physical and natural science through the work Summa de Geografía of Martín Fernández de Enciso from the early sixteenth century, which indicated for the first time the New World.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a controversy exported from geology, between supporters of James Hutton (uniformitarianism thesis) and Georges Cuvier (catastrophism) strongly influenced the field of geography, because geography at this time was a natural science.

Two historical events during the nineteenth century had a great effect on the further development of physical geography. The first was the European colonial expansion in Asia, Africa, Australia and even America in search of raw materials required by industries during the Industrial Revolution. This fostered the creation of geography departments in the universities of the colonial powers and the birth and development of national geographical societies, thus giving rise to the process identified by Horacio Capel as the institutionalization of geography.

The

The contributions of the Russian school became more frequent through his disciples, and in the nineteenth century we have great geographers such as

The second important process is the theory of evolution by Darwin in mid-century (which decisively influenced the work of Friedrich Ratzel, who had academic training as a zoologist and was a follower of Darwin's ideas) which meant an important impetus in the development of Biogeography.

Another major event in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries took place in the United States. William Morris Davis not only made important contributions to the establishment of discipline in his country but revolutionized the field to develop cycle of erosion theory which he proposed as a paradigm for geography in general, although in actually served as a paradigm for physical geography. His theory explained that mountains and other landforms are shaped by factors that are manifested cyclically. He explained that the cycle begins with the lifting of the relief by geological processes (faults, volcanism, tectonic upheaval, etc.). Factors such as rivers and runoff begin to create V-shaped valleys between the mountains (the stage called "youth"). During this first stage, the terrain is steeper and more irregular. Over time, the currents can carve wider valleys ("maturity") and then start to wind, towering hills only ("senescence"). Finally, everything comes to what is a plain flat plain at the lowest elevation possible (called "baseline") This plain was called by Davis' "peneplain" meaning "almost plain" Then river rejuvenation occurs and there is another mountain lift and the cycle continues.

Although Davis's theory is not entirely accurate, it was absolutely revolutionary and unique in its time and helped to modernize and create a geography subfield of

• Eratosthenes (276 – 194 BC) who invented the discipline of geography.^[12] He made the first known reliable estimation of the Earth's size.^[13] He is considered the father of mathematical geography and geodesy.^[13][14]
• Ptolemy (c. 90 – c. 168), who compiled Greek and Roman knowledge to produce the book Geographia.
• Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī (973 – 1048 AD), considered the father of geodesy.^{[15][16][verification needed}
  ]
• uniformitarianism in Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (also called The Book of Healing
  ).
• Muhammad al-Idrisi (Dreses, 1100 – c. 1165), who drew the Tabula Rogeriana, the most accurate world map in pre-modern times.^[17]
• Piri Reis (1465 – c. 1554), whose Piri Reis map is the oldest surviving world map to include the Americas and possibly Antarctica
• Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594), an innovative cartographer and originator of the Mercator projection.
• Bernhardus Varenius (1622–1650), Wrote his important work "General Geography" (1650), first overview of the geography, the foundation of modern geography.
• Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765), father of Russian geography and founded the study of glaciology.
• Cosmos
  and founded the study of biogeography.
• Arnold Henry Guyot (1807–1884), who noted the structure of glaciers and advanced the understanding of glacial motion, especially in fast ice flow.
• Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), the author of a glacial theory which disputed the notion of a steady-cooling Earth.
• Wallace line
  .
• Vasily Dokuchaev (1840–1903), patriarch of Russian geography and founder of pedology.
• Wladimir Peter Köppen
  (1846–1940), developer of most important climate classification and founder of Paleoclimatology.
• William Morris Davis (1850–1934), father of American geography, founder of Geomorphology and developer of the geographical cycle theory.
• FRGS
  (1854-1911), wrote his seminal work Geography of the Oceans published in 1881.
• Walther Penck (1888–1923), proponent of the cycle of erosion and the simultaneous occurrence of uplift and denudation.
• Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922), Antarctic explorer during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
• overland flow
  .
• Bretz (Missoula) floods
  .
• Luis García Sáinz
  (1894–1965), pioneer of physical geography in Spain.
• Dansgaard-Oeschger events
  .
• Hans Oeschger (1927–1998), palaeoclimatologist and pioneer in ice core research, co-identifier of Dansgaard-Orschger events.
• Richard Chorley (1927–2002), a key contributor to the quantitative revolution and the use of systems theory in geography.
• Sir Nicholas Shackleton (1937–2006), who demonstrated that oscillations in climate over the past few million years could be correlated with variations in the orbital and positional relationship between the Earth and the Sun.

See also

References