Student Question

What are the five themes of geography?

Quick answer:

The five themes of geography are Location, Place, Human-Environment Interaction, Movement, and Region. Location involves both absolute and relative positioning on Earth. Place examines physical and human characteristics of a location. Human-Environment Interaction focuses on how humans affect and adapt to their environment. Movement looks at how people, goods, and ideas travel. Region explores how areas are defined and altered by cultural and political factors.

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The five themes are geography are:

  1. Location—our position on Earth, both relative and absolute. Think of the US—it has an absolute position on earth that can be located and pinpointed on a map and with coordinates (this is where latitude and longitude factor in to the conversation). It also has a relative location in terms of economy, society, politics, and so on. The United States's capacity for producing oil is relative to where the oil exists.
  2. Place—these are the physical and human characteristics that help define a location. How the physical and human relate to and impact one another is a key study in geography. Questions about place could include things like "what are the physical attributes of the Amazon rainforest" as well as "which peoples live in the Andes Mountains."
  3. Human-Environment Interaction—this concerns the impact humans have had on the environment. For example: how have irrigation efforts in the American Southwest impacted the environment?
  4. Movement—Continuing with our "human" theme, how have people and goods moved across the environment? Walking? Boat? Car? Airplane? Electronically? And how has this movement impacted the way humans live and interact with the environment, both absolute and relative?
  5. Region—how do regions form and change? The fertile crescent is a band of earth (in a crescent shape) from the Eastern Mediterranean across to the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in modern-day Iraq and Iran. How did this form? How does it change with human interactions? How do boundaries change over time with political changes? What is the location and place of the fertile crescent? And so on . . . How about the Northeast? It is not a formal region with delineated borders or boundaries, and yet it is considered a "region" of the United States.

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