Environmental geography

Environmental geography examines interlinkages between human and natural systems. This discipline combines parts of human geography and physical geography.

Branches of environmental geography

Environmental perception

Environmental perception is the study of both individual and group understandings of the environment, the creation of those understandings, and their impacts on decisionmaking.

Landscape studies

Landscape studies involves the interactions between humans and the environment in concrete areas. The term landscape comes from the German Landschaft, referring the the area that one's eye can comprehend in a single view. This work includes study of both physical and human systems, with much attention paid to cultural, political, and aesthetic aspects. Carl Sauer's work traced the transition from a physical landscape to a cultural landscape, marked and defined by human activity.

Sustainability

Environmental geography is one of many disciplines active in the study of sustainability and sustainable development. Work in this branch includes economic, social, and environmental development. Specific topics include food, energy, the built environment, population, consumption, modernization, conservation, globalization, and others.

Environmental justice

Environmental justice is a term that includes both the academic study of disparate environmental impacts as well as activism to address those impacts. This body of study grew out of the anti-toxic movement of the 1980's, and the findings of the time that environmental harms often correlated with race, class, or other axes of difference.

Selected list of notable environmental geographers

• Gilbert Fowler White (1911-2006) - central figure in natural hazards research
• Carl Sauer (1889-1975) - developed idea of cultural landscapes which evolved into cultural ecology
• Yi-fu Tuan (1930-) - seminal work in environmental perception
• David Harvey (1935-) - integrated the environment into Marxist geography