Geography is the study of places and how people and their environments shape each other, and this section teaches the skills you need to read maps, compare places and understand time zones.
What is geography?
Geography studies places and the relationships between people and their environments, and it splits into two main branches (National Geographic Society).
Physical geography covers Earth’s natural systems: climate, landforms, oceans and soil. Human geography covers people: how populations spread out, build cities and organize governments. This page does not teach either branch in depth. It points you to the skill pages that do.
Where to start
If you are new to geography, start with the basics of dividing up the globe, then move to direction and place.
- Continents covers the seven landmasses and why some maps group them differently.
- Hemispheres explains the four ways mapmakers split the globe in half.
- How to read a compass teaches direction and bearings, a skill you need for any map.
- The five themes of geography gives you a framework for investigating any place: location, place, human-environment interaction, movement and region.
- Time zones explains why clocks differ around the world and how to compare them.
These five pages cover the core skills. They do not cover every geography topic, such as climate science or economic geography, which belong to other parts of the site.
Put the skills to use
Once you know the basics, our virtual tours page lets you visit real places online and practice reading maps and locating regions for yourself.
Virtual tours change over time as sites update or retire their content, so that page is reviewed on its own schedule and is not part of the core skills covered here.
Sources
- National Geographic Society. What Is Geography?