CBSE Class 12 Geography

## What human geography studies **Human geography** studies the relationship between human societies and the earth's surface. It looks at how people are distributed, how they use and change their surroundings, and how places differ from each other because of what people do there. Physical geography studies the natural environment (landforms, climate, water, soils and vegetation), and human geography studies the people who live in it and the cultural environment they build on top of it. Geographers have defined it in several ways, and the definitions show how the subject changed. - Friedrich Ratzel, who founded modern human geography, described it as the synthesis of the study of societies and the earth's surface. He stressed that the environment shapes people. - Ellen Churchill Semple described it as the study of the changing relationship between the unresting man and the unstable earth. She saw both sides of the relationship as changing. - Paul Vidal de la Blache described it as a conception resulting from a more synthetic knowledge of the earth's physical laws and of the relations between the living beings that inhabit it. His emphasis was that nature offers people a range of choices. All three place people and environment in one relationship, and what changed over time was which of the two was thought to count for more. ## Nature of human geography Human geography is an integrating discipline. It draws on physical geography for the setting in which people live, and on…