Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
prolonged rainstorms in the summer of 2007. Human populations
and wealth continue to grow in hazardous places, driven by the
need to exploit the resources available and often disregarding or
being unaware of the risk. Integrated geography has the task of
taking both the biophysical hazard and the cultural context fully
into account.
Geography of global change
Spatial variation up to global scale, and temporal variability
on timescales of relevance to human occupancy of the Earth,
have long been major concepts within integrated geography.
Thus, geography's interest in global change is not a new one.
This interest can be traced within both of the previously
discussed themes of historical geography and the geography
of human-environment interaction. However, global change
has recently become a dominant theme in its own right, largely
because of broader concerns about the magnitude, rate, and
direction of current changes in both the biophysical and
human environment. On the one hand, global-scale human
impacts on the biophysical environment now dominate to the
extent that many believe this threatens the future existence
of humanity itself. On the other hand, the globalization of
communications, organizations, information, and other forms
of human interaction have profound implications for the nature
of economic, social, and political patterns within the human
environment.
Global change has come to refer to the immediate past, present,
and imminent future changes affecting the anthroposphere - the
human-modifi ed Earth's surface. The unprecedented rates of
change during the Anthropocene - the last c. 200 years (see box in
Chapter 2) - especially during the last 50 years, are illustrated by
some key indicators of the natural and human environment
in Figure 18. These global changes are driven, directly or
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