five themes of geography essay

The Five Themes of Geography (Explained for Students)

The five themes of geography are location, place, region, movement, and human-environmental interaction.

The human-environmental interaction theme was originally called “relationships within places”, and movement was first known as “relationships between places”.

The five themes were first introduced in the 1984 Guidelines for Geographic Education: Elementary and Secondary Schools . 

The document suggested the themes as a way for teachers to structure geography content. Teachers, writers, and curriculum designers have since widely used the five themes model to teach geography in the United States (Natoli, 1994).

These themes can be thought of as tools that make the study of geography in school more effective (Gersmehl, 2014).

The Five Themes of Geography

1. location.

According to Natoli (1994), the first theme of geography is location because it is vital for understanding world climatic patterns and cartography.

Location refers to the position of a site on the Earth’s surface and can be understood in absolute and relative terms:

• Absolute location refers to a precise and unique description. The most common way to describe the location of a site is by reference to its latitude and longitude or address. For example, the absolute location of Washington D.C. can be described with the following coordinates: 38.9072° N, 77.0369° W.
• Relative location describes one location by comparing it to another one. In other words, by situating one location in relation to another. For example, Washington D.C. is around 330 kilometers from New York City. 

Every point on Earth has a unique absolute location that can be represented by two coordinates (latitude and longitude).

Relative descriptions aren’t necessarily unique and any location can be described in a myriad of relative terms. 

This theme helps teachers demonstrate the importance of knowing where something is before examining it geographically. For example, the location of a site gives information about its climate, access to resources, access to routes, and so on. 

Descriptions of spatial relationships through concepts like distance, proximity, and direction fall under the theme of location.

If the theme of location answers the question of where something is, the theme of place answers the question: what’s it like?

It considers how one place is different from others. The word place refers to an area defined by everything in it. The location of a place stays the same, but its characteristics are constantly changing. 

Place differs from location because the latter considers a position in space, while the former considers the characteristics and features of a site.

Places have two main types of characteristics: physical and human.

• Physical characteristics include things like landforms, plant life, bodies of water, climate, soil, and animals.
• Human characteristics , on the other hand, include things like language, architecture, religion, political systems, and so on. 

These characteristics make each place unique and provide valuable information about its nature.

According to Lukermann, there are six constituent values of places: location, ensemble (the integration of nature and culture), uniqueness, localized focusing power, emergence, and meaning (Lukermann, 2008).

The theme of place provides further information about a location. Descriptions through the use of defining characteristics of a given site fall under this theme.

In geography, understanding places is essential for making comparisons of landscape elements and generalizing the characteristics of areas. 

3. Human-Environmental Interaction (Relationships within Places)

Human-environmental interaction, originally termed “relationships within places”, is a theme of geography that deals with how people and their environments interact (Alliance, 1990).

This theme differs from the preceding two by the fact that it is not as exclusively geographical.

When geographers study human-environmental interaction, both the negative and positive effects of such interactions are under investigation. There are three key concepts in this theme: dependency, adaptation, and modification.

• Dependency refers to how we as humans depend on our environment for necessities like food, water, and shelter.
• Adaptation refers to the idea that humans adapt to the environment. We have settled in almost every corner of the world and have adapted successfully to the changing natural settings. 
• Modification refers to the way we change our environment. The human characteristics of places like architecture, city planning, and landscaping shape the given natural settings to suit our needs. 

The theme of human-environmental interaction explores how places evolve, develop, and gain “geographical recognition by the intricate interactions between people and their physical and cultural environments, although it also subsumes physical-physical relations as well as cultural-cultural interactions” (Natoli, 1994, p. 3). 

This theme also includes the study of Earth as an environmental system that interacts with technology and the study of the conflicts between economic or technological development and environmental protection. 

4. Movement (Relationships between Places)

The theme of movement addresses the question of how and why places are connected.

Movement, originally termed “relationships between places”, referred to the travel of people, goods, and ideas from one place to another.

This conception of movement is sometimes criticized for being too narrow. Some scholars now define movement to include economic, sociological, and informational interactions as well as environmental movements (Natoli, 1994, p. 3).

For example, the movement of continents, weather patterns, and ocean currents are just as much an object of this theme of geography as are the westward expansion of the United States and immigration. An individual’s travel from one place to another is also considered an example of movement. 

The inclusion and omission of physical geography from the theme of movement continues to be a matter of debate.

Bednarz, Tchakerian, and Giardino suggest that becoming familiar with several fundamental concepts of physical geography (system, boundary, driving force, resisting force, threshold, and equilibrium) is essential for understanding movement (Bednarz et al., 1993). 

Places may be connected through movement in many ways: through methods of transportation, everyday movement, economic factors that influence movement, water cycles, tectonic plates, global interdependence, and other types of human interaction.

The most concrete examples of how places have interconnected relationships are things like transportation routes. 

A region can be defined as an area that displays unifying characteristics given some criteria. The theme of regions studies how areas are similar to one another and how they differ.

Regions can be divided into different categories, including: formal, functional, physical, human, and vernacular.

• Formal regions have official boundaries and include cities, countries, and states.
• Functional regions have apparent connections.
• Physical regions have a unifying physical geography (for example, the Rocky Mountains).
• Human regions have some unifying cultural, economic, social, or political characteristics (for example, the Northeast Corridor from Washington D.C.).
• Vernacular regions have no formal boundaries but exist as concepts (for example, the Middle East). 

See here for more types of regions.

Different regions can be analyzed through their physical and human characteristics.

Here we can use the same definitions as we did in the theme of place above, where physical characteristics include landforms, plant life, bodies of water, climate, animal life, etc., and human characteristics include but are not limited to architecture, culture, language, religion, and politics.

So a region may exhibit unity in its physical or human characteristics (or both).

Most of the time geographers find it useful to incorporate both physical and human characteristics into their descriptions.

For example, while the major topic of human geography is the study of political, cultural, social, and economic aspects of areas, it is nearly impossible to conduct a rigorous study of an area without referring to the physical landscape on which human activities take place.

It is, therefore, unsurprising that one must study human-environmental interaction along with the other themes of geography. 

The five themes of geography are location, place, human-environmental interaction (relationships within places), movement (relationships between places), and region. These were introduced in the 1980s to help teachers organize geography classes. They continue to be used in the United States and the influence of this approach can be seen in most geography textbooks. 

Alliance, M. G. (1990). Global Geography: Activities for Teaching the Five Themes of Geography, Grades 3-9 . Social Science Education Consortium.

Bednarz, R. S., Tchakerian, V. P., & Giardino, J. R. (1993). Incorporating Physical Geography into the Guideline’s Movement Theme. Journal of Geography , 92 (1), 35–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221349308979124

Gersmehl, P. (2014). Teaching Geography, Third Edition . Guilford Publications.

Guidelines for Geographic Education: Elementary and Secondary Schools . (1984). The Council.

Lukermann, F. (2008). Geography as a Formal Intellectual Discipline and the Way in Which It Contributes to Human Knowledge. The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe Canadien , 8 , 167–172. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0064.1964.tb00605.x

Natoli, S. J. (1994). Guidelines for Geographic Education and the Fundamental Themes in Geography. Journal of Geography , 93 (1), 2–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221349408979676

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Five Themes of Geography

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The five themes of geography are as follows:

• Location: Where are things located? A location can be absolute (for example, latitude and longitude or a street address) or relative (for example, explained by identifying landmarks, direction, or distance between places).
• Place: Characteristics that define a place and explains what makes it different from other places. These differences can take many forms including physical or cultural differences.
• Human Environment Interaction: This theme explains how humans and the environment interact with each other. Humans adapt and change the environment while depending upon it.
• Region: Geographers divide the earth into regions making it easier to study. Regions are defined in many ways including area, vegetation, political divisions, etc.
• Movement: People, items, and ideas (mass communication) move and help shape the world. After teaching these concepts to students, continue with the Five Themes of Geography assignment.

The following assignment is meant to be given after the teacher has presented the definitions and examples of the five themes of geography. The following directions are given to the students:

• Use the newspaper, magazines, pamphlet, flyers, etc. (whatever is the most readily available) to cut out an example of each of the five themes of geography (Use your notes to help you find examples.):
• Human Environment Interaction
• Paste or tape the examples to a piece of paper, leave room for some writing.
• Next to each example you cut out, write what theme it represents and a sentence stating why it represents that theme. Ex. Location: (Picture of a car accident from a paper) This picture shows relative location because it portrays an accident by the Drive-In Theatre on Highway 52 two miles west of Everywhere, USA. HINT: If you have a question, ASK - don't wait until the homework is due!
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What Are the 5 Themes of Geography? (Plus Teaching Ideas)

More than maps, geography prepares kids to be global citizens.

Geography is a big topic. It literally spans the globe. That’s why the National Council for Geographic Education and the Association of American Geographers broke geography down into five distinct themes:

• Human-Environment Interactions

Here’s a short video about each of the five themes of geography and how to approach them in the classroom.

Geography Theme 1: Location

Location is the study of where places are located, both absolute and relative.

Absolute location is a definitive reference for a place. So, it’s a place’s latitude and longitude, an address, or any other way to tell exactly where a place is. If you describe your house as being at 123 Main Street, you’re describing an absolute location.

Relative location explains where a place is in relation to other landmarks and the environment. Describing your school as 23 miles from the nearest ocean is using relative location.

Location is important to understanding the geography of a region as it helps us communicate about different places. And defining location helps us understand how things like climate, natural resources, and topography impact humans.

How To Teach Location

Teaching location means teaching kids to describe places, as well as reading and creating maps.

Build an amusement park

Teach the basics of mapmaking and ideas of location by having students design their own amusement park. Have them think about the absolute and relative locations as they map out their rides. The big roller coaster is at a specific latitude and longitude. It’s also 50 feet from the snow cone stand.

Get it: Build Your Amusement Park lesson

Create a story map

Read books from around the world and, as you do, identify on the map where each story takes place. As you read, talk about how the place shaped the story. For example, how did Spanish topography and culture shape the story of Ferdinand the Bull?

Here’s a list of picture books that take place around the world to get you started.

Map in pieces

Cut pieces out of a map of the United States (small or large, depending on the grade you teach) and have students guess which state it comes from based on what they see. Is there ocean coastline? A lake? Lots farmland? Can students work together to match each piece with the state it comes from?

Create a class atlas

Give students large pieces of paper and research tools. Assign them each a country to research and create an atlas page. Then, display all the atlas pages in a public space so they can read about other countries.

Geography Theme 2: Place

Place is about understanding the human and physical characteristics of a location.

Physical characteristics are things like mountains, rivers, beaches, climate, and animal and plant life. Think about what you’d see on a topographical map. Using physical characteristics, a place could be described as dry, arid, and populated by cacti and desert animals.

Human characteristics are things that people have made that define a place. That could be architecture, farms and land use, religious practices, political systems, transportation, and/or communication. Using human characteristics, a place could be described as an advanced, Spanish-speaking democracy with a Catholic majority.

Place is important because the characteristics of a place influence how humans interact with the environment. For example, the amount of rain impacts which crops can grow. Or a place with a redwood forest may create a logging industry in one area.

And place is important for understanding cultural diversity. Culture is shaped by place, and different regions have different traditions and beliefs that are shaped by place.

How To Teach Place

Have students explore the idea of place by working with each element—physical and human—in various projects and all at once.

Create your own country

A project like having students create their own country asks them to think through the characteristics of a country they create, as well as the features of the area they choose to place it on the globe.

Get it: Create Your Own Country lesson

Create a real world map

Watch a video about the challenge of creating a map of the world like this one:

Then, have students tackle the challenge of how to represent the world map. How have cartographers already solved this problem? What other ideas do students have?

Put together a soil report

Have students request soil samples from people they know around the country or even the world. Once you have the soil samples, investigate them. What is similar? What is different? How does the composition of the soil tell you about the place it’s from?

Compile a weather report

Assign each student or group of students a city around the world. One day each week or for a few weeks in a row, students look up the weather for that city, record the weather highlights, and keep track of the weather patterns. When students have enough recorded information, have them analyze and present the data. Which city has the highest temperature? The lowest? The biggest range? Smallest range? What can weather tell you about a place?

Investigate maps

Watch a video on how maps have been wrong throughout history:

Then, review different types of maps and discuss what each map shows and what type of information cartographers need to collect to create it.

Read more: Google Earth Hacks To Use Now

Geography Theme 3: Human-Environment Interactions

Human-environment interaction is the consideration of how humans adapt to and modify the environment. So, it’s how people have shaped the land, in positive and negative ways, and how the environment shapes people. For example, human-environment interaction explores how people living in cold climates use natural gas to heat homes, while in more temperate climates, people use other methods of heating and cooling. Another example is how the construction of dams impacts people (more people can live in an area) and the environment (some animals may thrive while others may not; a lake may be created where there wasn’t one before).

Humans are always shifting and impacting the land, so this theme is important to understand how human activities impact the planet and the resulting consequences.

How To Teach Human-Environment Interactions

Teaching human-environment interactions starts with helping kids understand how they benefit from and impact their own environment, and expanding from there.

Make a list of wants and needs

Have students work together to list their wants and needs. How do they get their wants and needs from their current city? How might their wants and needs change and be met if they lived in a different place?

Calculate population change

Collect population statistics for your town going back at least 50 years. When students present and analyze the data, what do they notice? What trends do they see? What might have influenced those trends? For an extension, invite a local historian into class to talk about the population trends and history of your area.

Investigate the plants that grow naturally in your area and create an image of what a natural yard would look like. Would there be less grass because you live in a dry area? Or would there be tall plants because you live in a place with lots of rain? Have students create a campaign to encourage people to let yards go “wild.”

Do a vanishing-island project

After watching a 9-minute film about the Isle de Jean Charles, a tiny island community off the Louisiana coast, students learn about how the changes on the island are impacting people who live there. Then, they learn more about the effects of hurricanes for people who live on the coast.

Learn more: A Vanishing Island lesson at PBS LearningMedia

Geography Theme 4: Movement

Movement studies the ways that ideas, goods, resources, communication, and trends travel around the world. This includes migration and immigration. Movement could be cell phone reception moving around the world, or refugees fleeing a country during war.

Movement is broken into different types:

• Human migration: when people move from one place to another either voluntarily or involuntarily
• Transportation of goods and services: moving products from where they are made to another place
• Communication of ideas: dissemination of information through various channels
• Cultural diffusion: when cultural traits spread from one society to another
• A big theme in movement is globalization and the impact of globalization on economies around the world.

How To Teach Movement

Teaching movement involves introducing students to new topics, like shipping, and using familiar tools, like maps.

Read about movement

Read a book like I Ship by Kelly Rice Schmitt and use the book’s narrative to trace how goods move from one place to another through shipping routes.

Buy it: I Ship at Amazon

Get teaching guide: I Ship Teaching Guide at Lerner Publishing

Create a travel map

Have students create a list of places that they would like to visit around the world. How would they get to each location? Have students create a map of how they would get from their hometown to each place. Can they think of creative ways to move from one place to another? For example, are there any shipping routes that go from your town to another country? Or do you want to visit any places that are close enough to travel to via hot-air balloon?

Here’s how to make a map using Google Maps:

Create a family movement map

Ask students to ask their parents and grandparents where their family came from and create a class map of how people moved and immigrated to your town. Note that one family may have more than one immigration or migration route.

Learn about push and pull factors

Watch a video about push and pull factors and migration, like this one:

Then, assign students a region and have them research why people are either moving to or from that region. Some regions to include: Syria, the United States, Pakistan, India, Ukraine.

Use the World Migration Report 2020 for a visualization.

Geography Theme 5: Region

Regions divide the world into units for study. Each region has some characteristic that unites it.

• Formal regions: regions with official boundaries, like cities, states, countries
• Functional regions: regions that are defined by connections, like the suburbs around a city that create a region
• Vernacular regions: perceived regions like “the Midwest.” There are no official boundaries, but these regions are generally understood.

Studying cultural regions helps students understand how societies have developed over time and how environment shapes human culture.

How To Teach Region

Teach region by creating regions and working with concepts that help define regions, like time zones and artifacts.

Map your school region

Use students’ addresses to create the region for your class. Then, discuss the physical features. What physical features are included? What man-made features are included? How do the features that are included influence the experience of living there?

Create a wall of time zones

Read a book like At the Same Moment Around the World by Clotilde Perrin and introduce the idea of time zones. Create a clock wall for your room that shows the time zones in different cities around the world.

Buy it: At the Same Moment Around the World at Amazon

Investigate cultural artifacts

Look at stamps or money from around the world. What do different countries include on their stamps or money? How does their region and culture impact money or stamps?

More Resources for Teaching the 5 Themes of Geography

• Lesson on the Five Themes of Geography from Erie Public Schools
• National Geography Standards from the National Council for Geographic Education
• Geography Games Students Will Love from We Are Teachers
• Unexpected and Fun Geography Lessons from We Are Teachers
• List of things to consider as you teach place from Decolonise Geography

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Five Themes of Geography Applied to Africa Essay

Introduction.

Modern geography is an integrative discipline that combines the study of the distribution and nature of physical and human characteristics on Earth. Geography is usually divided into five thematic areas: physical geography, human geography, regional geography, resource geography, and ecosystem geography. To explain the physical geography of Africa, factors such as climatic conditions, substrate conditions, relief, and other geographical factors can be used. Africa covers a wide range of climatic zones, from tropical to subtropical. It includes different types of relief, which determine flora and fauna that can adapt to these conditions.

To describe the human geography of Africa, the location and characteristics of settlements, as well as other factors such as economy, social structures, and culture, can be applied. In the past, Africa included many cultures, and their influence can still be observed. Moreover, the economy of Africa has undergone great changes recently, particularly the development of the tourism industry. Concerning the geography of Africa’s regions, a classification of regions and their political boundaries can be used. Africa is divided into 54 countries, each with its own government, economy, and culture. Additionally, the regions of Africa can also be divided into smaller areas such as cities, city-states, provinces, and so on. To explore the geography of Africa’s resources, one should consider information about the distribution of natural resources such as minerals, oil, and gas, as well as the distribution of agricultural land and water resources. The distribution of these resources has a significant impact on the economy of Africa and leads to various economic problems. For example, African countries take loans for oil extraction, but many of them do not have sufficient resources to use them for the benefit of all citizens.

As for the geography of Africa’s ecosystems, factors such as biomes, vegetation, and animals, as well as how people use these ecosystems and affect them can be utilized. For example, people have exploited and continue to exploit African ecosystems such as savannas to produce agricultural crops, use pastures for animals, and provide places for hunting and fishing. These and other human activities have an effect on the various characteristics of Africa’s ecosystems.

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Five Themes of Geography Essay

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The 5 Themes in Geography

During the 1980’s the United States showed unacceptably low test scores on simple Geographic tests. The point Committee on Geographic Education could only attribute these results to Geographic Illiteracy, not only on the part of the students, but more importantly on the educators themselves. By 1984 it had become inexplicably clear that immediate action must take place to counteract this ongoing problem in our educational institutions (Journal of Geography 89). In response, the Joint Committee on Geographic Education produced a landmark publication entitled “Guidelines for Geographic Education”.

This document contained a scope and sequence in Geography with suggested learning results for the nations primary and secondary school systems, as well as suggested educational strategies for analysis on the part of the students and teachers. Most importantly, this article provided the Five Fundamental Themes in Geography, which have evolved to become an integral element of social studies education, because they take the world of geographic study beyond the realm of basic memorization, and into a new plane of analysis and implementation.

These five themes include location, place, human-environment interactions, movement, and regions. Location answers the question of “where? “. If you plan to meet someone at a specific time, and a specific place, the question of “Where will you meet? ” must first be answered. To resolve this situation, Geography employs Absolute Location, and Relative Location. Absolute Location applies a grid-matrix system to the earth’s surface in the form of coordinates. These coordinates, longitude and latitude, allow geographers to pinpoint exact areas of the earth’s surface, and other planetary bodies as well.

If Geographers wish to apply satellite technology to observe an area of the earth’s surface, coordinates are used to pinpoint an exact location. Relative Location answers the simple question of where you would meet a person. For example: “Let’s meet at Martin Hall, the building next to the Library. ” But, relative location is much deeper than simple location. It also involves interdependence of a location based upon its resources, people, and environment. If one wishes to build a ski resort, the location of that resort must be relative with the environment of the location.

It would be illogical, and non-profitable to build a ski resort in the Mojave desert. However, it would be logical to build a resort in the higher elevations of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Idaho, or Montana. Every area on the surface of the earth is defined by some type of characteristic. Siberia is known to be very cold, but also a part of the Soviet Union, a formerly communist country. Belize is known to be very warm, but it is also an English speaking country which houses a tropical rain forest.

To define these basic geographical characteristics, Geographers have placed them into three categories under the heading of “place” – Physical, Human, and Observed Characteristics. Physical Characteristics are those characteristics which define the physical environment of a place . This environment includes the climate, physical terrain, and plant and animal life. Human Characteristics are those things which people have done to an environment to change them. People construct buildings in which to live, shop, work, pray, and play.

People are also defined by their religion, race, languages they speak, and philosophies and ideologies in which they live. Observed Characteristics are in part an overflow of human characteristics. People change their environment, this change can be observed in everyday life; the roads we use to get to work or school, the power lines used to heat our homes, the pollution exuded from our factories to produce the luxuries we crave, all of these represent changes to our environment.

These physical changes represent the observed characteristics of a place. Human- Environment interactions are the way people react with their environment (Guidelines for Geographic Education). Living with the environment is not a one way street, we can not continually expect to take from mother earth without giving something in return. We take for granted the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we consume, and the houses in which we live. The important thing to remember is where did these amenities come from?

The human population continues to pour thousands of tons of combustion emissions into the atmosphere every day, these emissions include not only carbon dioxide, but chloroflourocarbons from refrigerants as well, which escalates the depletion of the ozone (O3) layer exponentially (film – Geography tutor). Only recently did our governments pass a law banning the use of chloroflorocarbons. Sadly, humans continue to deplete one of earth’s greatest natural resources which could aid in the natural repair of the ozone layer, our rain forests.

The list of violations people incur upon the environment everyday is endless, but it is the most important of the five themes in geography – Human/Environment interactions – and the reason is very simple. If our population continues to rape the environment in the fashion in which it has over the last two hundred years, very soon, there will be no environment left. Mother nature is very forgiving, but her resources are being pulled out from under her at a rate in which she can not repair herself. If she dies, we all shall surely perish as well.

Movement is simply the migration of people, products, information, and ideas within or between regions (Journal of Geography 1990). People on earth are now linked in virtually every way via transportation, communication, and technological networks which allow for the sharing of ideas, philosophies, goods, and services within virtually every corner of the globe. The last of the five themes of geography consists of the idea of regions. A region is not only a place where a group of people of similar nationality, race, or religious belief reside. A region can also be a defining physical characteristic of a place.

The Sahara and Sahel of Africa is a desert region. Defined by its consistently hot and dry climate. Great Britain of old encompassed one of the greatest regional empires of the world, which extended from Australia, to Belize, to the North American Continent, and finally to her own islands. A region simply put, is a place which has a unique physical, racial, cultural, or environmental characteristic which defines it separately form other regions. The five fundamental themes of geography offer educators a new and unique perspective on the world of geography.

This perspective breaks down the vast array of knowledge contained in the world of geography into its simplest simplest form, allowing teachers to convey the basic concepts of geography. These basic concepts are the key to understanding. Once the student learns the five basic themes, he or she can then apply the themes to virtually every aspect of our physical and cultural environment. Which in the end will provide a much deeper understanding of geography, as well as eliminating the problem of geographic illiteracy in our schools. After all, education is not memorization, education is understanding.

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