Associated Faculty
If you are passionate about the Earth's natural environments, geography could be the field for you through the study of Earth's physical systems.
This part of geography focuses on the processes and phenomena of weather and climate, plant and animal communities, landforms, soils, and water, as it cycles through all the other systems. Physical geographers study how atmospheric, ecological, and landform systems vary over the Earth's surface, how they change through time, and how they interact with each other to form the complex environments found on Earth.
Learning more about how Earth's physical systems work is an established part of natural science that has practical applications. This knowledge can help people recognize potentially hazardous natural circumstances. It also helps us to understand how the Earth's physical systems are changing as a result of human activity, enabling us to minimize negative impacts so that we can pass a sustainable environment on to future generations.