B.

A 4th semester
Paper-4016
Environmental geography and
disaster management
1. ENVIRONMENTAL GEOGRAPHY:MEANING
AND NATURE

What is environmental geography?

• The term environment has been derived from a French
word “Environ”means to surround.

• environment refers to anything that is immediately

surrounding an object and exerting a direct influence on
it.

• Environmental geography is the study of systematic

description of different components of environment and
interactions of man with these components.
•In 1989 Savindra Singh attempted to define
environmental geography and determine its
scope in his research paper entitled
‘environmental geography : conceptual
frameworks’ (National Geographer, 1989)

•He published the first comprehensive text and

reference book entitled ‘environmental
geography’ in 1991.

•Savindra Singh defined environmental

geography in 1989 as follows
•“Thus broadly speaking, environmental geography
may be defined as the study of spatial attributes of
interrelationships between living organisms and
natural environment in general nd between
technologically advanced ‘economic man ’ and his
natural environment in particular in temporal and
spatial framework.”
•In simple words environmental geography is the
branch of geography that describes the spatial
aspects of interactions between humans and the
natural world.
Nature of environmental geography

•The concept of environmental studies is stated as

‘environmental geography’ instead of ‘geography of
environment’ as the term environmental geography
lays more emphasis on men environment
relationship.
•On the other hand geography of environment
focuses more on study of characteristics and spatial
and temporal distribution of different components of
environment.
•It lays more emphasis on the application of
geographical information to the solution of
environmental problems.

•Environmental geography may also serve as a

bridge between physical and human branches of
geography on one hand and it may associate
geographers in general and environmental
geographers in particular with other allied life and
earth scientists on the other hand.
Source:Environmental
geography by Savindra
Singh
wikipedia