What is the difference between "environment" and "geography"?

Question

I'm writing a paper on how environmental and geographic factors influence economic development and, having already established that as my research question early in the semester, am having trouble actually defining the difference between the two. It seems like there's a lot of overlap. This is a slightly more subjective question than just the straightforward English definitions, but I'd appreciate any help you can give me.

Edit: I just realized that maybe the relationship between environment and geography is a sort of micro/macro relationship, where environment encompasses more of the micro-level details of an ecosystem and geography is more a macro-level analysis. Thoughts?

Edit 2: I should clarify that I'm writing about the features of the natural environment, rather than environment in a more abstract sense.

Answer 1

Are you defining "geography" to encompass only natural phenomena such as the shape and location of landmasses and their features? Or are you including demographic and sociological factors like population density, literacy rate, and so forth?

If the former, consider something like geophysics (which would be better used in adjectival form, e.g. "geophysical factors") or physical topology.

If the latter, that's probably too broad a category to be considered as a single unit, although in a pinch you could resort to something unwieldy like "geographic and demographic factors."

In either case, "environment" should suffice as a contrasting category once you've differentiated it from the other one.

Answer 2

Geography refers more to the features of the land mass of the Earth. These includes as climate, elevation, soil, vegetation, population, land use, industries.

Environment is the circumstances or conditions surrounding a certain person or place. These circumstances or conditions can change, depending on your location and occupation. Geography is only a part of environment. Enviroment includes influences, surroundings(geography), air quality, the leadership of a country, etc.

It is true they have many similarities, and have many things in common, but they are different things.

Answer 3

Let me try to define both concepts.

Geography has to do with landscape, the shape of continents, islands and so on. An environment, and specially a natural environment, is a set of elements — animals, plants, climate, etc. — and its relations. Often, an environment is restricted to a (geographical) area. You can, of course, talk about a “global environment”, or a “local environment” as well.

Now let’s see what Merriam-Webster has to say about those words:

• Geography 2. the geographic features of an area;
• Environment 2. the complex of physical, chemical, and biotic factors (as climate, soil, and living things) that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival

My “definitions” and the ones from Merriam-Webster seem to overlap a bit.

If you still feel those words are interchangeable, I have two hypothesis you should consider:

• Maybe the authors you’ve been reading use them in order to avoid repeating one of them a lot of times (that is, a question of style);
• Although they may be part of the jargon of the field/theory you’re working on, it doesn’t seem likely. First of all, if they were, they’d refer to different things, and you’d notice that. Second, a jargon must avoid ambiguity, so there’s no point using the two words to describe the same thing.

I hope this helps you.

Answer 4

"Geography" refers to a place. North, south, east, or west of whereever.

"Environment" refers to the state of surroundings. Hot, cold, wet, dry, etc.

Answer 5

Geography can be define as the scientific study of earth, its physical features which comprises both land, lake, river, and the climate...while the environment can be define as a surrounding of a particular area or terrain...

Answer 6

Geography is the systematic study of spatial characteristics and their relation to human beings.