nature geography essay

How to Write Geography Essay: Topics and Examples

Table of contents

• 1 What Is Geography Essay
• 2 Choosing a Topic
• 3 Research and Data Collection
• 4 Planning the Essay
• 5 Writing the Essay
• 6 Examples of Geography Essays
• 7 Unlocking the World: Key Insights from Our Geographic Exploration

Welcome to the dynamic world of geography essays, where understanding the Earth’s surface becomes an enlightening journey. This article serves as a comprehensive guide to writing a geography essay, starting with the crucial step of selecting a captivating topic. We’ll navigate through various popular topics, emphasizing the importance of effective research and data collection.

In this article, we’ll cover:

• How to select engaging and relevant geography essay topics.
• The importance of thorough research and effective data collection methods.
• Strategies for planning and organizing your geography essay for clarity and impact.
• Tips for writing a compelling geography essay, including structuring and presenting arguments.
• Analyzing examples of successful geography essays to guide and inspire your work.

As we transition into the details, prepare to enhance your understanding and skills in geography essay writing.

What Is Geography Essay

As we delve into the essence of a geography essay, it’s important to understand that it meticulously examines Earth’s landscapes and human activities. Furthermore, it aims to analyze how these two aspects interact, focusing on spatial relationships and patterns. Transitioning into the specifics, such essays often delve into particular geographic issues, aiming to broaden our comprehension of the world.

Moreover, when writing a geography essay, one must include accurate geographical data. This data, encompassing maps, statistics, and case studies, is crucial for a well-grounded analysis. Consequently, the essay should present facts and interpret them, offering fresh insights into the discussed topic.

Additionally, it’s noteworthy that an essay on geography stands out from others due to its unique subject matter approach. It demands a keen eye for detail and a profound understanding of the world’s physical and human dimensions. This requirement makes crafting such an essay a challenging yet fulfilling endeavor.

Lastly, the primary goal of a geography essay is to enlighten and inform. It persuades readers to view the world through a geographical lens, grasping the complex interplay between humans and their environment. This type of essay transcends mere academic exercise, serving as a means to foster a deeper appreciation for our world and its complex dynamics.

Choosing a Topic

The crucial point for a successful geography essay is selecting an engaging and appropriate topic. To choose a topic that resonates, consider current events, your interests, and the scope of your assignment. A good topic should captivate your interest and offer sufficient scope for in-depth study and analysis.

Popular geography essay topics often revolve around climate change , urban development, and cultural landscapes. These topics provide a rich ground for exploration and allow for diverse perspectives and interpretations. For example, a thematic essay on geography could focus on how urbanization affects local ecosystems or how cultural practices shape landscape use.

• Analyzing the Direct Impact of Climate Change on the Amazon Rainforest’s Biodiversity
• Urbanization in Mega Cities: Environmental Consequences and Sustainable Solutions
• Wind and Solar Power: Pioneers of Sustainable Energy Landscape
• Managing Water Scarcity in the Middle East: Strategies and Challenges
• The Amazon Deforestation Crisis: Causes, Impacts, and Global Responses
• Spatial Inequality: A Detailed Look at Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
• The Dynamics of Population Growth and Overconsumption in Asia
• Cultural Preservation of Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon Basin
• Earthquakes in Japan: Analyzing Causes, Effects, and Preparedness Strategies
• Geography’s Role in the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
• Implementing Sustainable Agricultural Practices in India for Food Security
• The Kashmir Conflict: A Geopolitical Analysis of Border Disputes
• The Growing Crisis of Climate Refugees in the Pacific Islands
• The Importance of Urban Green Spaces in New York City’s Environmental Health
• The Impact of Globalization on Maori Culture in New Zealand
• Ecotourism in Costa Rica: Balancing Economic Benefits and Environmental Preservation
• Addressing Ocean Plastic Pollution: Case Studies from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
• The Nile River Conflict: Water Politics in a Changing Climate
• Preventing Desertification in the Sahel: Strategies and International Cooperation
• GIS in Disaster Management: Case Studies of Earthquake Response and Recovery
• Measuring the Effects of Glacial Melting on Greenland’s Coastal Communities
• Tracing the Economic Geography of the Silk Road in the 21st Century
• The Health Impacts of Air Pollution in Beijing: Urban Policies and Challenges
• Vulnerable Communities: Assessing the Socioeconomic Impacts of Climate Change in Bangladesh
• The New Face of Migration: Syrian Refugees and European Response
• The Critical Role of Metropolitan Areas in Combating Global Warming
• Saving Madagascar’s Rainforest: Conservation Strategies and Challenges
• The Transition to Renewable Energy in Germany: A Model for the World?
• Satellite Imagery in Land Use Changes: A Study of the Brazilian Amazon
• Arctic Sovereignty: The Geopolitical Implications of Melting Ice Caps for Global Powers

To guide and inspire your topic selection, you can use geography essay examples. These examples showcase a range of topics and approaches, helping you understand what makes a topic both engaging and feasible for study. Remember, a well-chosen topic is the first step toward a compelling and insightful geography essay.

Research and Data Collection

To talk about thorough research, it is the backbone of any geography study, providing the factual and theoretical foundation to understand complex geographical phenomena. To explain why the study of geography is important, one must delve into diverse and reliable sources that offer insights into how geographical factors shape our world and affect our lives. This research underpins the type of geography being studied, whether physical, human, or environmental.

Collecting geographical data can be done through various methods. Firstly, fieldwork is essential, especially for physical geography, as it allows for the direct observation and measurement of geographical features and processes. For human geography, surveys and interviews can yield valuable data on human behaviors and social patterns. Moreover, a thorough literature review also helps understand existing research and theories, providing a critical context for new findings.

Furthermore, evaluating sources for their credibility and relevance is vital. This involves checking the qualifications of the authors, the rigor of their methodologies, and the recency of their findings. Reliable sources are peer-reviewed and come from reputable academic or scientific institutions. What is more, ensuring the credibility of sources strengthens the arguments made in a geography essay and enhances the overall understanding of the topic.

In summary, comprehensive research and careful data collection are fundamental in geography. They enable a deeper understanding of how geographical aspects shape our environment and lives, which is central to the discipline.

Planning the Essay

When you start planning a geography essay, it begins with creating an outline to organize thoughts and research. This step is crucial as it helps structure the essay logically, ensuring a smooth flow of ideas. Start by listing major points and supporting evidence. This framework guides the writing process and maintains focus on the chosen topic. Planning involves outlining the essay and crafting a compelling thesis. Planning involves outlining the essay and crafting a compelling thesis. This process ensures the essay remains focused and coherent, addressing the chosen geography topic. By establishing a clear roadmap for the essay, writers can navigate their arguments and evidence with precision, avoiding common pitfalls such as digression or ambiguity. Now, with our plan in place, let’s transition to examining the structure more closely, exploring how to effectively organize our thoughts and research into a well-structured essay that engages and informs the reader.

Writing the Essay

When you finally start writing, a geographical essay involves several key steps, each demanding attention to detail and a balance between descriptive and analytical writing. This balance is crucial in creating an essay about geography that informs, engages, and persuades.

The introduction sets the stage. Start with a hook that grabs the reader’s attention, followed by background information that provides context to the topic. This section should conclude with a clear and concise thesis statement that guides the rest of the essay.

In the body, organize paragraphs thematically or chronologically , depending on the essay’s focus. Each paragraph should start with a topic sentence that relates to the thesis. Following this, present your arguments and support them with geographical theories and data. This is where you incorporate detailed information from your research, including statistics, case studies, and examples. Make sure to explain how this data supports your arguments. A geography research paper demands precision in presenting data and clarity in its interpretation.

When discussing geographical theories, link them directly to your topic. This shows your understanding of the subject and how these theories apply to real-world scenarios. Remember, each paragraph should have a smooth transition to the next, maintaining a coherent flow of ideas.

In the conclusion, summarize the key points of your essay. Restate the thesis in light of the arguments and evidence presented. The conclusion should not introduce new information but encapsulate what the essay has covered. It’s also an opportunity to emphasize the importance of the topic, suggesting potential areas for future research or implications of your findings.

Throughout the essay, maintain a balance between descriptive and analytical writing . Descriptive writing helps paint a picture for the reader, making the data and theories more relatable. Analytical writing, on the other hand, demonstrates your ability to think critically about the topic, evaluating and interpreting the information in a meaningful way.

Examples of Geography Essays

Diversity in style and approach marks the essence of geography writing. A popular method is the comparative approach, contrasting different geographical phenomena. This method often appears in works comparing landscapes or urban vs. rural areas. Another common technique is the case study, focusing on a specific location or event for in-depth analysis of a particular issue.

Thematic approaches cover broader topics like climate change, globalization, or human migration, weaving together various theories and data for a comprehensive view. Additionally, argumentative compositions present a thesis supported by geographical evidence, frequently seen in discussions about environmental policies or land use conflicts.

Each style offers unique insights, providing varied ways to explore and understand geographical concepts and issues. For an in-depth exploration and diverse perspectives on these topics, consider reviewing geography essay examples. This resource can enrich your understanding and offer a broad spectrum of approaches to geographical analysis, from case studies on environmental conservation to essays on urban development and spatial inequalities.

• Geography Unveiled: Costa Rica’s Absolute Location Revealed
• Geography Unveiled: Navigating Earth’s Spatial Tapestry through Five Themes
• The Ever-Changing Canvas of New England Weather
• The Mystique and Marvels of the Desert Biome
• The Impact of Geography on the Development of Egypt

Unlocking the World: Key Insights from Our Geographic Exploration

This journey through the realm of geography reveals the field’s depth and complexity. From initial planning to diverse writing methods, the main insight stands out: geography compositions are more than maps and data; they are about comprehending our world’s rich tapestry. They balance descriptive narrative and critical analysis, backed by meticulous research and credible sources.

Whether exploring climate change impacts, urban developments, or cultural landscapes, these works offer a lens to see and understand the world anew. They prompt critical thinking about our environment and our place in it. Navigating various geographic topics brings not just academic insights but also life lessons in appreciating our world’s complexity and beauty.

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Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments.

Earth Science, Geography, Human Geography, Physical Geography

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Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments. Geographers explore both the physical properties of Earth’s surface and the human societies spread across it. They also examine how human culture interacts with the natural environment, and the way that locations and places can have an impact on people. Geography seeks to understand where things are found, why they are there, and how they develop and change over time.

Ancient Geographers

The term "geography" was coined by the Greek scholar Eratosthenes in the third century B.C.E. In Greek, geo- means “earth” and -graphy means “to write.” Using geography, Eratosthenes and other Greeks developed an understanding of where their homeland was located in relation to other places, what their own and other places were like, and how people and environments were distributed. These concerns have been central to geography ever since.

Of course, the Greeks were not the only people interested in geography, nor were they the first. Throughout human history, most societies have sought to understand something about their place in the world, and the people and environments around them. Mesopotamian societies inscribed maps on clay tablets, some of which survive to this day. The earliest known attempt at mapping the world is a Babylonian clay tablet known as the Imago Mundi. This map, created in the sixth century B.C.E., is more of a metaphorical and spiritual representation of Babylonian society rather than an accurate depiction of geography. Other Mesopotamian maps were more practical, marking irrigation networks and landholdings.

Indigenous peoples around the world developed geographic ideas and practices long before Eratosthenes. For example, Polynesian navigators embarked on long-range sea voyages across the Pacific Islands as early as 3000 years ago. The people of the Marshall Islands used navigation charts made of natural materials (“stick charts”) to visualize and memorize currents, wind patterns, and island locations.

Indeed, mapmaking probably came even before writing in many places, but ancient Greek geographers were particularly influential. They developed very detailed maps of Greek city-states, including parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia. More importantly, they also raised questions about how and why different human and natural patterns came into being on Earth’s surface, and why variations existed from place to place. The effort to answer these questions about patterns and distribution led them to figure out that the world was round, to calculate Earth’s circumference, and to develop explanations of everything from the seasonal flooding of the Nile to differences in population densities from place to place.

During the Middle Ages, geography ceased to be a major academic pursuit in Europe. Advances in geography were chiefly made by scientists of the Muslim world, based around the Middle East and North Africa. Geographers of this Islamic Golden Age created an early example of a rectangular map based on a grid, a map system that is still familiar today. Islamic scholars also applied their study of people and places to agriculture, determining which crops and livestock were most suited to specific habitats or environments.

In addition to the advances in the Middle East, the Chinese empire in Asia also contributed immensely to geography. Around 1000, Chinese navigators achieved one of the most important developments in the history of geography: They were the first to use the compass for navigational purposes. In the early 1400s, the explorer Zheng He embarked on seven voyages to the lands bordering the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, establishing China’s influence throughout Southeast Asia.

Age of Discovery

Through the 13th-century travels of the Italian explorer Marco Polo, European interest in spices from Asia grew. Acquiring spices from East Asian and Arab merchants was expensive, and a major land route for the European spice trade was lost with the conquering of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire. These and other economic factors, in addition to competition between Christian and Islamic societies, motivated European nations to send explorers in search of a sea route to China. This period of time between the 15th and 17th centuries is known in the West as the Age of Exploration or the Age of Discovery.

With the dawn of the Age of Discovery, the study of geography regained popularity in Europe. The invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s helped spread geographic knowledge by making maps and charts widely available. Improvements in shipbuilding and navigation facilitated more exploring, greatly improving the accuracy of maps and geographic information.

Greater geographic understanding allowed European powers to extend their global influence. During the Age of Discovery, European nations established colonies around the world. Improved transportation, communication, and navigational technology allowed countries such as the United Kingdom to establish colonies as far away as the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Africa. This was lucrative for European powers, but the Age of Discovery brought about nightmarish change for the people already living in the territories they colonized. When Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, millions of Indigenous peoples already lived there. By the 1600s, 90 percent of the Indigenous population of the Americas had been wiped out by violence and diseases brought over by European explorers.

Geography was not just a subject that enabled colonialism, however. It also helped people understand the planet on which they lived. Not surprisingly, geography became an important focus of study in schools and universities.

Geography also became an important part of other academic disciplines, such as chemistry, economics, and philosophy. In fact, every academic subject has some geographic connection. Chemists study where certain chemical elements, such as gold or silver, can be found. Economists examine which nations trade with other nations, and what resources are exchanged. Philosophers analyze the responsibility people have to take care of Earth.

Emergence of Modern Geography

Some people have trouble understanding the complete scope of the discipline of geography because geography is interdisciplinary, meaning that it is not defined by one particular topic. Instead, geography is concerned with many different topics—people, culture, politics, settlements, plants, landforms, and much more. Geography asks spatial questions—how and why things are distributed or arranged in particular ways on Earth’s surface. It looks at these different distributions and arrangements at many different scales. It also asks questions about how the interaction of different human and natural activities on Earth’s surface shape the characteristics of the world in which we live.

Geography seeks to understand where things are found and why they are present in those places; how things that are located in the same or distant places influence one another over time; and why places and the people who live in them develop and change in particular ways. Raising these questions is at the heart of the “ geographic perspective .”

Exploration has long been an important part of geography, and it’s an important part of developing a geographic perspective. Exploration isn’t limited to visiting unfamiliar places; it also means documenting and connecting relationships between spatial, sociological, and ecological elements.

The age-old practice of mapping still plays an important role in this type of exploration, but exploration can also be done by using images from satellites or gathering information from interviews. Discoveries can come by using computers to map and analyze the relationship among things in geographic space, or from piecing together the multiple forces, near and far, that shape the way individual places develop.

Applying a geographic perspective demonstrates geography’s concern not just with where things are, but with “the why of where”—a short but useful definition of geography’s central focus.

The insights that have come from geographic research show the importance of asking “the why of where” questions. Geographic studies comparing physical characteristics of continents on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, for instance, gave rise to the idea that Earth’s surface is comprised of large, slowly moving plates—plate tectonics.

Studies of the geographic distribution of human settlements have shown how economic forces and modes of transport influence the location of towns and cities. For example, geographic analysis has pointed to the role of the United States Interstate Highway System and the rapid growth of car ownership in creating a boom in U.S. suburban growth after World War II. The geographic perspective helped show where Americans were moving, why they were moving there, and how their new living places affected their lives, their relationships with others, and their interactions with the environment.

Geographic analyses of the spread of diseases have pointed to the conditions that allow particular diseases to develop and spread. Dr. John Snow’s cholera map stands out as a classic example. When cholera broke out in London, England, in 1854, Snow represented the deaths per household on a street map. Using the map, he was able to trace the source of the outbreak to a water pump on the corner of Broad Street and Cambridge Street. The geographic perspective helped identify the source of the problem (the water from a specific pump) and allowed people to avoid the disease (avoiding water from that pump).

Investigations of the geographic impact of human activities have advanced understanding of the role of humans in transforming the surface of Earth, exposing the spatial extent of threats such as water pollution by artificial waste. For example, geographic study has shown that a large mass of tiny pieces of plastic currently floating in the Pacific Ocean is approximately the size of Texas. Satellite images and other geographic technology identified the so-called “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

These examples of different uses of the geographic perspective help explain why geographic study and research is important as we confront many 21st century challenges, including environmental pollution, poverty, hunger, and ethnic or political conflict.

Because the study of geography is so broad, the discipline is typically divided into specialties. At the broadest level, geography is divided into physical geography, human geography, geographic techniques, and regional geography.

Physical Geography

The natural environment is the primary concern of physical geographers, although many physical geographers also look at how humans have altered natural systems. Physical geographers study Earth’s seasons, climate, atmosphere, soil, streams, landforms, and oceans. Some disciplines within physical geography include geomorphology, glaciology, pedology, hydrology, climatology, biogeography, and oceanography.

Geomorphology is the study of landforms and the processes that shape them. Geomorphologists investigate the nature and impact of wind, ice, rivers, erosion, earthquakes, volcanoes, living things, and other forces that shape and change the surface of Earth.

Glaciologists focus on Earth’s ice fields and their impact on the planet’s climate. Glaciologists document the properties and distribution of glaciers and icebergs. Data collected by glaciologists has demonstrated the retreat of Arctic and Antarctic ice in the past century.

Pedologists study soil and how it is created, changed, and classified. Soil studies are used by a variety of professions, from farmers analyzing field fertility to engineers investigating the suitability of different areas for building heavy structures.

Hydrology is the study of Earth’s water: its properties, distribution, and effects. Hydrologists are especially concerned with the movement of water as it cycles from the ocean to the atmosphere, then back to Earth’s surface. Hydrologists study the water cycle through rainfall into streams, lakes, the soil, and underground aquifers. Hydrologists provide insights that are critical to building or removing dams, designing irrigation systems, monitoring water quality, tracking drought conditions, and predicting flood risk.

Climatologists study Earth’s climate system and its impact on Earth’s surface. For example, climatologists make predictions about El Niño, a cyclical weather phenomenon of warm surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. They analyze the dramatic worldwide climate changes caused by El Niño, such as flooding in Peru, drought in Australia, and, in the United States, the oddities of heavy Texas rains or an unseasonably warm Minnesota winter.

Biogeographers study the impact of the environment on the distribution of plants and animals. For example, a biogeographer might document all the places in the world inhabited by a certain spider species, and what those places have in common.

Oceanography, a related discipline of physical geography, focuses on the creatures and environments of the world’s oceans. Observation of ocean tides and currents constituted some of the first oceanographic investigations. For example, 18th-century mariners figured out the geography of the Gulf Stream, a massive current flowing like a river through the Atlantic Ocean. The discovery and tracking of the Gulf Stream helped communications and travel between Europe and the Americas.

Today, oceanographers conduct research on the impacts of water pollution, track tsunamis, design offshore oil rigs, investigate underwater eruptions of lava, and study all types of marine organisms from toxic algae to friendly dolphins.

Human Geography

Human geography is concerned with the distribution and networks of people and cultures on Earth’s surface. A human geographer might investigate the local, regional, and global impact of rising economic powers China and India, which represent 37 percent of the world’s people. They also might look at how consumers in China and India adjust to new technology and markets, and how markets respond to such a huge consumer base.

Human geographers also study how people use and alter their environments. When, for example, people allow their animals to overgraze a region, the soil erodes and grassland is transformed into desert. The impact of overgrazing on the landscape as well as agricultural production is an area of study for human geographers.

Finally, human geographers study how political, social, and economic systems are organized across geographical space. These include governments, religious organizations, and trade partnerships. The boundaries of these groups constantly change.

The main divisions within human geography reflect a concern with different types of human activities or ways of living. Some examples of human geography include urban geography, economic geography, cultural geography, political geography, social geography, and population geography. Human geographers who study geographic patterns and processes in past times are part of the subdiscipline of historical geography. Those who study how people understand maps and geographic space belong to a subdiscipline known as behavioral geography.

Many human geographers interested in the relationship between humans and the environment work in the subdisciplines of cultural geography and political geography.

Cultural geographers study how the natural environment influences the development of human culture, such as how the climate affects the agricultural practices of a region. Political geographers study the impact of political circumstances on interactions between people and their environment, as well as environmental conflicts, such as disputes over water rights.

Some human geographers focus on the connection between human health and geography. For example, health geographers create maps that track the location and spread of specific diseases. They analyze the geographic disparities of health-care access. They are very interested in the impact of the environment on human health, especially the effects of environmental hazards such as radiation, lead poisoning, or water pollution.

Geographic Techniques

Specialists in geographic techniques study the ways in which geographic processes can be analyzed and represented using different methods and technologies. Mapmaking, or cartography, is perhaps the most basic of these. Cartography has been instrumental to geography throughout the ages.

Today, almost the entire surface of Earth has been mapped with remarkable accuracy, and much of this information is available instantly on the internet. One of the most remarkable of these websites is Google Earth, which “lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean.” In essence, anyone can be a virtual explorer from the comfort of home.

Technological developments during the past 100 years have given rise to a number of other specialties for scientists studying geographic techniques. The airplane made it possible to photograph land from above. Now, there are many satellites and other above-Earth vehicles that help geographers figure out what the surface of the planet looks like and how it is changing.

Geographers looking at what above-Earth cameras and sensors reveal are specialists in remote sensing. Pictures taken from space can be used to make maps, monitor ice melt, assess flood damage, track oil spills, predict weather, or perform endless other functions. For example, by comparing satellite photos taken from 1955 to 2007, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) discovered that the rate of coastal erosion along Alaska’s Beaufort Sea had doubled. Every year from 2002 to 2007, about 13.7 meters (45 feet) per year of coast, mostly icy permafrost, vanished into the sea.

Computerized systems that allow for precise calculations of how things are distributed and relate to one another have made the study of geographic information systems (GIS) an increasingly important specialty within geography. Geographic information systems are powerful databases that collect all types of information (maps, reports, statistics, satellite images, surveys, demographic data, and more) and link each piece of data to a geographic reference point, such as geographic coordinates. This data, called geospatial information, can be stored, analyzed, modeled, and manipulated in ways not possible before GIS computer technology existed.

The popularity and importance of GIS has given rise to a new science known as geographic information science (GISci). Geographic information scientists study patterns in nature as well as human development. They might study natural hazards, such as a fire that struck Los Angeles, California, United States, in 2008. A map posted on the internet showed the real-time spread of the fire, along with information to help people make decisions about how to evacuate quickly. GIS can also illustrate human struggles from a geographic perspective, such as the interactive online map published by the New York Times in May 2009 that showed building foreclosure rates in various regions around the New York City area.

The enormous possibilities for producing computerized maps and diagrams that can help us understand environmental and social problems have made geographic visualization an increasingly important specialty within geography. This geospatial information is in high demand by just about every institution, from government agencies monitoring water quality to entrepreneurs deciding where to locate new businesses.

Regional Geography

Regional geographers take a somewhat different approach to specialization, directing their attention to the general geographic characteristics of a region. A regional geographer might specialize in African studies, observing and documenting the people, nations, rivers, mountains, deserts, weather, trade, and other attributes of the continent. There are different ways you can define a region. You can look at climate zones, cultural regions, or political regions. Often regional geographers have a physical or human geography specialty as well as a regional specialty.

Regional geographers may also study smaller regions, such as urban areas. A regional geographer may be interested in the way a city like Shanghai, China, is growing. They would study transportation, migration, housing, and language use, as well as the human impact on elements of the natural environment, such as the Huangpu River.

Whether geography is thought of as a discipline or as a basic feature of our world, developing an understanding of the subject is important. Some grasp of geography is essential as people seek to make sense of the world and understand their place in it. Thinking geographically helps people to be aware of the connections among and between places and to see how important events are shaped by where they take place. Finally, knowing something about geography enriches people’s lives—promoting curiosity about other people and places and an appreciation of the patterns, environments, and peoples that make up the endlessly fascinating, varied planet on which we live.

Gazetteer A gazetteer is a geographic dictionary. Gazetteers, which have existed for thousands of years, usually contain some sort of map and a set of information. Some gazetteers may contain a list of capital cities or areas where a specific resource is found. Other gazetteers may contain information about the local population, such as languages spoken, money used, or religious beliefs.

Old Maps People have been making maps for thousands of years. One of the oldest known maps was found near the city of Kirkuk, Iraq. Most geographers say it dates from 2500 B.C.E. It is a palm-sized block of clay depicting an area with two hills and a stream. (Some geographers think the stream is a canal made by people for irrigation.) Geographers have identified one of the towns on the map. However, they are not sure exactly what the hand-held map represents. Ancient maps could also be quite large. A nine-foot wall painting in Catal Hyuk, Turkey, was made about 6000 B.C.E. It is a map of a busy city, complete with crowded housing and even an erupting volcano. However, some scientists believe this "map" is decorative and not an accurate representation of what was there.

Wrong-Way Corrigan The American aviator Douglas Corrigan is often nicknamed "Wrong-Way Corrigan" because of a navigational error he made on a flight in 1938. Corrigan had just piloted a very impressive flight from the U.S. cities of Long Beach, California, to New York, New York. He was scheduled to fly back to Long Beach. Instead, with the sky covered in clouds, Wrong Way Corrigan flew to Dublin, Ireland.

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May 9, 2024

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How to Write a Geography Essay: Structure, Tips, FAQs

Geography reveals fascinating facts about our planet, like the Dead Sea's buoyancy due to its high salt content. Similarly, writing a geography essay can be just as interesting.

In this guide, our paper writing service experts will discuss what defines this type of essay and share some tips for writing a great one. You’ll learn its key components and see why geography is relevant today. Whether you're a student aiming for success in geography or simply curious about its significance, let's begin!

What is a Geography Essay

A geography essay is a piece of writing that explores a topic related to the Earth's surface and its features. It goes beyond just memorizing locations. There are two main things a geography essay might explore:

• Physical features: This could be about mountains, rivers, oceans, deserts, or any other natural aspect of the Earth. The essay might explain how these features formed, how they affect the environment, or how they influence human life.
• Human-made features and influences: This could be about cities, borders, agriculture, or any other way humans have shaped the planet. The essay might discuss why these features exist where they do, or how they interact with the natural world.

In the next parts, our skilled writers, who you can buy essay from, will share a simple guide to help you write these essays successfully.

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How to Write a Geography Essay

Writing a geography essay can be broken down into clear steps. Here's a roadmap to guide you:

• Understand the question: Make sure you grasp what the essay prompt is asking you to explore.
• Do your research: Gather information from reliable sources like textbooks, scientific journals, or reputable websites. Remember, a strong essay needs a solid foundation of facts.
• Craft your thesis statement: This is the main idea your essay will explore. Think of it as the sentence that summarizes the whole chapter of your story.
• Introduction: Grab the reader's attention with a captivating opening and introduce your topic. Briefly mention your thesis statement.
• Body paragraphs: Each paragraph should focus on one key point that supports your thesis. Use clear explanations, examples (like real-world places or case studies), and geographical terms to back up your ideas.
• Conclusion: Wrap up your essay by summarizing your main points and leaving the reader with a final thought that reinforces your thesis.
• Proofread and edit: Double-check your work for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and clarity of your writing. Make sure your essay flows smoothly and transitions well between ideas.

Remember, geography essays explain the "why" behind where things are and how they interact. Use clear language, relevant examples, and a well-organized structure to build a strong and informative essay about our amazing planet.

While you’re at it, find out all about a cause and effect essay and how to write it in our separate guide!

How to Start a Geography Essay

The introduction is your chance to grab the reader's attention and set the stage for your exploration. Here are some tips to craft a compelling opening for your geography essay:

How to End a Geography Essay

A strong conclusion leaves the reader with a lasting impression and reinforces the key takeaways from your essay. Here's how to write a conclusion for an essay :

Geography Essay Example

For a closer look at how to structure and compose an effective geography essay, we've put together a compelling example for your review. As you go through it, you'll discover the essential elements that contribute to making an essay both informative and engaging.

For more inspiration for your upcoming writing project, check out our extensive list of research paper topics . 

Geography Essay Structure

We've covered the essential elements of a geography essay, but crafting a truly strong piece requires attention to detail within the structure. Here are some additional points to consider:

Tips for Writing a Geography Essay

Here are some final tips to equip you for crafting a stellar geography essay:

• Know Your Audience: Consider who will be reading your essay. Is it for a general audience or a professor well-versed in geography? Tailor your language complexity and level of detail accordingly.
• Focus on Clarity, Not Jargon: While geographical terms are important, avoid overusing complex vocabulary that might alienate your reader. Explain technical terms if necessary, and strive for clear, concise writing.
• Active Voice is Your Friend: Geography is about a dynamic planet! Use active voice to make your essay engaging and avoid passive constructions that can sound dull.
• Proofread and Edit Ruthlessly: Typos and grammatical errors can undermine your essay's credibility. Take the time to proofread meticulously and have someone else review your work for a fresh perspective.
• Practice Makes Progress: The more you write about geography, the more comfortable you'll become. Don't be afraid to practice writing about different geographical topics to hone your skills.

This guide has equipped you with the tools to write a good geography essay. Remember, it's all about understanding the why behind where things are on Earth. Use clear language, strong examples, and a well-organized structure to craft an essay that explores our amazing planet in a compelling way. So, get out there, research your topic, and impress your professor!

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What is geographical essay, what is the structure of the geography essay.

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is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

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• Updated writing steps, structure and tips
• Added new essay sample and FAQs
• Geography Essay Writing Guidelines . (n.d.). https://www.adelaide.edu.au/writingcentre/ua/media/40/learningguide-geographyessay.pdf 
• Extended Response Writing HSC Geography . (n.d.). Retrieved July 9, 2024, from https://gtansw.org.au/files/resources/SeniorGeography/2017/2a.%20Grace%20Larobina%20%20Extended%20Response%20Writing.pdf 

Essay on Conservation of Nature for Students and Children

500+ words essay on conservation of nature.

Nature has provided us numerous gifts such as air , water, land, sunlight , minerals, plants, and animals. All these gifts of nature make our earth a place worth living. Existence on Earth would not be possible without any of these. Now, while these natural resources are present on Earth in plenty. Unfortunately, the necessity of most of these has increased extremely over the centuries due to growth in the human population.

What is Conservation of Nature?

Conservation of nature means the preservation of forests, land, water bodies, and minerals, fuels, natural gases, etc. And to make sure that all these continue to be available in abundance. Thus all these natural resources make life worth living on Earth. Life would not be imaginable without air, water, sunlight as well as other natural resources present on the earth.

Thus, it is essential to conserve these resources in order to retain the environment integral. Here is a look at the types of natural resources existing on Earth and the ways to conserve these:

Types of Natural Resources:

• Renewable Resources : These are resources such as air, water, and sunlight that refill naturally.
• Non-Renewable Resources: These are resources like fossil fuels and minerals that do not restock reform very slowly.
• Biotic: These originate from living beings and organic material like plants and animals.
• Abiotic: These come from non-living things and non-organic material. These comprise air, water, and land as well as metals like iron, copper, and silver.

Natural resources are also categories such as actual resources, reserve resources, stock resources and potential resources based on their development stage.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

How to Conserve Nature and Its Resources?

Many of the natural resources are being used at a faster rate as compared to their speed of production. There is so a necessity for conservation of nature and the natural resources it offers. Here are some of the ways in which these resources can be conserved:

Reduce Water Consumption

Water is available in abundance on Earth . This is one of the reasons people do not consider much before using it. However, if we keep using it at this speed. In the future, we may not be left with as much of it. Therefore, simple things such as turn off the tap while brushing or reuse the leftover water to water the plants can help in this direction.

Reduce Usage of Electricity

Use only as much energy as you require. It is thus advised to limit the usage of electricity. Simple habits such as turning off the lights before parting your room, turn off the electric appliances after use.  Switching to energy-saving fluorescent or LED bulbs can make a change.

Restrict Usage of Paper

Paper manufacturing depends only on trees. Increasing the use of paper means encouraging deforestation . This is one of the key reasons for concern is in today’s time Always ensure you use only as much paper as necessary. Stop taking print outs and use e-copies instead to do your bit.

Use Newer Agricultural Methods

The government must aware the methods such as mixed cropping, crop rotation. Also, the government should teach the minimum use of pesticides, insecticides. Appropriate use of manures , bio-fertilizers, and organic fertilizers to the farmers.

Spread Awareness

Spreading awareness about the conservation of nature is always a necessary step. It can be achieved only when more and more people understand its importance and the ways in which they can help. Besides this, it is essential to plant more and more tress. It is necessary to contribute towards lowering air pollution. We must use shared transport and employing rainwater harvesting systems to conserve nature.

Nature comprises of everything that surrounds us. The trees, forests, rivers, rivulets, soil, air all are the part of nature. Keeping nature and its resources integral. So, it is very important for the continuation of life on earth. It would be difficult to imagine life on earth, which has a spoiled natural environment.

Therefore, taking appropriate steps to conserve nature in its untouched form. It must be a priority for the human race. Only human beings with their power and ability can save nature in its purest forms.

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• Nature Essay

Essay About Nature

Nature refers to the interaction between the physical surroundings around us and the life within it like atmosphere, climate, natural resources, ecosystem, flora, fauna, and humans. Nature is indeed God’s precious gift to Earth. It is the primary source of all the necessities for the nourishment of all living beings on Earth. Right from the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the house we live in is provided by nature. Nature is called ‘Mother Nature’ because just like our mother, she is always nurturing us with all our needs. 

Whatever we see around us, right from the moment we step out of our house is part of nature. The trees, flowers, landscapes, insects, sunlight, breeze, everything that makes our environment so beautiful and mesmerizing are part of Nature. In short, our environment is nature. Nature has been there even before the evolution of human beings. 

Importance of Nature

If not for nature then we wouldn’t be alive. The health benefits of nature for humans are incredible. The most important thing for survival given by nature is oxygen. The entire cycle of respiration is regulated by nature. The oxygen that we inhale is given by trees and the carbon dioxide we exhale is getting absorbed by trees. 

The ecosystem of nature is a community in which producers (plants), consumers, and decomposers work together in their environment for survival. The natural fundamental processes like soil creation, photosynthesis, nutrient cycling, and water cycling, allow Earth to sustain life. We are dependent on these ecosystem services daily whether or not we are aware.

Nature provides us services round the clock: provisional services, regulating services, and non-material services. Provisional services include benefits extracted from nature such as food, water, natural fuels and fibres, and medicinal plants. Regulating services include regulation of natural processes that include decomposition, water purification, pollution, erosion and flood control, and also, climate regulation. Non-material services are the non-material benefits that improve the cultural development of humans such as recreation, creative inspiration from interaction with nature like art, music, architecture, and the influence of ecosystems on local and global cultures. 

The interaction between humans and animals, which are a part of nature, alleviates stress, lessens pain and worries. Nature provides company and gives people a sense of purpose. 

Studies and research have shown that children especially have a natural affinity with nature. Regular interaction with nature has boosted health development in children. Nature supports their physical and mental health and instills abilities to access risks as they grow. 

Role and Importance of Nature

The natural cycle of our ecosystem is vital for the survival of organisms. We all should take care of all the components that make our nature complete. We should be sure not to pollute the water and air as they are gifts of Nature.

Mother nature fosters us and never harms us. Those who live close to nature are observed to be enjoying a healthy and peaceful life in comparison to those who live in urban areas. Nature gives the sound of running fresh air which revives us, sweet sounds of birds that touch our ears, and sounds of breezing waves in the ocean makes us move within.

All the great writers and poets have written about Mother Nature when they felt the exceptional beauty of nature or encountered any saddening scene of nature. Words Worth who was known as the poet of nature, has written many things in nature while being in close communion with nature and he has written many things about Nature. Nature is said to be the greatest teacher as it teaches the lessons of immortality and mortality. Staying in close contact with Nature makes our sight penetrative and broadens our vision to go through the mysteries of the planet earth. Those who are away from nature can’t understand the beauty that is held by Nature. The rise in population on planet earth is leading to a rise in consumption of natural resources.  Because of increasing demands for fuels like Coal, petroleum, etc., air pollution is increasing at a rapid pace.  The smoke discharged from factory units and exhaust tanks of cars is contaminating the air that we breathe. It is vital for us to plant more trees in order to reduce the effect of toxic air pollutants like Carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, etc. 

Save Our Nature

Earth’s natural resources are not infinite and they cannot be replenished in a short period. The rapid increase in urbanization has used most of the resources like trees, minerals, fossil fuels, and water. Humans in their quest for a comfortable living have been using the resources of nature mindlessly. As a result, massive deforestation, resultant environmental pollution, wildlife destruction, and global warming are posing great threats to the survival of living beings. 

Air that gives us oxygen to breathe is getting polluted by smoke, industrial emissions, automobile exhaust, burning of fossil fuels like coal, coke and furnace oil, and use of certain chemicals. The garbage and wastes thrown here and there cause pollution of air and land. 

Sewage, organic wastage, industrial wastage, oil spillage, and chemicals pollute water. It is causing several water-borne diseases like cholera, jaundice and typhoid. 

The use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers in agriculture adds to soil pollution. Due to the mindless cutting of trees and demolition of greeneries for industrialization and urbanization, the ecological balance is greatly hampered. Deforestation causes flood and soil erosion.

Earth has now become an ailing planet panting for care and nutrition for its rejuvenation. Unless mankind puts its best effort to save nature from these recurring situations, the Earth would turn into an unfit landmass for life and activity. 

We should check deforestation and take up the planting of trees at a massive rate. It will not only save the animals from being extinct but also help create regular rainfall and preserve soil fertility. We should avoid over-dependence on fossil fuels like coal, petroleum products, and firewood which release harmful pollutants to the atmosphere. Non-conventional sources of energy like the sun, biogas and wind should be tapped to meet our growing need for energy. It will check and reduce global warming. 

Every drop of water is vital for our survival. We should conserve water by its rational use, rainwater harvesting, checking the surface outflow, etc. industrial and domestic wastes should be properly treated before they are dumped into water bodies. 

Every individual can do his or her bit of responsibility to help save the nature around us. To build a sustainable society, every human being should practice in heart and soul the three R’s of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. In this way, we can save our nature.  

Nature Conservation

Nature conservation is very essential for future generations, if we will damage nature our future generations will suffer.

Nowadays, technological advancement is adversely affecting our nature. Humans are in the quest and search for prosperity and success that they have forgotten the value and importance of beautiful Nature around. The ignorance of nature by humans is the biggest threat to nature. It is essential to make people aware and make them understand the importance of nature so that they do not destroy it in the search for prosperity and success.

On high priority, we should take care of nature so that nature can continue to take care of us. Saving nature is the crying need of our time and we should not ignore it. We should embrace simple living and high thinking as the adage of our lives.  

FAQs on Nature Essay

1. How Do You Define Nature?

Nature is defined as our environment. It is the interaction between the physical world around us and the life within it like the atmosphere, climate, natural resources, ecosystem, flora, fauna and humans. Nature also includes non-living things such as water,  mountains, landscape, plants, trees and many other things. Nature adds life to mother earth. Nature is the treasure habitation of every essential element that sustains life on this planet earth. Human life on Earth would have been dull and meaningless without the amazing gifts of nature. 

2. How is Nature Important to Us?

Nature is the only provider of everything that we need for survival. Nature provides us with food, water, natural fuels, fibres, and medicinal plants. Nature regulates natural processes that include decomposition, water purification, pollution, erosion, and flood control. It also provides non-material benefits like improving the cultural development of humans like recreation, etc. 

An imbalance in nature can lead to earthquakes, global warming, floods, and drastic climate changes. It is our duty to understand the importance of nature and how it can negatively affect us all if this rapid consumption of natural resources, pollution, and urbanization takes place.

3. How Should We Save Our Nature?

We should check deforestation and take up the planting of trees at a massive rate. It will save the animals from being extinct but also help create regular rainfall and preserve soil fertility. We should avoid over-dependence on fossil fuels like coal, petroleum products, and firewood which release harmful pollutants to the atmosphere. We should start using non-conventional sources of energy like the sun, biogas, and wind to meet our growing need for energy. It will check and reduce global warming. Water is vital for our survival and we should rationalize our use of water. 

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• School Education /

Essay on Nature: In 100 Words, 200 Words, 300 Words

• Updated on  
• Oct 13, 2023

Nature is the intricate web of life that surrounds us, encompassing everything from the air we breathe to the majestic landscapes we admire. It includes the delicate balance of ecosystems, the diversity of flora and fauna, and the natural resources that sustain all living beings on Earth. Exploring the beauty and significance of nature is not only a pleasurable endeavour but also a crucial one, as it reminds us of our responsibility to protect and preserve our environment.

Table of Contents

• 1 Tips to Write the Best Essay
• 2 Essay on Nature in 100 Words
• 3 Essay on Nature in 200 Words
• 4 Essay on Nature in 300 Words

Tips to Write the Best Essay

Here are some tips to craft an exceptional essay:

• Understand the Topic: Grasp the essence of the topic and its different aspects before you start writing.
• Structure: Organize your essay coherently, with a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
• Thesis Statement: Formulate a strong thesis statement that summarizes the main point you want to convey.
• Use Vivid Language: Employ descriptive language to bring the beauty of nature to life for your readers.
• Supporting Evidence: Back up your points with facts, statistics, and examples to make your essay more convincing.
• Variety of Ideas: Discuss different perspectives and dimensions of the topic to showcase a comprehensive understanding.
• Proofread: Edit your essay for grammar, punctuation, and clarity before submitting it.

Essay on Nature in 100 Words

Nature is a precious gift, encompassing all living and non-living entities. It provides us with air, water, food, and shelter. The beauty of nature soothes our souls and brings us closer to the marvels of creation. However, human activities are threatening the delicate balance of ecosystems, leading to pollution, deforestation, and climate change. It’s our responsibility to protect and preserve nature for future generations to enjoy its wonders.

Essay on Nature in 200 Words

Nature is the ultimate source of inspiration and sustenance for all life forms on Earth. From the smallest microorganisms to the tallest trees, every aspect of nature plays a crucial role in maintaining the delicate balance of our planet. The diversity of flora and fauna, the intricate ecosystems, and the natural resources provide us with food, shelter, and even the air we breathe.

Despite its undeniable importance, human activities are wreaking havoc on nature. Deforestation, pollution, and excessive use of natural resources are causing irreparable damage to our environment. Climate change, triggered by human-induced factors, is resulting in extreme weather events and rising sea levels, endangering both human and animal habitats.

Preserving nature is not a choice; it’s a necessity. The responsibility to conserve nature lies in the hands of every individual. Planting trees, reducing waste, using sustainable resources, and raising awareness about the importance of nature are steps we can take to mitigate the damage.

Nature has provided us with boundless beauty and resources, but it’s up to us to ensure its survival. By respecting and nurturing the natural world, we can secure a healthier and more vibrant planet for current and future generations.

Essay on Nature in 300 Words

Nature is a symphony of vibrant life forms and dynamic ecosystems that create a harmonious and intricate web of existence. The lush greenery of forests, the tranquil blue of oceans, the diverse habitats of animals, and the breathtaking landscapes remind us of the sheer magnificence of the world we inhabit. It’s a world that offers us both solace and sustenance, making our survival intertwined with its preservation.

The ecosystem services provided by nature are immeasurable. The forests act as the lungs of the Earth, producing oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide. Wetlands filter our water, providing us with clean and fresh sources of hydration. Bees and other pollinators enable the growth of crops, contributing to global food security.

However, the rampant disregard for nature’s delicate balance is leading to alarming consequences. The relentless deforestation for urbanization and agriculture is causing habitat loss, leading to the extinction of numerous species. The excessive emission of greenhouse gases is driving climate change, with rising temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns threatening vulnerable communities.

To ensure the well-being of our planet and future generations, conservation and sustainable practices are imperative. Afforestation and reforestation efforts must be intensified to restore lost ecosystems. Transitioning to renewable energy sources can reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change. Moreover, raising awareness and fostering a deep connection with nature can instil a sense of responsibility and inspire positive action.

In conclusion, nature is not merely a resource for human exploitation; it’s a complex and interconnected system that sustains life in all its forms. We must recognize our role as custodians of the environment and act with diligence to protect and preserve it. By embracing sustainable practices and fostering a profound respect for nature, we can secure a future where the world’s natural wonders continue to thrive.

Nature encompasses the entirety of the physical world and its components, including landscapes, flora, fauna, air, water, and ecosystems. It encompasses the natural environment and all living and non-living elements that shape and sustain life on Earth.

Nature is vital for our survival, providing resources like air, water, and food. It maintains ecological balance, supports biodiversity, and offers inspiration and solace. However, human activities threaten its delicate equilibrium, necessitating conservation efforts.

Saving nature requires planting trees, reducing waste, using sustainable resources, and raising awareness about its importance. Adopting renewable energy sources, practising responsible consumption, and fostering a connection with nature are crucial steps in its preservation.

We hope that this essay blog on Nature helps. For more amazing daily reads related to essay writing , stay tuned with Leverage Edu .

Manasvi Kotwal

Manasvi's flair in writing abilities is derived from her past experience of working with bootstrap start-ups, Advertisement and PR agencies as well as freelancing. She's currently working as a Content Marketing Associate at Leverage Edu to be a part of its thriving ecosystem.

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Geography Notes

Essay on the atmosphere: top 6 essays on atmosphere | climatology |geography.

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Here is a compilation of essays on ‘Atmosphere’ for class 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Atmosphere’ especially written for school students.

Essay on Atmosphere

Essay Contents:

• Essay on the Chemistry of Earth’s Atmosphere

Essay # 1. Introduction to Atmosphere:

The atmosphere is a turbulent gaseous blanket that surrounds the earth. The mass of this surrounding atmosphere is less than a millionth part of that of the whole earth, yet its activities and influences are far-reaching. On the average each person breaths 15 kg of air per day. The presence of the atmosphere is necessary to sustain all the types of life of the earth.

It is the atmosphere that plays its role tending to equalize the temperature of the earth’s surface. By its agency weather is produced which causes rock weathering. Weather is of vital importance in the execution of engineering projects. Many construction works have been delayed due to adverse weather conditions.

Many construction activities can be carried out only in certain seasons or in favourable weather. The atmosphere plays its role as a medium for transfer of water, since water continuously is evaporated into the atmosphere and later precipitated on to the earth in the form of rain or snow which is gathered into the streams and glaciers, and assists in wearing the rocks and transport the sediments to the sea. Engineering attention is well focused on winds on instances of damage or failure of bridges and buildings.

The atmosphere is an important geological agent. The atmosphere chemically reacts with the rocks oxidizing them to form new minerals. It generally breaks the rocks into smaller fragments leading to disintegration.

The atmosphere acts as a thermal blanket which not only distributes the heat received from the sun but also tends to prevent the escape of heat from the earth. Sunlight is subjected to diffusion by the gaseous molecules and the suspended dust particles.

Moreover the gaseous envelope surrounding the earth protects the earth from excessive ultra violet radiation and from violent bombardment by meteorites. It may be realized that millions of meteorites fall into the atmosphere of the earth every day but they all get disintegrated by severe heat caused by friction.

The disintegrated fragments settle on the earth’s surface as fine cosmic dust. In exceptional instances some large meteorites may pass through the atmosphere and drop on the earth and may penetrate into the ground for a few metres.

By the daily weather at a place we mean the temporary state of prevailing atmospheric conditions like temperature, air pressure, wind humidity, cloudiness and precipitation. Climate is the combined effect of weather over a long period of time. Soils and vegetation in a region are to a great extent determined by the climate of the region. The geological processes especially the weathering of rocks and minerals and land erosion are all influenced by climate.

Essay # 2. Meaning of Atmosphere:

The several hundred kilometres thick air which envelopes the earth all around is called atmosphere. It is composed of various gases. Most of the earth’s life exists at the lower part of atmosphere, the zone near the solid earth.

It acts like a greenhouse and keeps the average temperature of the earth around 35°C and also protects the earth from the harmful radiation of the sun. The atmosphere is a storehouse for water vapour and serves as the medium of faster air transport.

Essay # 3. Composition of the Atmosphere :

The atmosphere is a thick gaseous envelope which surrounds the earth from all sides and is attached to the earth’s surface by gravitational force. The at­mosphere is a significant component of the biospheric ecosystem because the life on the earth’s surface is because of this atmosphere otherwise the earth would have become barren like moon.

Besides providing all necessary gases for the sustenance of all life forms in the biosphere, it also filters the incoming solar radia­tion and thus prevents the ultraviolet solar radiation waves to reach the earth’s surface and thus protects the earth from becoming too hot.

The height of the atmos­phere is estimated between 16 to 29 thousand kilome­tres from the sea level. It is estimated that 97 per cent of the effective atmosphere is upto the height of 29 km. In fact, the air is mechanical mixture of several gases.

The atmosphere is composed of:

(ii) Vapour, and

(iii) Particulates.

Nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%) are major gases which constitute 99% of the total gaseous composition of the atmosphere. The remaining one per cent is represented by argan (0.93%), carbon dioxide (0.03%), neon (0.0018%), helium (0.0005%), ozone (0.00006%), hydrogen (0.00005%), krypton (trace), xenon (trace), methane (trace) etc.

Oxygen is the most important gas from the stand point of living organisms because they inhale it for their survival. Oxygen is also essential for combustion of burning matter. Nitrogen acts as dilutent and is generally chemically inactive.

Carbon dioxide is used by green plants for photosyn­thesis. It absorbs most of radiant energy from the earth and reradiates it back to the earth. Thus, carbon diox­ide, a greenhouse gas, increases the temperature of the lower atmosphere and the earth’s surface.

The concen­tration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is gradu­ally increasing due to burning of fossil fuels (coal, petroleum and natural gas) and deforestation. Ozone gas absorbs most of the ultra-violet rays radiated from the sun and thus prevents the earth from becoming too hot.

ii. Water Vapour:

The vapour content in the at­mosphere ranges between zero and 5 per cent by volume. Climatically, water vapour is very important constituent of the atmosphere. The atmospheric va­pour is received through the evaporation of moisture and water from the water bodies (like seas and oceans, lakes, tanks and ponds, rivers etc.), vegetation and soil covers. Vapour depends on temperature and therefore it decreases from the equator pole-ward in response to decreasing temperature towards the poles.

The content of vapour in the surface air in the moist tropical areas, at 50° and 70° latitudes is 2.6%, 0.9% and 0.2% (by volume) respectively. The content of vapour decreases upward. More than 90 per cent of the total atmospheric vapour is found upto the height of 5 km. If there is condensation of all the atmospheric vapour at a time, there would result a one-inch thick layer of water around the earth.

Even this meagre amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is responsible for various types of weather phenomena. The moisture content in the atmosphere creates several forms of condensation and precipitation e.g., clouds, fogs, dew, rainfall, frost, hailstorm, ice, snowfall etc.

Vapour is almost transpar­ent for incoming shortwave solar radiation so that the electromagnetic radiation waves reach the earth’s sur­face without much obstacles but vapour is less trans­parent for outgoing shortwave terrestrial radiation and therefore it helps in heating the earth’s surface and lower portion of the atmosphere because it absorbs terrestrial radiation.

iii. Particulate Matter:

The solid particles present in the atmosphere include dust particles, salt particles, pollen, smoke and soot, volcanic ashes etc. Most of the solid particles are kept in suspension in the atmos­phere. These particulates help in the scattering of solar radiation which adds varied charming colour of red and orange at sunrise and sunset.

The sky appears blue in colour due to selective scattering of solar radiation by dust particles. Salt particles become hygroscopic nuclei and thus help in the formation of water drops, clouds and various forms of condensation and precipi­tation.

On the basis of chemical composition, the at­mosphere is divided into two broad zones viz.:

(1) Homosphere.

(2) Heterosphere.

(1) Homosphere represents the lower portion of the atmosphere and extends upto the height of 90 km from sea level. The main constituent gases are oxygen (20.946%) and nitrogen (78.084%). Other gases are argan, carbon dioxide, neon, helium, krypton, xenon, hydrogen etc.

This zone is called homosphere because of the homogeneity of the proportion of various gases. In other words, the proportions of different gases are uniform at different levels in this zone. It may be pointed out that man is increasingly disturbing the natural proportions of gases through his ever-increasing economic activities and modern technologies. For ex­ample, the proportion of carbon dioxide is rapidly increasing due to burning of fossil fuels (coal, petro­leum and natural gas) and deforestation.

The concen­tration of atmospheric carbon dioxide at the beginning of the industrial revolution (1860 A.D.) was fixed at 280 to 290 ppm (parts per million) by volume but now it has increased to 350-360 ppm (1988 A.D.) thus registering an overall increase by 25 per cent from the pre-industrial level.

On the other hand, the proportion of ozone gas is rapidly decreasing due to ever-increasing production and consumption of CFCs (chloro- fluorocarbons) and halogenated gases.

On the basis of thermal conditions the homosphere has been divided into three layers viz.:

(i) Troposphere,

(ii) Stratosphere, and

(iii) Mesosphere.

(2) Heterosphere extends from 90 km to 10,000 km. Different layers of this sphere vary in their chemi­cal and physical properties.

There are four distinct layers of gases in this sphere:

(i) Molecular nitrogen 4ayer is dominated by molecular nitrogen and extends upward upto the height of 200 km (90 to 200 km),

(ii) Atomic oxygen layer extends from 200 to 1100 km.

(iii) Further upward there is helium layer which extends upto the height of 3500km.

(iv) Atomic hydrogen layer is the topmost layer of the atmosphere and extends upto the outermost limit of the atmosphere.

Essay # 4. Structure of the Atmosphere :

The modern knowledge about the atmosphere is based on the information received through rockets, radar and satellites. The effective height of the atmos­phere is estimated between 16 and 29 thousand kilo­metres from the sea level but the height of the atmos­phere upto 800 km is most important. About 50 per cent of the atmosphere lies below the altitude of 5.6 km and 97 per cent of the atmosphere is confined to the height of only 29 km.

The upper limit of the atmos­phere, though unknown, is considered to be 10,000 km from sea level. The earth’s atmosphere consists of a few zones or layers like spherical shells.

On the basis of the characteristics of temperature and air pressure there are four layers from the earth’s surface upward e.g.:

(1) Troposphere,

(2) Stratosphere,

(3) Mesosphere, and

(4) Thermosphere (fig. 32.1).

(1) Troposphere :

The lowermost layer of the atmosphere is known as troposphere and is the most important layer because almost all of the weather phenomena (e.g., fog, cloud, dew, frost, rainfall, hailstorm, storms, cloud-thunder, lightning etc.) occur in this layer. Thus, the tropo­sphere is of utmost significance for all the life forms including man in the biospheric ecosystem because these are concentrated in the lowest part of the atmos­phere.

Temperature decreases with increasing height at the rate of 6.5°C per 1000m. This rate of decrease of temperature is called normal lapse rate. There is sea­sonal variation in the height of troposphere. In other words, the height of troposphere changes from equator towards the poles (decreases) and from one season of a year to other season (increases during summer while it decreases during winter).

The average height of the troposphere is about 16 km over the equator and 6 km over the poles. The upper limit of the troposphere is called tropopause which is about 1.5 km thick. The height of tropopause is 17 km over the equator and 9 to 10 km over the poles. There is also seasonal variation in the height of tropopause.

Its height is 17 km during January and July over the equator and the temperature at this height is -70°C. The height of tropopause during July and January over 45°N latitude is 15 km (tempera­ture -60°C) and 12.5 km (temperature -58°C) respec­tively. The height decreases further poleward as it is 10 km during July (temperature -45°C) and 9 km during January (temperature -58°) over the North Pole.

It is apparent that temperature at the top of tropopause is lowest over the equator (-70°C) and is relatively high over the poles. Since temperature decreases upward at the rate of 6.5°C per 1000m and hence it is natural that temperature at the height of 17 km over the equator becomes much lower than at the height of 9-10 km over the poles. The word troposphere literally means ‘zone or region of mixing’ whereas the word tropopause means ‘where the mixing stops’.

(2) Stratosphere :

The layer just above the troposphere is called stratosphere but there is contrasting opinion about the height and thickness of this layer. The average height over the middle latitudes has been determined to be 25-30 km, whereas it is estimated to be 80 km by others. On an average the upper limit of the strato­sphere is taken to be 50 km.

There is also contrasting opinion about the change or no change of temperature with increasing height in this sphere. A few scientists believe that the stratosphere is isothermal i.e., there is no change in temperature with increasing height while others hold that temperature gradually rises upward as it becomes O 0 C or 32°F at the height of 50 km, the upper limit of the stratosphere which is known as stratopause.

Though the stratosphere is more or less devoid of major weather phenomena but there is circulation of feable winds and cirrus cloud in the lower stratosphere. The lower part of this layer is very important for life-forms in the biospheric ecosystem height of 15-30 km though ozone has been discovered because there is concentration of ozone between the upto the height of 80 km.

The lower portion of the stratosphere having maximum concentration of ozone is called ozonosphere, which is confined between the height of 15 km to 35 km from sea level though the upper limit has been fixed at 55 km. Ozone (O 3 ) defined as ‘a three-atom isotope of oxygen or merely a triatomic form of oxygen (O 3 )’ is a faintly blue irritating gas with a characteristic pungent odour. The ozone gas is unstable because the creation and destruction of this gas is a gradual and continuous natural process.

It acts as a protective cover for the biological communities in the biosphere be­cause it absorbs almost all of the ultra-violet rays of solar radiation and thus protects the earth’s surface from becoming too hot. Recently, the researchers have shown that there is gradual depletion of ozone gas in the atmosphere due to human activities. It may be pointed out that combining of atmospheric oxygen (O 2 ) with individual oxygen molecules results in the creation of ozone (O 2 + O → O 3 ) whereas the breaking of ozone (O 3 ) into O 2 and O results in the depletion or destruction of ozone.

The main culprits of ozone de­struction are halogenated gases called chlorofluorocarbons, halons and nitrogen oxides. The chlorofluorocarbons, popularly known as CFCs, be­long to the category of synthetic chemicals and are relatively simple compounds of the elements chlorine, fluorine and carbon and are initially stable compounds which do not have any toxic effect on life processes in the biosphere at ground level.

These synthetic chemi­cals are widely used as propellants in spray can dis­pensers, as fluids in air conditioners and refrigerators etc. Chlorofluorocarbons, when used as propellants, are released into the air and are transported in the stratosphere by vertical atmospheric circulation. Chlo­rine when separated from chlorofluorocarbons reacts with water and thus depletes ozone rather breaks ozone into O 2 and O.

Besides, nitrogen oxides released by supersonic jets which fly at the height of 18-22 km also depletes ozone. Depletion of ozone would result in the rise of temperature of the ground surface and lower atmosphere. This would cause global warming, acid rain, melting of continental glaciers and rise in sea level, skin cancer to white-skinned people, poisonous smogs, decrease in photosynthesis, ecological disaster and ecosystem instability.

(3) Mesosphere :

Mesosphere extends between 50 km and 80 km. Temperature again decreases with increasing height.

In fact, the rise of temperature with increasing height in the stratosphere stops at stratopause. At the uppermost limit of mesosphere (80 km) temperature becomes -80°C. This limit is called mesopause above which temperature increases with increasing height.

(4) Thermosphere :

The part of the atmosphere beyond mesopause is known as thermosphere wherein temperature in­creases rapidly with increasing height. It is estimated that the temperature at its upper limit (height unde­cided) becomes 1700°C.

It may be pointed out that this temperature cannot be measured by ordinary ther­mometer because the gases become very light due to extremely low density. That is why one does not feel warm when one stretches one’s arm in the air.

Thermosphere is divided into two layers viz.:

(1) Lono­sphere, and

(2) Exosphere.

(1) Ionosphere extends from 80 km to 640 km. There are a number of ionic layers (with increasing heights) in this sphere e.g., D layer, E layer, F layer, and G layer. D layer (between the height of 60 km – 99 km) reflects the signals of low frequency radio waves but absorbs the signals of medium and high frequency waves.

This layer disappears with the sunset because it is associated with solar radiation. E layer, also known as Kennelly – Heaviside layer, is confined in the height between 99 km – 130 km. This layer reflects the medium and high frequency radio waves back to the earth. This layer is produced due to interaction of solar ultra-violet photons with nitrogen and nitrogen mol­ecules and thus it also disappears with the sunset. Sporadic E layer is associated with high velocity winds and is created under special circumstances.

This layer reflects very high frequency radio waves. E 2 layer is generally found at the height of 150 km and is produced due to reaction of ultra-violet solar photons with oxygen molecules and thus this layer also disappears during nights. F layer consists of two sub-layers e.g. F 1 , and F 2 layers (150 km – 380 km) and are collectively called ‘Appleton layer’. These layers reflect medium and high frequency radio waves back to the earth. G layer (400 km and above) most probably persists day and night but is not detectable.

(2) Exosphere represents the uppermost layer of the atmosphere. In fact, we know very little about the atmosphere extending beyond 640 km height from the sea level. The density becomes extremely low and the atmosphere resembles a nebula because it is highly rarefied. The temperature becomes 5568°C at its outer limit but this temperature is entirely different from the air temperature of the earth’s surface as it is never felt.

Essay # 5. Heating of the Atmosphere:

The sun is the main source of energy and heat. It provides solar energy (insolation) or fuel for the process of weather and climate. The energy emitted by the sun is known as solar radiation. The incoming solar radiation to the earth is known as insolation.

It is estimated, that the earth is receiving nearly two calories of heat per square centimetre per minute. This fixed amount of heat is known as solar constant. Of the incoming solar radiation nearly 50 per cent is able to reach the earth surface and the rest 50 per cent is reflected back into the space from the atmosphere and from ground.

The amount of insolation differs from place to place and depends on:

(a) Distance from the sun and its elevation,

(b) The amount of atmosphere to be crossed,

(c) Duration of sunlight, and 

(d) The output of energy by the sun.

The perpendicular rays have to pass through a smaller portion of atmosphere and spread over a small extent of surface. That is why regions receiving direct and perpendicular rays are warmer than others. Similarly, insolation has a direct relationship with the duration of sunlight.

As the duration of sunlight varies with latitude and seasons, so is the case with insolation. Besides, the output of energy from the sun varies to the extent of 5-10 per cent with the increase or decrease of the sunspots. This results in the variation of solar constant by nearly 2 per cent.

The atmosphere is heated in four ways:

(1) Convection,

(2) Conduction,

(3) Radiation, and 

(4) Compression.

(1) Convection:

Transfer of heat of atmosphere from one place to another is known as convection. When the surface of the earth is heated more as compared to the upper layers of atmosphere, the air near the earths’ surface also gets heated and rises above due to decrease in density.

By the continuous upward movement of hot air, a vacuum is produced and cooler air from the surrounding areas comes in. In this way, convectional current takes place and the heat is transferred to upper layers of atmosphere. Convection is the main process in the heating of the atmosphere.

(2) Conduction:

Conduction is a process of transfer of heat by molecular activity. When two bodies with unequal temperature come into contact, there is a flow of energy from the warmer body to the cooler one. The lower layer of atmosphere especially that comes into direct contact with the surface of the earth gets heated through the process of conduction.

(3) Radiation:

Radiation is the direct heating by the transmission of heat waves. The upper layer of atmosphere absorbs some amount of heat of the rays of the sun as they pass through the atmosphere. Radiation from the earth is called terrestrial radiation. Due to certain chemical and physical properties of the elements of atmosphere, they absorb more heat from the terrestrial radiation rather than the radiation from the sun.

(4) Compression:

Another method of heating is compression. When cold air descends, its weight compresses the air below and the air of the lower layer is heated up due to pressure from above and temperature rises.

Heat Balance:

It is found that there is a balance of incoming solar radiation and the amount of terrestrial radiation returned to space. The balance of incoming and outgoing radiation is termed as heat balance.

Global Warming:

Global warming means the increase of temperature of the earth. The various gases present in atmosphere absorb and radiate the sunlight by greenhouse process. This process increases the temperature of the earth. There are various factors responsible for heating of the earth.

1. Actions of human being:

The human activities add methane and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere mainly through burning of fossil fuels and various agricultural activities. The carbon dioxide allows incoming solar radiation to enter into the earth surface but it absorbs the terrestrial radiation and sends back to the earth. The process helps increase surface temperature of the earth.

2. Industrialization:

Rapid industrialization, technological change, revolution in agricultural development and transport have resulted in large supply of carbon dioxide, methane and chlorofluorocarbon gases to the atmosphere. Some of these gases are consumed by vegetation and some portion dissolved in ocean water.

Nearly 50 per cent remains in the atmosphere. These gases absorb the terrestrial radiation and send back to the earth. The process helps increase surface temperature of the earth.

Scientists have predicted that by 2020, temperature over the earth would be higher than that of the same during the last 1000 years. Therefore, it is very essential to reduce greenhouse effect and lower the amount of carbon dioxide which is mainly responsible for global warming.

The solar energy received by the earth’s surface including both ground surface and water surface (of the seas and the oceans) is converted into heat energy ill the form of sensible heat (heat that can be measured by thermometer) and is temporarily stored. This stored energy is radiated from the ground and water surface in the form of long-waves into the atmosphere.

The proc­ess of radiation of heat energy from the earth’s surface is called ground radiation (including radiation from both, ground surface and water surface). The part of this ground radiation after being absorbed by the at­mosphere is again radiated back to the earth’s surface. This process of radiation of terrestrial heat energy from the atmosphere back to the earth’s surface is called counter-radiation. The counter-radiation is effected mainly by water vapour and atmospheric carbon diox­ide.

Heating of the Atmosphere by Direct Insolation :

The heat energy is radiated from the outer sur­face of the sun (photosphere) in the form of long-waves. The atmosphere absorbs 14 per cent of incoming short wave solar radiation through ozone, water vapour etc. present therein. Seven per cent of this energy is spread in the lower atmosphere up to the height of 2km. It is apparent that this amount is too low to heat the atmos­phere significantly.

Conduction :

The transfer of heat through the molecules of matter in any body is called conduction.

The transfer of heat under the process of conduction may be accom­plished in two ways viz.:

(i) From one part of a body to the other part of the same body, and

(ii) From one body to the other touching body.

Conduction may be effec­tive only when there is difference in temperatures in different parts of a single body or in two bodies and the process continues till the temperatures of all parts of a body or of two touching bodies become same.

It is obvious that heat moves from warmer body to the cooler body through molecular movement. The rate of transfer of heat through molecular movement depends on the heat conductivity of the substance. The sub­stance or a body which allows transfer of heat through conduction at a very fast rate is called good conductor of heat while the substance or a body which retards conduction of heat is called bad or poor conductor of heat. Metal is a good conductor of heat while air is very poor conductor of heat.

The earth’s surface is heated during day-time after receiving solar radiation. The air coming in contact with the warmer ground surface is also heated because of transfer of heat (conduction of heat) from the ground surface through the molecules to the air. Since air is very poor conductor of heat and hence the transfer of heat from the ground surface through conduction is effective only up to a few metres in the lower atmosphere.

The ground surface becomes colder than the air above during winter nights and thus heat is transferred from the lower portion of the atmos­phere to the ground surface and thus the atmosphere is cooled.

Terrestrial Radiation :

The process of transfer of heat from one body to the other body without the aid of a material medium (e.g., solid, liquid or gas) is called radiation.

There are two basic laws which govern the nature of flow of heat energy through radiation:

(a) Wien’s displacement law ‘states that the wave­length of the radiation is inversely proportional to the absolute temperature of the emitting body’.

(b) Stefan-Boltzmann law ‘states that flow, or flux of radiation is proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature of the radiating body’.

The earth’s surface after receiving insolation from the sun through shortwave electromagnetic ra­diation gets heated and radiates heat to the atmosphere in the form of long-wave or infrared radiation through­out 24 hours. It may be remembered that the atmos­phere is more or less transparent for incoming shortwave solar radiation but it absorbs more than 90 per cent of outgoing long-wave terrestrial radiation through water vapour, carbon dioxide, ozone etc.

Thus, the terrestrial radiation is the most important source of heating of the atmosphere. The process of radiation of heat from the earth’s surface is called ground radiation. The part of this ground radiation after being absorbed by the at­mosphere is radiated back to the earth’s surface. This process of radiation of terrestrial heat energy from the atmosphere back to the earth’s surface is called coun­ter-radiation which is effected mainly by water vapour and atmospheric carbon dioxide.

This mechanism known as greenhouse effect keeps the lower atmosphere and the ground surface relatively warmer. Thus, the atmos­phere acts as window glass-pane which allows the shortwave solar radiation to come in and prevent the long-wave terrestrial radiation to escape into space.

It is obvious that the increase in the concentra­tion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will increase the greenhouse effect and thus the temperature of the earth’s surface would increase. It may be pointed out that carbon dioxide also absorbs long-wave terrestrial radiation and helps in keeping the lower atmosphere and the ground surface warmer. Water vapour absorbs both the incoming shortwave solar radiation and out­going long-wave terrestrial radiation.

Since most of water vapour is concentrated in the lower atmosphere (90 per cent of the total atmospheric water vapour is found upto the height of 5km in the lower atmosphere) and hence both the incoming solar radiation and outgo­ing terrestrial radiation increase with increasing height. This is the reason that high mountains are called radiation windows.

Convection :

The transfer of heat energy through the move­ment of a mass of substance from one place to another place is called convection. The process of convection becomes effective only in fluids or gases because their internal mass motion activates convection of heat energy. The earth’s surface gets heated after receiving heat energy (insolation) from the sun.

Consequently, the air coming in contact with the warmer earth’s surface also gets heated and expands in volume. Thus, warmer air becomes lighter and rises upward and a vertical circulation of air is set in. Conversely, the relatively colder air aloft becomes heavier because of contraction in volume and thus descends to reach the earth’s surface. The descending air is warmed because of dry adiabatic rate and warm ground surface.

This warm air again ascends because of increase in volume and decrease in density. The whole mechanism of ascent of warmer air and descent of colder air generates convection currents in the lower atmosphere. This convective mechanism transports heat from the ground surface to the atmosphere and thus helps in the heating of the lower atmosphere. Similarly, horizontal convection currents are also generated on the ground surface.

Besides, atmosphere is also heated through la­tent heat of condensation, and expansion and compres­sion of air.

Essay # 6. Chemistry of Earth’s Atmosphere:

The Earth’s atmosphere is 99.9% nitrogen, oxygen and argon, of the remaining 0.1%, roughly half (0.04%) is accounted for by the three transition gases CO 2 , Ne and He.

The remaining minute fraction of the atmosphere (0.66%) is composed of a complex mixture of hundreds of trace gases, the most abundant being methane at 1.7 ppm. Many gases at the parts per trillion levels (10- 12 v/v), are entirely man-made but may still have significant effect on the environment.

Some trace gases control or affect the Earth’s climate and stability. Long lived gases that are increasing at substantial rates because of human activities are of particular current interest since they lead eventually to stratospheric ozone depletion, global warming, and disturbances in atmosphere chemistry that many believe will be harmful to human life.

As per the present estimate the composition of the atmospheric gases are presented in Table 10.1. Substantial effects of human activities on the global cycles of trace gases have arisen only during the last century.

Since 1800 the human population has increased from 1 to 7 billion, bringing with it fast changes in the surface of the earth and disturbing the global balance of the trace gases, changing in atmospheric composition that have occurred are unprecedented during the last several thousand years.

The rate of change is much faster now than can occur from natural climatic cycles, although it is hard to prove that there were no times when trace gas concentrations did not rise rapidly and later fall. The changes that are occurring now have their origin in the Industrial Revolution (since 1760) and the expansion of technology.

These changes are directly related to human events and activities. There is a prevalent belief that the changes man is causing to the atmospheric environment are unnatural and unhealthy.

There were various types of natural processes like volcanic, earthquake, decomposition and climatic transformations that led to the changes in global atmospheric composition in addition to man-made activities like industrialisation, urbanisation and modernisation of agricultural activities.

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• Essay on Fog: Top 4 Essays on Fog | Climatology | Geography

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Reconnecting with Nature: The Enriching Power of Walking

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Nature and the Environment

National Geographic staff recommends books for Earth Day.

English Language Arts

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Earth Day is celebrated around the world on April 22. The relationship between people and the natural environment is a rich geographic topic, one addressed by authors of fiction , nonfiction , and memoir . Here are some books about conservation and the relationship between people and the natural environment , recommended by National Geographic staff. Young Readers The Lorax , by Dr. Seuss. “This book for all ages uses the geographic perspective to talk about global systems, interconnectedness, economy, and the environment.” —Mary Crooks, illustrator Make Way for Ducklings , by Robert McCloskey. “One of the most beautiful picture books ever published tells the story of how nature finds its way—with a little help from friendly policemen—even in the big, busy city of Boston.” —Caryl-Sue, senior writer/editor Young Adult My Side of the Mountain , by Jean Craighead George. “This coming-of-age story uses a boy's daily journal to show his experiences living alone in the wilderness. His survival adventures and descriptions of the natural world are an inspiring display of youth, competence, and independence.” —Julie Brown, ocean education specialist The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind , by William Kamkwamba. “Growing up amid famine and poverty in rural Malawi, 14-year old William Kamkwamba realizes that there is one resource that is constantly available—wind. The book chronicles William's self-taught attempts to make a windmill from salvage-yard finds. The book also shows William working to improve life for his family and village, surviving starvation, and enduring attacks from enemies and the teasing of his peers for his strange ideas. An inspiring look at the human spirit and a fascinating account of overcoming a difficult life in a famine-stricken nation.” —Kim Hulse, director (geography education programs) A Sand County Almanac , by Aldo Leopold. “A short, nonfiction book of essays and field notes about Leopold's natural observations around his homeland in Sauk County, Wisconsin. Leopold is an advocate for ‘land ethics’ and building strong and responsible relationships between people and their natural environment. Leopold’s idea is that land is not a commodity to be possessed; rather, humans must have mutual respect for Earth in order to not destroy it." —Heather Hoelting, intern, education programs Indian Creek Chronicles: A Winter Alone in the Wilderness , by Pete Fromm. "Thrust forward in life helter-skelter, Fromm recounts how he left college in his junior year at the University of Montana to work for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Fromm leaves on a romantic whim, perusing the mountain man lifestyles of Jedediah Smith and Jim Bridger for the seven months that he watched over a remote salmon hatchery in the Idaho wilderness. His official duties taking just minutes a day to complete, Fromm delves into hunting, trapping, and embracing the isolation and stark beauty of his time in the Idaho winter." —Zach Michel, contractor (oceans)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle , by Barbara Kingsolver. "This book chronicles the year that Barbara Kingsolver, along with her husband and two daughters, made a commitment to become locavores—those who eat only locally grown foods. A lighthearted read written by three of the four family members who are passionate about their mission but don't take themselves too seriously, this is a great book for anybody who is interested in how their personal choices affect the world around them, budding environmentalists—or just anybody who likes to eat, because the recipes are also fantastic." —Justine Kendall, partnerships and communications coordinator Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism, the Belief System That Enables Us to Eat Some Animals and Not Others , by Melanie Joy. “Remember the moment in the movie Babe, where the cat purrs malevolently at our porcine hero, ‘Sometimes animals that seem to have no purpose really do have a purpose’? This book puts a name to The Way Things Are and what you can do to reject the status quo. With the book not much longer than the title, it's all the more reason to pick it up. Thoughtful, informative, life-changing.” —Mary Schons, reporter Students The Pie Man , by Gerry FitzGerald. “Charlie, a successful engineer at one of the largest firms in New York, finds himself in the rugged and rural landscape of McDowell County, West Virginia. As he tries to seal the deal on a multi-million dollar coal-fired power plant, Charlie realizes that the community and culture of Red Bone, West Virginia, will be changed forever if the deal goes through.” —Nina Page, web specialist The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon , by David Grann. “This is a nonfiction account of British explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett, who disappeared in 1925 on one of his many quests to find an ancient civilization deep in the Amazon jungle. For nearly two decades, Fawcett, unlike many of his peers, ventured into the wilderness with only the bare minimum he would need to survive. He had great respect for the Amazon and the ideals of exploration, and by the end of the book, I did, too.” —Jeannie Evers, copy editor Environmental Justice and Environmentalism: The Social Justice Challenge to the Environmental Movement , edited by Ronald Sandler and Phaedra C. Pezzullo. “This collection of essays gives a great introduction to the concept and history of environmental justice and how it differs from mainstream environmentalism. A must-read for anyone interested in social issues pertaining to the environment!” —Samantha Zuhlke, contractor (oceans)

Desert Solitaire , by Edward Abbey. “In this 1968 literary non-fiction work, Abbey details his work as a park ranger in Utah’s Arches National Park. Abbey clearly holds the natural world in high esteem, even though he rails against humanity’s relationship with the environment. At one point, he calls wilderness ‘not a luxury, but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.’” —Stuart Thornton, reporter The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places , by Gary Paul Nabhan and Stephen Trimble. “These two authors share their own stories, as well as observations of their children, about how and why nature becomes important during the growing years. I found myself reliving some of my own old styles of play and connection to wild places while reading. I highly recommend it.” —Anna Switzer, program manager (outdoor and experiential education) The Monkey Wrench Gang , by Edward Abbey. “Published in 1975, this book is basically a how-to for those who want to be, and became, eco-saboteurs. Excellent writing with thought-provoking, emotional, and often gut-wrenching views of the changes made to the environment in the name of progress and need.” —Valerie Ostenak, artist The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific , by J. Maarten Troost. “Nothing in the book actually relates to the title! It's a really funny take on Troost’s two-year stay on the island of Tarawa. It made me think a lot about how influenced we are by the places that are (and aren't) around us.” —Tricia B. Kane, director (business practices)

Join a Book Club Book clubs are a great way to discover more about the books you love, the books you loathe, and if the book was really better than the movie. Some book clubs are focused on a particular type of book: science fiction, graphic novels, classics. Other book clubs are free-for-alls. Book clubs also offer insight into your own community and the people who live thereyou will not believe the characters in your own neighborhood. Public libraries are usually an excellent source of information on local book clubs, and often host book club meetings themselves. Most book clubs are free, welcome new members , and meet about once a month.

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The Changing Nature of Geography (RLE Social & Cultural Geography)

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This book is an introduction to the nature of geography. There are detailed sections on content, methods and purposes and an attempt is made to distinguish progress from those changes which are merely fashion and those which result in genuine progress. One of these, resulting partly from the adoption of quantitative techniques, is the improvement in the accuracy and the type of explanation which the geographer is now able to give. The new techniques have also helped in the bringing about of profound changes in geographical laws, the use of models and even the relevance of determinism.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter | 6  pages, introduction, chapter | 16  pages, some consideration of content, chapter | 7  pages, is certain subject-matter unique to geography, chapter | 10  pages, the geographical approach, chapter | 12  pages, practical approaches, chapter | 13  pages, changing techniques, connection, samples and models, chapter | 11  pages, functions and purposes of geography, chapter | 19  pages, determinism, laws, descriptions and explanations in geography, recent changes in geography, chapter | 17  pages, one geography or many.

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Guy Davenport—the Last High Modernist

In the essays collected in Geography of the Imagination , one can glimpse the inner workings of the mind of a 20th-century literary genius.

Whitman appearing at Poe’s funeral, toward the back. A young Picasso catching a glimpse of the prehistoric bull paintings at Altamira. Allen Ginsberg, mid-chant at Charles Olson’s funeral, accidentally pressing the pedal to lower the coffin, leaving Olson’s remains “wedged neither in nor out of the grave.” Whittaker Chambers sponsoring Louis Zukofsky’s Communist Party membership bid. Kafka observing an air show as the first pilots took flight. Emerson expressing his dismay at the dinner-table talk of Thoreau and Louis Aggasiz on the sexual habits of turtles.

Books in review

The geography of the imagination: forty essays.

These are among the meetings of the minds gathered together in Guy Davenport’s masterpiece The Geography of the Imagination , a wide-ranging collection of essays that fuses together the multifaceted author’s long engagements with his cultural ancestors . The fruits of serious time spent reading, Davenport’s gift is a kind of literary eros: His affinity for these artists is so great that, even as he brilliantly analyzes their texts, he can’t help but try to conjure them to life. Scholar, critic, and artist rolled into one, Davenport was the standard-bearer for a variety of serious belles lettres, the likes of which is rare today—who now has done so much homework? Returned to print with a new introduction by John Jeremiah Sullivan, Geography is a powerful reminder of the pleasures of erudition, and perhaps a barometer of today’s literary culture and its diminished capacity for difficulty.

For Davenport, the literary anecdote mattered; he recognized it as the “last survivor of an oral tradition.” And it was part of how his mind moved: Revolutionary ideas were embodied by great men (and, tellingly, less often women)—heroes of the past who came into contact, often fleetingly, and exchanged their genius. In his view, the flowering of culture is the product of these meetings rippling through history. Davenport himself was no stranger to these anecdotal encounters—he seems to have met a fair number of his artistic gods.

Here are some of the stories he sorts through: stumbling upon Ezra Pound’s original blueprint for The Cantos while helping the aged, mad poet move into a new apartment in Rapallo; a coffee chat with Samuel Beckett; attending boring Oxford classes taught by J.R.R. Tolkien; lunching in Kentucky with the photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard, the monk and writer Thomas Merton (“in mufti, dressed as a tobacco farmer with a tonsure”), and “an editor of Fortune who had wrecked his Hertz car coming from the airport and was covered in spattered blood from head to toe.” He reports that the restaurant treated them with impeccable manners. Perhaps more importantly, these morsels of storytelling lend Davenport’s formidable learning a voice, one with charm and humility, even a kind of boyishness (hero worship is always at hand). Moreover, they stitch together his unconventional leaps of logic and arcane references, grounding the reader even when the path of the essay may be unfamiliar.

The pleasure of reading Davenport is not just in spending time with someone who has read more widely and deeply than you have—though it’s that, too—but rather in his power of making surprising connections. The memorable lines that open the collection’s title essay propose to put all of culture, across all time, into some kind of relationship:

The difference between the Parthenon and the World Trade Center, between a French wine glass and a German beer mug, between Bach and John Philip Sousa, between Sophocles and Shakespeare, between a bicycle and a horse, though explicable by historical moment, necessity, and destiny, is before all a difference of imagination.

This assertion is, at its heart, a question of style: All cultures have buildings, beverages, music, theater, and modes of transportation, but the contrasts between them are central to how we understand ourselves and others. How these choices came to be, however, requires an investigation that can span centuries and vast distances. “Every force evolves a form,” taken from the Shakers and the seemingly inevitable simplicity of their art, is one of Davenport’s most cherished phrases—even as artists choose, forces of nature always work upon those choices. Chance and circumstance are key, but Davenport still insists on that most elusive of qualities, the imagination, to explain the particulars: People dream, guess, and suppose (to paraphrase him slightly), and these intangible urges press up against their material conditions and lead to moments of creativity. Even if you grew up in a cornfield, you might still dream of the sea.

“The imagination; that is, the way we shape and use the world, indeed the way we see the world,” Davenport writes, “has geographical boundaries like islands, continents, and countries. These boundaries can be crossed.” The title essay labors to construct an elusive third option between cultural determinism (that you are inevitably a product of your origins) and a free-floating subjectivity (that we can escape our contexts entirely). Davenport’s sprawling project as an essayist, then, is to try to track those boundary crossings and detect influences that might have escaped our notice at first. The essay’s culmination is an extended close reading of Grant Wood’s American Gothic , drawing a map out of every item in the frame. The bamboo screen from China (“by way of Sears Roebuck”), the glass from Venice, the pose of the couple out of the whole history of portraiture—this most American of images was created by a global flow of ideas and materials. Davenport’s “geography” is a kind of spatial aid to the way we think about culture: The painting isn’t just one exhibit in a long gallery of “periods” that follow one after the other. Instead, it’s a demonstration of many traditions all intertwined on the same canvas. Like a map—if one knows how to read it. And taking it all in at once is how we might begin to understand how the boundaries blur.

Another pleasure of reading Davenport is in his roaming, in never knowing his exact destination. He is just as likely to resort to simile and metaphor (“The imagination is like the drunk man who lost his watch, and must get drunk again to find it”) or swerve into a subject that is completely fascinating but also somewhat unclear in exactly how it connects to his original point. On the way to American Gothic is an extended examination of Edgar Allan Poe’s tripartite imagination: grotesque, arabesque, and classical, in Davenport’s telling. The close reading itself is elaborate and entertaining enough to quell the reader’s doubts of how, exactly, everything will fit together. Onward, then, he leaps to the Goncourt brothers, Spengler, Joyce, and so on. With Davenport, the reader is always on a journey, and it can feel good to know that there is someone a few steps ahead of you, guiding the way even if you’re temporarily lost.

Peripatetic as his writing was, Davenport was, by his own admission, someone who hated travel. He was born in South Carolina in 1927, and his Southern roots occasionally surface when his writing dips into the personal (particularly memorable is his story of being taken to his Black nurse’s house to eat clay in order to cure his indigestion). The majority of his life took place in the university: Duke, Oxford, Harvard, and eventually a post at the University of Kentucky. “The farthest away for the highest pay,” he is reported to have said. There were brief interruptions for travel as well as time spent in the US Army during the Korean War—his main memory of the latter seems to be reading Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers in the Fort Bragg rec room. Davenport would teach at Kentucky for decades, although his attitude toward the experience seems to have been ambivalent at best—he considered teaching noble in the abstract, but in practice a futile chore. Meanwhile, he toiled away inside his immense library at his brilliant and often arcane writing.

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After winning a MacArthur “genius grant” in 1990, Davenport retired to write full-time. Before his death from lung cancer at the age of 77 (he was a lifelong smoker), he was incredibly productive, with numerous volumes of essays, fiction, poetry, and translations of ancient Greek poets and philosophers to his name. He was also a painter and often an illustrator of his own work. In another essay collection, Davenport approvingly notes the wisdom of Montaigne in leaving the world of business and court intrigue to spend his days in peaceful, humanistic introspection. It’s not hard to see the older Davenport in this image: a gentleman squire, intellectually engaged but essentially aloof. He took pleasure in life outside his library, but his understanding came through the texts that structured his world.

At times, Davenport has the aura of “The Last Man Who Knew Everything,” the epithet once bestowed on the English polymath Thomas Young. However, a closer inspection shows that Davenport’s breadth of subjects, while impressive, has a focus. High modernism is his home, particularly in literature (Joyce for his master’s thesis, Pound for his PhD), though he writes compellingly about the visual arts as well. Around half of Geography ’s essays are about, or at least significantly involve, poets: Poe, Whitman, Stevens, Moore, Olson, Zukofsky, and others more obscure (a fascinating essay on the lesser-known Ronald Johnson is one of the collection’s best). In general, he is more content to root around in the text—if it is complex enough, he will find food for thought. His essays often have no fixed thesis or argument to speak of, and some of his sprawling close readings are more convincing than others: While his dissection of Olson’s famously opaque “The Kingfishers” is genuinely illuminating, his theory of Ulysses as based, chapter by chapter, on an ancient Celtic alphabet is perhaps more technically impressive than it is useful. He has many touchstones, or hobby horses, that he returns to again and again: Leonardo da Vinci (one of the first books Davenport read as a child was the artist’s biography, an obsession that seems to have molded him for a lifetime), prehistoric cave painting, Dogon theology, the ancient Greeks, Fourier, Wittgenstein, and above all, those demigods of the earlier 20th century—Picasso, Joyce, and Pound.

If “imagination” is the key to Davenport’s thinking on culture, he did not mean it in the way that it is often invoked today: a disruptive idea that strikes like a bolt from the blue. Tradition was indispensable, even inescapable, in the act of creation, he believed. In one of the collection’s most famous essays, “The Symbol of the Archaic,” Davenport provides another axiom of his thought: namely, that modernism needed to look backward, deep into the past, to advance. “What is most modern in our time frequently turns out to be the most archaic,” Davenport writes. “The sculpture of Brancusi belongs to the art of the Cyclades in the ninth century B.C. Corbusier’s buildings in their Cubist phase look like the white clay houses of Anatolia and Malta.” If The Geography of the Imagination asks us to think spatially or cross-culturally, Davenport here asserts the power of the “midden” of history, what he sees as the 20th century’s reabsorption of the past to create new, more vital work: “Archaic art, then, was springtime art in any culture.”

This attitude is itself characteristically high modernist, and Davenport saw his own style as a kind of primitivism, perhaps more in the “naïve” spirit of self-taught artists like Balthus and Henri Rousseau—the claim is debatable, but perhaps can be chalked up to Davenport’s modesty. This insight, or tension, lies at the heart of Davenport’s peculiar aesthetic: Returning to the archaic is a source of art’s freshness, but it simultaneously requires a huge scholarly apparatus to fully unwind the connections. In effect, his role as one of modernism’s great interpreters came with a downside: Davenport’s own archaic impulse, his desire to make art visceral, was always at risk of being overwhelmed by his learning.

Davenport was, of course, more than an essayist. His large body of fiction—mostly stories—has its champions, such as Sullivan. It also has its moments, but to my ears his essayistic experiments in fiction lack the grace of his “nonfiction” voice. Given that he had no real skill with character or plot, Davenport’s layerings can feel overworked, top-heavy with the relay of information in baroque language. And his conceits (Kafka, again, at the air show, or Robert Walser’s early career as a butler), which summon the hero worship that is central to his thinking, feel more at home in the realm of criticism. In “The Critic as Artist,” an essay collected elsewhere that perhaps best articulates Davenport’s own strengths, he concludes with a rather surprising cliché by his standards: “Literature does not ever say anything. It shows. It makes us feel. It is, in the world’s language, as inarticulate as music and painting. It is critics who can tell us what they think it means.” Perhaps Davenport was simply too articulate to re-create the absorption that he believed was literature’s highest achievement. His essays, which show more of his personality (though he is ultimately not a “personal essayist”), accomplish far more.

As Sullivan puts it in his breezy, pleasingly personal introduction, Davenport saw himself as “somebody who was working at the end of a civilization or tradition.” For him, “Modernism had been a cultural summit, like the Athenian Golden Age,” and now we were living “in the radioactive ash-lands of whatever that involved.” Of course, emphasizing that you stand on the shoulders of giants can tend toward diminishment—because of his density and his allusions, it’s easy to think of Davenport as a “writer’s writer.” Nostalgia can bring out the crank in him, although the stance is characteristically charming. His greatest contemporary antipathy was for the automobile, which Davenport blamed for the ravaging of American cities and culture, a quite defensible and prescient position.

Although Davenport is undoubtedly encyclopedic in many ways, it’s also worth noting what he omits—the most noticeable absence is any trace of pop culture. So many essayists today who claim a unique style (particularly those who aspire to “creative” or “literary” nonfiction) often seem duty-bound to rope in contemporary culture—Taylor Swift, say, or the latest Internet ephemera. Today, the poptimism wars are over (or, to put it differently, the “unpacking” of cultural ephemera as seen in Barthes’s Mythologies simply became the dominant form of cultural analysis), and pop won. Writers, fearing their irrelevance, feel they must insist that they belong to the “now.” Not so for Davenport: He stays firmly entrenched in his books, looking for deeper and deeper symbols in his masters. Although Davenport’s era is long past, there’s something appealing, almost romantic, in how little he fears irrelevance. Instead, he asks you to give things time: You may not understand everything in a difficult text, but that is itself the extended pleasure of reading. There will always be something further to encounter, if you choose to go on.

Davenport’s imagination always returns to Pound, that ever-troublesome modernist founding father, and a paragon of the ambiguity and density that Davenport valued. Pound is mentioned in or the subject of 26 of the 40 essays in Geography . His extreme eclecticism is perhaps the master key to Davenport’s imagination, as Pound’s best-known work, The Cantos , operates by extensive, almost uncontrollable, analogy. Incredibly disparate references are juxtaposed—Dante and Woodrow Wilson, Confucius and Odysseus—attempting to force the reader into thinking about what their relationship might be. Davenport is Pound’s ideal reader, able to grasp the threads of connection where those less booked-up might simply throw up their hands in bewilderment (and maybe for good reason). Davenport is not particularly forthcoming on Pound’s antisemitism or fascism, eliding it as madness. A political reticence, or at least mildness, is obvious. Rarely does Davenport acknowledge the perils of over-reading a text—the conspiratorial germ in Pound, for instance, is neutralized by ignoring how it might spill over into life. Complexity can be its own kind of safety, too.

As a supercharged reader, Davenport always tries to make the most of the texts he loves. Another of Geography ’s best essays is a fascinating but far-fetched dive into the work of Eudora Welty, reading her fiction largely through the myth of Persephone. The intention is to situate Welty as a major modernist in the mold of Pound or Joyce, giving deep symbolic readings of her major novels and stories. Davenport recounts elsewhere, somewhat bashfully, that Welty wrote him once to say that his interpretation did not at all conform with her own sense of her work. “Death of the author” pending, Davenport’s humility at recounting this exchange breathes warmth into the analysis. And perhaps there’s something to be grasped from this ever-deeper excavation: the unconscious patterns in art and literature that hum in the air around any enduring work.

In the literary theorist Anna Kornbluh’s recent book Immediacy , Kornbluh writes about the dominance of a contemporary style that pretends to have no style at all: autofiction, streaming television, the low-friction churn of memes and social-media posts. In our hurry to move through the flow of stuff , we have become subject to a kind of art that feeds us “effortlessness” while depleting art’s essential power to make us stop and reflect. Davenport, in his labyrinths, his constraints, his obscure references, is the model of an artist who believes in dwelling with artworks. There is a density to his writing, a willingness to embrace the uncertain and to make us work a little harder to capture the meaning or the beauty of an image.

Celebrating at the DNC in a Time of Genocide Celebrating at the DNC in a Time of Genocide

Adam Johnson

The Right Hates Kids. It’s Weird. The Right Hates Kids. It’s Weird.

Reality bites but gen x can still fight back reality bites but gen x can still fight back, percival everett’s great american novel percival everett’s great american novel.

Books & the Arts / Omari Weekes

His work feels salutary exactly because such ambitions are increasingly rare—modernism and its ambitions are receding from our culture, warts and all. At the same time, we experience a massive crush of information every day, a circumstance that more than ever requires a mind capable of describing, or inventing, relationships between the disparate works of art that populate the feed. Davenport asks us to practice invention in our associations, to not just settle for the catch-alls of “everything” and “all the time.”

Through the effort of thinking through those connections, even when they’re perplexing, a critic—or an artist—manages to make something from the information “midden” that might otherwise have been lost. As Davenport observes in “Finding,” one of the few purely autobiographical essays in the collection, “I learned from a whole childhood of looking in fields how the purpose of things ought perhaps to remain invisible, no more than half known. People who know exactly what they are doing seem to me to miss the vital part of any doing.” To take up Davenport, we should make haste slowly. Unhurriedness, distance, the eye unfocused at first: Through these patient arts, something rare might emerge.

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• TECHNOLOGY FEATURE
• 19 August 2024

Cash for catching scientific errors

• Julian Nowogrodzki 0

Julian Nowogrodzki is a science writer and editor in Boston, Massachusetts.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Illustration by the Project Twins

Malte Elson is blunt when it comes to science’s ability to self-correct. “The way we currently treat errors doesn’t work,” he says.

To prove his point, Elson, a psychologist at the University of Bern, highlights a well-known 2010 paper 1 by economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “This paper became highly influential in financial policies in Europe,” says Elson, where it “promoted austerity measures to reduce national debt”. Three years later, Thomas Herndon, an economics PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst at the time, tried to replicate the paper’s results for a class assignment and discovered an error in a crucial spreadsheet used in the paper. The authors had selected only 15 of the 20 countries they meant to include for a key calculation 2 . When this and two other errors were considered, the study’s conclusions were less strong than they initially appeared, Elson says.

Pay researchers to spot errors in published papers

Reinhart and Rogoff cooperated by providing their data and admitting to the errors, but they have maintained that their overall conclusion is sound. But, these errors might never have been discovered had Herndon not tried to reproduce the results.

This haphazard system of error detection makes no sense, Elson says. “We cannot seriously rely on coincidental discovery of errors.” Currently, looking for errors in published papers is neither systematic nor rewarded. Elson and his colleagues launched the Estimating the Reliability and Robustness of Research (ERROR) project in February to change that.

The ERROR project pays reviewers to check highly cited psychology and psychology-related papers for errors in code, statistical analyses and reference citations. The programme posted its first review in May — the first of 100 planned over 4 years. This month, the ERROR team aim to have the first 20 papers assigned to reviewers.

Maximizing impact

Led by Elson, Ian Hussey, a meta-scientist also at the University of Bern, and Ruben Arslan, a psychologist at Leipzig University in Germany, ERROR focuses on papers with a continuous stream of citations that were published in “important and respected journals in subdisciplines of psychology” since January 2015, Elson says. The ERROR team prioritizes highly cited papers to maximize the impact of its efforts, and contacts study authors asking for their permission to review their work. “For ERROR to be successful, it’s important that everybody is on board,” Elson explains — but the team also requires access to each paper’s underlying data and code, which only authors can provide.

‘Spell-checker for statistics’ reduces errors in the psychology literature

With funding from the Humans in Digital Transformation programme, a fund to drive a digitalization strategy at the University of Bern, which has offered the project 4 years of support and 250,000 Swiss francs (US$289,000), reviewers are paid up to 1,000 francs for each paper they check. They get a bonus for any errors they find, with bigger bonuses for bigger errors — for example, those that result in a major correction notice or a retraction — up to a maximum of 2,500 francs. This bonus is modelled on ‘bug bounty’ programmes that technology companies, such as Microsoft and Google, offer to hackers who can find and report vulnerabilities in their products.

Errors can include mistakes in code, discrepancies between the code and the wording in the manuscript, statistical analyses that do not support conclusions or are misinterpreted and inaccurate citations.

Authors are compensated as well: 250 francs for answering reviewer questions and making data available, with an extra 250 francs if the reviewer finds only minor or no errors.

ERROR posted its first review in May 3 for a 2018 paper 4 in the journal Psychophysiology that was authored by cognitive neuroscientist Jan Wessel at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. The process was exemplary, Hussey says, including the open-mindedness of Wessel and of cognitive neuroscientist Russ Poldrack at Stanford University in California, who performed the review and found only minor errors. Wessel even wrote a simulation study that found a 96% chance that there is at least one remaining error in his data set that even ERROR’s review has not caught. “This was a very cool mentality — exactly what we’re hoping to foster,” says Hussey.

Smart software spots statistical errors in psychology papers

Hussey expects to post three more reviews in September. To hit 100 papers in 4 years, the team will need to publish about one review every 2 weeks.

Although initially focused on psychology, the ERROR project is “actively working towards” expanding to other disciplines, says Hussey. The team has applied for funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation to expand into artificial-intelligence research and hopes to take on medical research as well. “More generally, we hope to demonstrate a scalable and transferable model for how to do this, so that other researchers can do it in their own field,” says Hussey. The team is also exploring the possibility of auditing manuscript preprints as well as published articles, Elson says.

Still, the project faces significant challenges. Few authors respond to ERROR’s e-mails asking for permission to review their paper, says Elson. So far, only 17 authors have agreed to have their study reviewed from 134 selected papers. Sometimes, the underlying data no longer exist or cannot be found. And sometimes, authors reply saying that third parties cannot have access to the data for legal reasons. Although there are technical solutions for this, Elson says he doesn’t press.

Reviewers needed

A further challenge is finding reviewers who have both the required technical expertise and no conflicts of interest with the study authors. Reviewers, Hussey says, might need more technical knowledge than the authors themselves, “because you have to know about the probabilities of different kinds of errors happening”. Often, such reviewers are PhD students or postdoctoral researchers, who might be put in a difficult career position if they cast doubt on a publication that is authored by more-established researchers. “We are acutely aware of the power dynamics involved,” Hussey says. “We’re trying our best to match that balance of power in who’s doing the critique and who’s being critiqued.”

NatureTech hub

In 2023, in an attempt to help grow the pool of potential reviewers, Hussey began teaching a master's-level course on error detection at the University of Bern’s psychology department. The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London ran a similar course at a summer school in July .

Now, the ERROR team hopes to convince those who fund research to pay for error reviews of the research that they support. Funders will benefit from error detection because they pay doubly for errors, Elson says: once by wasting money on research that turns out to be incorrect, and again because they missed the opportunity to fund a different project. Since May (when Elson published a World View article 5 in Nature on the project), Elson has spoken with both the German research foundation DFG, and Volkswagen Foundation, a private funder.

Compared with the current ad hoc approach, “meaningful discoveries per dollar spent would actually be higher with some degree of systematic error scrutiny”, Hussey says. And a serious error-detection system needs resources, says Elson. “We cannot expect it to work for free.”

Nature 632 , 942-943 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02681-2

Reinhart, C. M. & Rogoff, K. S. Am. Econ. Rev. 100 , 573–578 (2010).

Article   Google Scholar  

Herndon, T., Ash, M. & Pollin, R. Camb. J. Econ. 38 , 257–279 (2014).

ERROR. Preprint at PsyArXiv https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/8gtz2 (2024).

Wessel, J. R. Psychophysiology 55 , e12871 (2018).

Elson, M. Nature 629 , 730 (2024).

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