Many of the world’s environmental problems lie in unsound human management of the environment.Humans have the potential to recognize and respond to opportunities and to threats that are natural or caused by humans, and to perhaps avoid them. Physical geography provides a long-term understanding of environmental change within which to place contemporary
environmental change. Physical geographers study past and present climates, tectonics, oceans, glaciology , landform development and ecological and biogeographical processes. They also study the interacting nature of these global and local processes. Physical geographers are involved with measuring environmental change. In addition to monitoring environmental change we are able to test and refine theories about how processes actually operate. This allows us to understand more readily whether changes we see today are part of normal dynamic Earth processes or whether they are the result of human interaction with the environment.Through field study, laboratory investigation and numerical modeling, geographers are able to understand a wide variety of environmental processes and how these processes interact. This improved understanding helps us to predict the likely effects of future environmental
changes. This is because our predictive models rely on us first having a good conceptual model of how the system operates. Geographers are able to contribute to the debates surrounding global climate change and can help provide policy-makers with some answers as to how best to deal with certain problems. Rather than just investigating whether the increased flooding in a particular catchment is due to climatic change or land management, physical geographers are able to take a more holistic approach (looking at how the whole system responds rather than just one bit of it). A traditional approach
would simply explore a problem (e.g. flooding) in relation to possible causes (e.g. land management, climatic change). This approach fails to address the linkages between problems that emerge within particular catchment and where any one solution to a problem (e.g. blocking land drains) may have positive (enhanced biodiversity) and negative (release of dissolved organic carbon into rivers) impacts upon other parts of the environment. In other words, rather than thinking about just one thing at a time in environmental management, we ought to be seeking to look at the full range of possible effects.
environmental change. Physical geographers study past and present climates, tectonics, oceans, glaciology , landform development and ecological and biogeographical processes. They also study the interacting nature of these global and local processes. Physical geographers are involved with measuring environmental change. In addition to monitoring environmental change we are able to test and refine theories about how processes actually operate. This allows us to understand more readily whether changes we see today are part of normal dynamic Earth processes or whether they are the result of human interaction with the environment.Through field study, laboratory investigation and numerical modeling, geographers are able to understand a wide variety of environmental processes and how these processes interact. This improved understanding helps us to predict the likely effects of future environmental
changes. This is because our predictive models rely on us first having a good conceptual model of how the system operates. Geographers are able to contribute to the debates surrounding global climate change and can help provide policy-makers with some answers as to how best to deal with certain problems. Rather than just investigating whether the increased flooding in a particular catchment is due to climatic change or land management, physical geographers are able to take a more holistic approach (looking at how the whole system responds rather than just one bit of it). A traditional approach
would simply explore a problem (e.g. flooding) in relation to possible causes (e.g. land management, climatic change). This approach fails to address the linkages between problems that emerge within particular catchment and where any one solution to a problem (e.g. blocking land drains) may have positive (enhanced biodiversity) and negative (release of dissolved organic carbon into rivers) impacts upon other parts of the environment. In other words, rather than thinking about just one thing at a time in environmental management, we ought to be seeking to look at the full range of possible effects.
Furthermore, because of the history of physical geography, geographers have had experience of bringing together large-scale approaches with small-scale approaches, linking case studies with general context. In this way physical geographers can readily adapt to the relevant scale of enquiry required by policy-makers. They can also link together scales of approach through process understanding. This is important because sometimes cause and effect are not clear and the alternative framework for thinking about environmental change is one in which form–process feedback interactions are considered. For example, Clifford (1993) suggested that water could undulate over an individual pebble in a river. This undulation in flow causes small-scale erosion upstream of the pebble and deposition downstream thereby changes the shape of the river bed around the pebble leading to an exaggeration of the undulating flow, which in turn makes a bigger feature on the river bed, eventually leading to a large pool and riffle. In turn, this larger-scale feature will interact with the flow of water, which in turn influences meander development and the way sediment is eroded, transported
and deposited. Thus, there are feedbacks between processes and landforms at lots of different spatial scales. On a temporal scale, too, there have been approaches to physical geography that illustrated how the individual location, the history of that location, and therefore the exact timing of an event can be important in determining how a land-scape will respond.The fact that geographers have such a variety of approaches can be of enormous benefit to policy-makers. For example, while evaluating a river reach subject to erosion near houses, some geographers might examine the river sediment distribution to establish sediment transport processes and hence design some coarse stone block protection for the river banks. Other physical geographers might take a longer-term view of the river system and start to look for evidence of how the river has behaved over time (e.g. Lane, 2001). This might suggest a different management strategy. For example, if the geographers find evidence that the river has been subject to historically frequent avulsions (where the channel suddenly changes its position), then perhaps progressive abandonment of the area by those who live there would be a better strategy since no matter how much riverbank engineering there is, that particular river may be prone to major channel change and homes would never be safe from the threat of flooding and erosion. Therefore, by using different skills and different scales of approach (long term and short term) geographers can aid
environmental management decision-making and planning.
environmental management decision-making and planning.