Geography is translated from ancient Greek as geography. Actually, this science is. This is a series of interconnected teachings about the Earth. About its composition, structure, relief, countries and beyond. There are a great many classifications of geographies, and sometimes it’s not easy to understand them.
Geography Classification
The main divisions of geography distinguish the physical and socio-economic branches of this science.
In turn, economic geography is divided according to the objects of study into the geography of the population, industry, agriculture, the service sector, transport, and many others. The development of science and technology provokes the appearance of increasingly narrow specifications.
Physical geography is also a whole complex of sciences. These include paleogeography, geomorphology, climatology, land hydrology, oceanology, soil geography, biogeography.
It is difficult to carry out a clear classification also because a number of sciences belong to related fields of knowledge.
For example, platform geography is a science that applies not only to geography, but also to geology.
History of geography
The history of geography begins at the same time as the history of the writing of mankind. And maybe even earlier, because even before the first recordings people traveled, memorized and transmitted their knowledge orally.
Officially registered research expeditions are known as far back as Ancient Egypt, the 2nd century BC.
Written descriptions of the area with a list of rivers, mountains and oceans came to us from Ancient India, Greece.
With the development of navigation, the geography of the seas and oceans inevitably appears, and marine cartography develops. Information about the compilation of maps in the time of Ancient Greece has reached our time. Perhaps at that time it was not yet known about such subtleties as the underwater relief, the platform of the region, but the external manifestations and their features were described quite accurately.
The Middle Ages became a dark age also for sciences. The achievements of previous civilizations were lost, European science shifted towards theology, and this explained natural phenomena. However, geographical science did not stop its development, just its center shifted to the east. In those periods, the main discoveries were made by Arab scholars and travelers.
In the XV-XVII centuries, geographical science and cartography gradually began to return to Europe. With the development of navigation, the era of research and expeditions began.
As a separate science
The geography of the platform is a branch of science that studies the vast parts of the crust of our planet, creating its solid framework. These sites are inactive in tectonic meaning.
Their sizes are huge and measured in millions of square kilometers. They cover more than 40% of the entire continent.
Structure
Geography of the platform is a complex science along with genealogy. She studies not only the location and movement of parts of the earth, but also their structure.
To the shields that make up the platforms are the ledges of the foundation without sedimentary rocks. The second variety of areas is plates dressed in sedimentary cover.
Do not assume that the landscape defines the platform. The shape of the relief also depends on the rocks covering them.
Modern science most often distinguishes two main structural levels. Lower floor, older and upper - platform cover. Often the upper case consists of invariable sedimentary rocks.
What are they
Geologists and geographers distinguish ancient platforms and young ones.
For the ancients, the foundation of the Precambrian period is characteristic. These include the East European, Siberian platforms, on which part of the territory of the Russian Federation is located. This type covers approximately 40% of the total area of the continents.
Young platforms, on the other hand, consist of the foundations of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic age. These are Scythian, Turan, West Siberian. It is in this type of platform that an intermediate structural floor is found. They cover only 5% of the area of the continents.
Russian platforms
But what about in Russia? As an independent science in the Russian Federation, the geography of the platform is a rarity. This is important to know.
Platforms of Russia are studied more often in the framework of geology. After all, the country is wide and immensely indecent.
Russia's platforms include: the East European, on which the European part of the country is located, the West Siberian (located under the Ural Mountains) and Siberian (stretches right up to the Lena River and is responsible for the location of the Central Siberian Plateau).
As you can see, the geography of the platform is a series of interconnected earth sciences, not as an external shell, but its internal composition. The structure of the earth, its relief in different areas of the world are different. And you always need to know in which region, on what shield, cavity or platform your native land (city, country) is located. Depending on these characteristics, faults in the earth's crust, earthquakes, volcanoes, fissures, natural disasters and other natural disasters are possible or unacceptable. Besides the fact that such knowledge is a necessity, it is also very interesting to study the structure of the earth!