The Role of Geospatial Technology in Bridging the Gap between Physical and Human Geography

Abstract

The interaction between physical and human geography is obvious as both are two sub disciplines of parent subject Geography. But it has been felt that the gap between the two sub disciplines has been increasing as time passed. It has been tried to seek answer of the question that why the gap between these two sister disciplines has been increasing day by day putting the Tobler's first law of Geography, 'Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things' as the base statement in the growth of specialization also. If we follow the first law of Geography, physical and human geography place nearest of each other than the subject of sociology, political science, economics etc. as they bifurcated from the same discipline. But most probably it's the geographers attitudes due to which the gap between physical and human geography has been increasing. The development of Geospatial Technology opens up new vistas to the geographers for the spatial or geographical analysis of the infinitely complex earth. It helps improve the data acquisition, analysis, interpretation and storing irrespective to physical or human geography. This paper will try to analyse the role of Geospatial Technology in dislocating or bridging the gap between physical and human geography as a holistic science for the people and place.

Full text

2686
ISSN 2286-4822
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EUROPEAN ACADEMIC RESEARCH
Vol. II, Issue 2/ May 2014
Impact Factor: 3.1 (UIF)
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The Role of Geospatial Technology in Bridging the
Gap between Physical and Human Geography
PANKAJ ROY
Research Scholar
Dept. of Geography, North-Eastern Hill University
Shillong, Meghalaya
India
Abstract:
The interaction between physical and human geography is
obvious as both are two sub disciplines of parent subject Geography.
But it has been felt that the gap between the two sub disciplines has
been increasing as time passed. It has been tried to seek answer of the
question that why the gap between these two sister disciplines has been
increasing day by day putting the Tobler’s first law of Geography,
‘Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more
related than distant things’ as the base statement in the growth of
specialization also. If we follow the first law of Geography, physical
and human geography place nearest of each other than the subject of
sociology, political science, economics etc. as they bifurcated from the
same discipline. But most probably it’s the geographers attitudes due
to which the gap between physical and human geography has been
increasing. The development of Geospatial Technology opens up new
vistas to the geographers for the spatial or geographical analysis of the
infinitely complex earth. It helps improve the data acquisition,
analysis, interpretation and storing irrespective to physical or human
geography. This paper will try to analyse the role of Geospatial
Technology in dislocating or bridging the gap between physical and
human geography as a holistic science for the people and place.
Key words: physical geography, human geography, geospatial
technology, gap and role.

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1. Introduction:
Geospatial Technology is one of the emerging areas of modern
sciences. The faster development of Geospatial Technology has
not only expanded the dimension of its own as a subject of study
but in its diversified application areas also. The Geospatial
Technology is the integration of GIS with global positioning
systems (GPS), remote sensing and mobile devices has found
applications in locational or spatial analysis and its interactive
mapping with large storage and future predicting capabilities.
As of early 2006, geospatial technology is listed by the US
Department of Labour as one of the three emerging fields, along
with nanotechnology and biotechnology.
GIS remains no longer for its developer. It has come to
the people working in diversified fields across the globe as
powerful and affordable computer software along with the vast
knowledge of its use. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is
a computer system for capturing, storing, querying, analysing
and displaying geospatial data. Geospatial data are
geographically referenced data that describe both the locations
and the characteristics of spatial features such as water bodies,
vegetation, roads and houses on the earth’s surface. The ability
of a GIS to handle and process geospatial data distinguishes
GIS from other information systems. It also establishes GIS as
a technology important to such occupations as market research
analysts, environmental engineers and urban and regional
planners (Chang, 2010). Then why not the geographers! And
geographers find it making things happen and getting things
done faster than before and in a convenient way and more
precisely. Farther they started to develop application models
with the help of model builder applying logical reasoning.

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2. Where is the Gap between Physical and Human
Geography:
The more concentration on physical sciences by the physical
geographer making the subject more natural science centric
against the inferiority of human geographer as they are lacking
the skill of pure sciences. The Human Geography, another
branch of geography trying to be more humanistic in nature as
it has linked with social sciences. Why the more concentration
on physical sciences by the physical geographer and on social
sciences, on the other hand by human geographers? Is this
tradition bringing the geographers away from the parent
subject? Is Human Geography placed itself more distant from
Physical Geography than the Economics, Political Science,
Sociology, Zoology, and Botany etc.? Alexander Follmann, an
PhD candidate in Human and Economic Geography from
Institute of Geography, University of Cologne (Germany) sadly
expressed his views in an
International School of
Geography organised by the
Geography Department of
North Eastern Hill
University held at Indian
Council for Social Science
Research-North Eastern
Regional Centre (ICSSR-
NERC), Shillong (India) in
2013 that why the
Departments of Physical &
Human Geography are in
different buildings at
Cologne University (Germany)? Why the Physical Geographer
and Human Geographer even don’t meet in the same university
rather than work together? Is it due to the Geographers
attitudes? Why does scholar of geography (Goudie, 1986) talk
Figure 1: The Holistic Approach of Geography

Pankaj Roy- The Role of Geospatial Technology in Bridging the Gap between
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about integration of physical and human geography if is not
there any gap between these two? These are the some questions
which need to be addressed in near future.
3. Geography as a Science of Sophistication:
Geography is a holistic and integrative discipline (Fig.-1) that is
unique in bridging the contemporary natural and social
sciences. Physical and human geography are both at the core of
the discipline. Physical geography is a field based science which
involves significant laboratory work with sophisticated and
specialist laboratory facilities and a high-end technological base
that incorporates computer modelling, remote sensing and
geographical information system (Geospatial Technology). It
underpins our understanding of earth surface environmental
processes and change and the impacts of society upon these
(and vice versa). Human geography also requires extensive field
work, the use of Geographic Information Systems, (Remote
Sensing and Global Positioning System also) and the statistical
analysis of large data sets such as census (and NSS) records.
This means that all geography students are exposed to
significant non-classroom teaching (field, lab and computer
based) throughout their undergraduate (post graduate and
research oriented) courses. Thus, geography teaching at
university is not only half science-based (?)(rather fully
scientific) but it social science aspects are distinct from many
other social science and humanities disciplines , notably in the
computer based teaching requirements of GIS (along with RS
and GPS) and dataset analysis and field work (Geography in
Higher Education).
People have used maps for centuries to represent their
environment. Maps are used to show locations, distances,
directions and the size of areas. Maps also display geographic
relationships, differences, clusters and patterns. Maps are used
for navigation, exploration, illustration and communication in

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the public and private sectors. Nearly every area of scientific
enquiry uses maps in some form or another. Maps, in short, are
an indispensable tool for many aspects of professional and
academic work (Department of Economic and Social Affairs,
2000). Map making is very fundamental and most essential
task for the geographers whether physical or human
geographer it doesn’t matter. But, thing is that no geographer
can prepare a map of fairly large area alone. For that purposes,
primarily he/she has to depend on topographical maps
published by Survey of India though there are some semi-govt.
agencies are also involved in different kinds of map making.
Looking at the rapid changes taking place all over the globe,
the topographical sheets are not enough to provide finer details
seeking by a researcher as these sheets take fifteen to twenty
years for up gradation. The satellite images acquired by remote
sensing technology provide coarser to finer detail in a synoptic
view for a larger area with more repetitively.
Finally, it is this technology that can be used by the
physical and human geographer both for the understanding of
infinite complexity of the mother earth.
4. New Technologies Bring New Opportunities for
Geographers:
In a presidential address at the Centennial Meeting of the
Association of Annals of American Geographers (AAG) held at
Philadelphia in 2004, the past president of AAG and the
Provost of Kansas State University M.D. Nellis rightly stated:
“In my role as a university administrator and as a geographer, I
have not seen before such widespread opportunity and potential
for geography to create a central place for itself in society,
within the university…than it has today”. In many ways,
emerging technologies in geography and related developments
in our discipline have given us new and exciting opportunities
that we must seize and continue to advance (Nellis, 2005, pp. 1-

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10). Richardson and Solis mention in their paper in The
Professional Geographer (2004), GIScience and more
specifically computer based geospatial information systems,
global positioning systems and remote sensing can help
geographers to catalyse research, scholarship and teaching
within geography and to enhance geography’s standing within
the university, without diminishing our traditional methods or
threatening the diversity and richness of our discipline. But we
cannot sit back and wait while other disciplines in areas such
as biology, sociology, landscape ecology, engineering and
business try to position themselves to seize these geography
technologies and approaches as somehow their own.
5. The Need of Third Eye in Geographical Analysis:
The core questions of geography what, where, why, when and
how are remained no more merely what, where, why, when and
how. It involves another important part i. e. social welfare
because in the present world situation everything is viewed
from the beneficiary to community people. It is very important
to address the community people in the time of emergencies
such as cyclone, flood, tsunami, earthquake, volcano etc. but,
doing the estimation going through horizontally in a traditional
method is more time consuming, risky and difficult for the data
gatherers and sometime it is impossible to physically go there.
On the other hand it is not a convenient way to collect data
looking the vertical dissect of the catastrophes moving
horizontally to measure the dimension and extents of these
catastrophic events over a large area. The impact of
phenomenon like the global warming, climate change, see level
rise etc. are so vast that it can’t be assessed moving
horizontally. And hence, there is a need of “third eye” which can
see the horizontal extent of such type of events from top for a
synoptic view or greater coverage. The satellites placed at
different height are observing the entire globe and its

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happenings and hazards for every moment restlessly. So, these
satellites are playing the role of third eye not only for the
catastrophes but for the all kind of activities on earth surface.
It can provide much better facility to gather data and
information for all kind of geographical analysis.
Another advance in remote sensing has been the leap in
scientific development and technology transfer of usable sensor
systems producing reliable, cost-effective data. The newest
developments have occurred in high spatial resolution satellite
data in the visible and near infrared spectrum, radar and hyper
spectral and laser illumination sensors (LIDAR). The new data
forms create the opportunity to ask new spatial questions and
develop new models for understanding our complex world.
Geographers with the perspective of linking the remote sensing
not only to the physical and human geography but other social
sciences also, have been able to “socialising the pixel” and
“pixeling the society”.
In recent times, the remote sensing data or satellite
images or geospatial data has come to market in large
quantities due to their multifaceted use and commercialisation.
These commercial data, some with less than one-metre spatial
resolution, create new opportunities for understanding some
social dimensions of urban areas, detail analysis of natural
hazard impacts or more detail analysis of agricultural areas.
Rural-urban migration is an important social and ecological
process that remote sensing can help to understand by
considering the pattern-process relationships of people and the
environment at source and destination locations (Nellis, 2005).
6. Cyber Geography:
Geography had been remained as traditional subject until for
the mid of the 20th century. Most geographical analysis and
map making were done either by hand or simple computers.
Making maps and their up gradation is a very complex and

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time consuming task which needed skilled hands. After the
development of computer technology, geographers started map
making with the help of this technology as it provided easy
manipulation and up gradation facilities along with better
storing capability. But, the earliest mapping applications
implemented on computers in 1960s did not find wide
application beyond a few government and academic projects
due to its graphical output capabilities. It took until the 1980s
for commercial geographic information systems to reach a level
of capability that would lead to their rapid adoption…
(Department of Economic and
Social Affairs, 2000).
The development of
Geographic Information
System has led a new
dimension to field of
geography. GIS has benefitted
from developments in various
fields of computing. Better
database software allows the
management of vast amounts
of information that is referred
to digital maps. Computer
graphics technique provides the data models for storage,
retrieval and display of geographic objects. Advanced
visualisation techniques allowed to create increasingly
sophisticated representations of our environment. GIS data
display functions go far beyond static two-dimensional displays
and provide animation and three-dimensional modelling
capabilities. Just as the input of textual information is
facilitated by optical character recognition, fast, high-resolution
scanning and sophisticated software speed up map data
conversion that previously relied exclusively on manual
digitisation or tracing... The most important recent
developments have been in navigation and remote sensing. The

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Global Positioning System (GPS) has revolutionised the field
data collection in area ranging from surveying to environmental
monitoring and transportation management. A new generation
of commercial, high resolution satellites promise
images/pictures of any part of the earth’s surface with enough
detail to support numerous mapping applications... Similar
advances are occurring in the areas of geographic data
dissemination.
All major GIS vendors now provide the tools to make
geographical databases accessible via the Internet on the world
web wide. Government agencies at all levels are embracing this
technology to provide access to vast amount of spatial
information to the public cheaply and quickly (Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, 2000). The World Wide Web has
become an extremely efficient channel for transferring data
across the Internet because of its visual capabilities and the
relatively advanced hypermedia and on-line geographical
information tools currently being developed. Subsequently,
there has been a growth in web-based GIS portals and services.
One of the growing paradigms associated with online access to
geographical information is public participatory GIS (W
Cartwright, 2004). The Internet is likely to replace the printed
maps and digital media as the most important means of data
distribution. Internet mapping programs are one indication
that the tools to utilise digital spatial information are
constantly becoming cheaper and easier to use. Digital mapping
is also becoming more closely integrated in standard computer
applications such as spreadsheet, graphics and business

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management software (Department of Economic and Social
Affairs, 2000). As a whole the outlook of Geography as a
discipline is going to look like and umbrella where GIS, RS and
GPS, and Geospatial technology as an integration of these all
playing the role of the roof and the cybersphere or internet
facility as the stick are at hand of common men (Fig-2).
7. Opportunities/Challenges Ahead:
All though it has a multidisciplinary utility yet, above all it’s a
geographical tool. Geographers are fortunate to having received
such a tool like GIS and, RS and GPS as input to it from the
modern technological development. When the geographers are
fighting among themselves as human and physical geographer
the advantages of this technology is taking by almost all
discipline somehow else. So it’s the right time to come forward
by physical and human geographer, and geographer as a whole
to best use the technology before being used in geographic
analysis by non-geographers. It will be a welcome step by the
geographers to enrich the subject for their own as well as for
the society through meaningful research works. Otherwise non-
geographers will overcome geography and the geographers will
have to lose many.
Figure 2: Balancing the Physical and Human Geography

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Table 1: Challenges/Opportunities for geographers to best utilising
the Geospatial Technology [modified from (Gregory, 2004)]
Value of Geographers
Danger
Challenges/Opportunities
To physical geographer
To human geographer
In education
In and by other
discipline
To managers and
decision makers
To the general public
Overall
Danger of loss to
environmental sciences
or earth system analysis
Separation so that other
social science discipline
‘step in’
Danger of reduced role
and competition from
other subjects
Danger of perception as
eclectic discipline
Danger that other
disciplines investigate
problems that are
physical geography in
nature
Physical geography not
understood
Physical & human
geography is perceived
as independent of other
discipline
Emphasise holistic approach to
the physical environment.
Develop ways in which physical
and human geography interact.
Emphasise relevance of physical
geography and the contributions
made.
Demonstrate singularity of
contributions by physical
geographers in multidisciplinary
teams.
Communicate ways in which
physical geography research
provides strategic or applied
results.
Use every opportunity to explain
a contemporary physical
geography approach.
Physical geography is an
integral part of geography but
because of its role in
multidisciplinary teams can be a
significant element in other
environmental sciences
structures.
REFERENCES:
Cartwright, S. M. 2004. "Geographical Visualisation: Past,
present and future development." Journal of Spatial
Science, 49(1).
Chang, K.-t. 2010. Introduction to Geographic Information
Systems (4th ed.). New York: Tata McGraw-Hill.
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, S. D. 2000.

Pankaj Roy- The Role of Geospatial Technology in Bridging the Gap between
Physical and Human Geography
EUROPEAN ACADEMIC RESEARCH - Vol. II, Issue 2 / May 2014
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Handbook on Geographic Information Systems and
Digital Mapping. New York: United Nations.
Geography in Higher Education. (n.d.). Royal Geographical
Society with IBG.
Goudie, A. S. 1986. "The integration of human and physical
geography." Transaction of Institute of British
Geographers 11.
Gregory, K. J. 2004. "Valuing Physical Geography." Geography
89(1).
Nellis, M. D. 2005. "Presidential Address: Geospatial
Information Technology, Rural Resource Development
and Future Geographies." Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 95(1).