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Geography is the study of the nature of the physical and human environments. It is often divided broadly into physical geography, which concerns the Earth's physical environment (the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere), and human geography, the study of people and their activities. In both there is emphasis on spatial analysis,the study of location and patterns; on ecological analysis, the interaction between the human and physical environments; and on scale, as in regional and local studies.

Geography encompasses both the physical and social sciences, using and contributing to their methodologies and content. It can be divided into a number of specialist disciplines: for example, geomorphology, the scientific study of the origin and development of landforms; population geography, concerned with the composition, distribution, growth, and migration of populations; and resource geography, the study of the location and exploitation of natural resources.

Geography became a separate academic subject in the late 19th-c, though its origins are much older - the first geographical account of China was produced in the 4th-c BC, and a 200-chapter Chinese geographical encyclopedia was published in 993. The nature of the subject has changed considerably in the past 100 years, away from an essentially descriptive and regional study towards a more quantitative and scientific approach.

Within EncycloZine, information is presented by continents and by nations within those continents.

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