Republic of the Philippines

Bicol University
College of Education
Daraga, Albay

THE MEANING OF “PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY”

Branches of Geography

The discipline of geography is divided into two major branches: 1) physical geography and 2) cultural or
human geography.

What Physical Geography Encompasses

Physical geography encompasses the geographic tradition known as the Earth Sciences Tradition. Physical
geographers look at the landscapes, surface processes, and climate of the earth -- all of the activity found
in the four spheres (the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere) of our planet.

Physical geography consists of many diverse elements. These include: the study of the earth's interaction
with the sun, seasons, the composition of the atmosphere, atmospheric pressure and wind, storms and
climatic disturbances, climate zones, microclimates, hydrologic cycle, soils, rivers and streams, flora and
fauna, weathering, erosion, natural hazards, deserts, glaciers and ice sheets, coastal terrain, ecosystems,
and so very much more.

Knowing about the physical geography of the planet is important for every serious student of the planet
because the natural processes of the earth (which is what the study of physical geography encompasses)
affect the distribution of resources, the conditions of human settlement, and have resulted in a plethora of
varied impacts to human populations throughout the millennia. Since the earth is the only home to
humans, by studying our planet, we humans and residents of the planet earth can be better informed to
help take care of our only home.

Ref: https://www.thoughtco.com/physical-geography-overview-1435345
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Bicol University
College of Education
Daraga, Albay
THE EARTH AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM
THE EARTH
The Earth is our planet. It is round and it
looks blue from space.
The Earth has everything that living beings
need: air, water, and heat and
light from the Sun. On our planet there is
water, land and air.
· Some animals and plants live in water.
· Many animals, plants and human beings
live on land.
· Some animals, like birds, can fly thanks to
the air.
PARTS OF THE EARTH
We can name three parts of the Earth:
· The Atmosphere: the atmosphere is the air that
we breathe. It
is the gaseous part of the Earth. The atmosphere
is composed of nitrogen,
oxygen and other gases. Living beings need
oxygen to breathe and live.
The Hydrosphere: the hydrosphere refers to all
of the water on our planet,
it is the liquid part of the earth. Most water
comes from oceans and seas
and the rest is in lakes and rivers.
· The Geosphere: the geosphere is the solid part
of the earth that is
composed of rocks and metals. In the geosphere
there are three layers: the
Earth’s crust, mantle and nucleus.
· The Earth is our planet and there is water, land
and air.
· The Earth has three parts: Atmosphere
(composed of air), Hydrosphere
(composed of water) and Geosphere (composed
of rocks).
MOVEMENTS OF THE EARTH
There are two important movements that affect
The Earth.
· Rotation: the Earth moves around an imaginary
line that it is called an axis. The Earth takes 24
hours a day to complete one rotation.
This movement causes day and night. In the
part of the Earth facing the Sun it is day-time
and the other side, it is night-time.
· Revolution: the Earth also moves around the
Sun, this movement is called revolution. The
Earth takes 365 days, or a year, to make one
revolution.
· There are two movements of the Earth:
Rotation and Revolution.
· Rotation: the Earth moves around its own axis.
It takes 24 hours.
· Revolution: the Earth moves around the Sun. It
takes 365 days.
THE EARTH: IMPORTANT FACTS
● The sun is the Earth’s source of light
and heat.
● The Earth revolves around the Sun.
One revolution takes 365 ¼ days, or
one year
● The North Pole always points the same
way as the Earth revolves around the
Sun.
● The Earth’s revolution around the sun
causes the seasons.
● The Earth rotates; it takes 24 hours to
complete a turn.
● Rotation produces the succession of day
and night, as well as the time difference
in different parts of the world.
DAY AND NIGHT
At any time half of the Earth
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faces the Sun and the other half

SEASONS OF THE YEAR
faces away from the Sun.
The revolution of the Earth causes us to have
In the part that faces the Sun
four seasons. They are:
it’s day and in the part that faces
SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN AND WINTER.
away from the Sun, it’s night.
SPRING
From the 21st of March to the 21st of June. In
Spring, the weather is
SEASONS
warm and sunny.
When the North Pole tilts towards the
SUMMER
Sun, it is summer in the Northern
From the 21st of June to the 23rd of September.
Hemisphere and winter in the Southern
In Summer, it is hot
Hemisphere.
and sunny.
When the North Pole tilts away from
AUTUMN
the Sun, it is winter in the Northern
From the 23rd of September to the 22nd of
Hemisphere and summer in the Southern
December. It is often rainy
Hemisphere
and windy.
· The sun is the Earth’s source of heat and light. WINTER
· The Earth revolves around the Sun. One From the 22nd of December to the 21st of
revolution takes about 365 days March. It is cold and
and causes the seasons. sometimes snowy.
· The Earth rotates around its own axis and takes
24 hours to complete a
turn. It causes day and night.

THE SOLAR SYSTEM

THE BIRTH OF THE SUN

A NEW DAY BEGINS

It was five billion years ago. A giant cloud of matter in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, condensed under
its gravity, exploding in nuclear fusion.

This fusion released what we call sunshine. Very, very, very hot sunshine. And the newly formed star was
our Sun. It drew in most of the surrounding matter, but some escaped. And some of this material clumped
together, settling into a protoplanetary orbit.

Tasty morsels of gas and rock

Those chemically rich leftovers orbiting our young Sun were stewing with all the ingredients to form the
planets in our Solar System.
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Bicol University
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The intense heat of the young Sun drove away most of the lighter hydrogen and helium elements — 99%
of the leftovers — the furthest. These eventually condensed to form the gassy outer giants — Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The tiny bit of heavier elements that remained made up the rockier
Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

Through a combination of gentle collisions and gravity these atoms and molecules began attracting other
like-sized material. Over millions of years, they gradually shaped themselves into solid planetesimals, and
later protoplanets with their own unique orbits.

Astronomers call all this smashing and joining together accretion. After 10 to 100 million years of this
banging, eight spherical, stable planets remained. Our Solar System spun into place.

THE LIFECYCLE OF OUR SUN

Stellar Nursery

Our Sun was born within a dense nebula 4.6 billion years ago. Gas and
dust contracted into a giant cloud, then floated in one of the spiral arms of
the Milky Way.

Heating Up

As our Sun aged, it grew larger, brighter, and hotter — eventually causing
nuclear fusion in the protons at the centers of its atoms. As they exploded,
a tiny bit of matter transformed into a great deal of energy, bursting into
sunshine. The Sun was born.

Shining Bright

The Sun is currently stable, about halfway through its lifecycle. It's
estimated it will live for about another five billion years before consuming
all the hydrogen in its core and transforming into a red giant.

Gradually Increasing

Our Sun is continually growing. About three billion years from now, our
Sun will be 40% larger than its current state and all life on Earth will
probably cease to exist.

Expansion

The greater a star's mass, the shorter its lifecycle. High-mass stars live for
one million to tens of millions of years. Low-mass stars, like our Sun, live
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Daraga, Albay

for tens of millions to trillions of years. When the Sun is about nine billion years old, it will begin to
expand rapidly.

Red Giant
Red giants are stars that have exhausted the supply of hydrogen in their
cores. Their outer envelope is lower in temperature, giving them a reddish-
orange hue.

Planetary Nebula

As the red giant burns out, it will collapse into a planetary nebula. The
outer layers of gas are ejected and the star's core contracts into a white
dwarf.

White Dwarf

As the planetary nebula collapses further, the star becomes a white dwarf.
Then finally, with all its energy exhausted, it — theoretically — expires into
a black dwarf. The possibility of the black dwarf stage has not yet been
proven, because not enough time has passed since the Big Bang to create
one.

HOW DID THE PLANETS FORM?

The cosmic creation of our Solar System

New elements, combined with the just-right Goldilocks Conditions came together and formed our Solar
System.

THE ROCK WE CALL HOME

WHAT DID THE YOUNG EARTH LOOK LIKE

Though Earth was neatly orbiting the Sun as a rocky mass four and a half billion years ago, no organism
could survive there. Radiation from the recent supernova kept the planet extremely hot, its surface
molten, and oxygen was non-existent. Plus, incredibly massive meteorites and asteroids frequently
slammed onto the surface — creating even more heat.

The Earth got so hot, it began melting. Heavier material sank to the bottom, lighter stuff rose to the top.
Some elements evaporated. This transformation created the Earth's layered core and mantle, crust, and
atmosphere.
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Daraga, Albay

Even today the Earth undergoes constant change. Shifting, sliding, and colliding tectonic plates "surf" atop
its semi-molten mantle. This relentless drifting speeds along at the rate of fingernail growth, yet causes
mountains to rise, volcanoes to erupt, and earthquakes to strike.

FINDING EARTH

Letting the Sun take center stage

It took billions of years for the Earth to form and settle into orbit around the Sun. But how do we know
that? What makes it so? These questions burned and plagued astronomers for millennia.

To study the movements of heavens back then, you would look up into the sky. You would see the Sun
and stars revolve around the very spot where you were standing, the Earth — just as Ptolemy did some
1,900 years ago. This geocentric view, backed by the very powerful religions at the time, endured for more
than 1,400 years until it was toppled by Copernicus and confirmed by Galileo. Through their observational
evidence, and by using the newly invented telescope, they produced data and logic supporting a Sun-
centered, heliocentric model of the Solar System.

Through these revolutionary findings, geocentrism began to crumble. In the later 1600s, Newton
developed his three basic laws of motion and the theory of universal gravity by combining physics,
mathematics, and astronomy. These ideas laid the foundation for our current understanding of the Earth
and the cosmos, and helped astronomer Edwin Hubble construct the modern-day Big Bang theory.

© Bettmann/CORBIS

The geocentric view of the cosmos held by

Aristotle and Ptolemy persisted for more than
1,400 years.

ASTRONOMERS SEE THE LIGHT

© The Big History Project

 Republic of the Philippines
Bicol University
College of Education
Daraga, Albay

Light travels fast. In one second it races around the Earth seven times. Then in a blink of an eye, light
reaches the Moon.

Going out to the stars, Astronomers know that by studying Cepheid variables, the fluctuation in
brightness of certain stars, we can calculate the star's distance from Earth. The longer the period of
fluctuation, the brighter the star. So even though a star might appear extremely dim, if it had a long
period it must actually be extremely large. The star appeared dim only because it was extremely far away.
By calculating how bright it appeared from Earth and comparing this to its intrinsic brightness,
Astronomers could estimate how much of the star's light had been lost while reaching Earth, and how far
away the star actually was.

Touching the edge of the Universe

In the scale of the Universe, light would take eight minutes to reach the Sun. And four years to reach
Proxima Centauri, the next nearest star. But could light ever cross the entire Universe? Or might it still
have a long way to go? Nobody knows for sure.
    

THE BIOSPHERE

OUT WITH THE BAD, IN WITH THE GOOD

Different elements joining, colliding, breaking apart, and joining again is a very ferocious stage in the life
of any planet. Even after the Earth formed, when the atmosphere began to stabilize, it was under siege.
Early microbes, in their struggle for life, clashed with and consumed hydrogen gas. Hundreds of millions
of years passed. These microbes evolved into prokaryotes and adapted further, finding energy in sunlight.
Then, in a process called photosynthesis, they flooded the atmosphere with oxygen.

The rise of oxygen formed a protective layer around the Earth and also helped cool the Earth, eventually
encasing the planet with ice in a series of "Snowball Earths" 2.4 to 2.2 billion years ago. Some life forms
survived, some proliferated, pushing oxygen levels higher. This enabled a greater diversity of life.

Naming the biosphere

Combining "bio," meaning life, and "sphere," referencing the Earth's rounded surface, English-Austrian
Geologist Eduard Suess coins the term that expressed the portion of the Earth that supports life.

Suess invented the word because he felt it was important to try to understand life as a whole rather than
singling out particular organisms. He believed "biosphere" combines an understanding of the distinct
layers that make up the Earth, its atmosphere, and an awareness of all life on our planet and relationships
surrounding us.

Meet the young Earth

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As knowledge of life on Earth evolves, thinking about it as a biosphere helps explain the entire intertwined
network of life. Here's an early look at how the Earth warmed, cooled, and built its biosphere over time.

GOLDILOCKS CONDITIONS:

Not too hot... Not too cold... Where in our Solar System are the conditions just right to support life?

SUN JUPITER

Even the coolest sunspots on the surface of the
Sun are 5,500 °C. So, yes, way too hot.
MERCURY
With no real atmosphere to retain heat, the
temperature is a freezing -180 °C at night to a
scorching oven of 430 °C during the day.
VENUS
Because of a dense atmosphere (over 96%
carbon dioxide) it's a runaway greenhouse
effect. At 480 °C, actually makes it the hottest
planet in the Solar System.
EARTH
Our planet contains just the right amount of
energy and water to support a diverse variety of
life.
MARS
Even though Mars reaches a temperate 20 °C at
noon at the equator in summer, it's usually a
frozen, arid world. The poles are way too cold
to support humans — around -153 °C.
This is a "gas giant" — nothing more than a
giant ball of hydrogen, helium, and other gases
with little solid surface, with an average
temperature of -148 °C.
SATURN
Saturn is too cold and gassy. Life-supporting
planets usually posses a heavy-metal core
surrounded by a rocky mantle.
URANUS
The surface of Uranus is mostly composed of
ices: methane, water, and ammonia. This -216
°C hydrogen and helium atmosphere isn't
hospitable.
NEPTUNE
The only energy is lightning, ultraviolet light,
and charged particles. Although it's the kind of
environment in which scientists believe life
began, it's not viable today.
PLUTO
Not only does liquid freeze solid on this dwarf
planet, but even gases, like methane, will
harden when Pluto is at its most distant, 5.9
billion kilometers from the Sun.

    

TECTONIC PLATES

THE MASSIVE SUPERCONTINENT BREAKS

© The Big History Project

 Republic of the Philippines
Bicol University
College of Education
Daraga, Albay

Even as the Universe drifts, the Earth's surface is in continual motion — moving a little more than two
centimeters per year, floating on a semi-molten bed of lava.

Along the edges where the continental and oceanic crust plates meet, all sorts of crazy things happen.
These massive plates scrape past each other sideways. They dive under each other. And in places, they get
snagged, causing tremendous pressures to build. When this tension suddenly releases things happen
much, much faster than two centimeters per year.

But how do we know that the Earth's surface is moving? Some of the early scholars studying the first
world maps began to notice some very odd things — for instance, that West Africa seems to fit nicely into
Brazil.

In the early 20th century, a German meteorologist named Alfred Wegener began assembling evidence
suggesting that the continents were once connected. He found very similar geological strata in West
Africa and in Brazil. And during World War I, he wrote a book arguing that at one time all the continents
on Earth had been united in a single supercontinent that he called Pangaea.

Why we're all Lava Surfers

Journey with our Big Historian team on assignment in Iceland, a land of fire and ice, as they walk upon the
spot the North American and Eurasian plates collide.    

PROVING CONTINENTAL DRIFT

A CASE FOR PANGAEA

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Courtesy of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research

While other scientists put forth the theory that the Earth's landmasses had once been connected by land
bridges that had since sunk into the ocean, and had always been located where they are today, a few
renegade scientists postulated that the Earth once contained one huge supercontinent. In 1858, Austrian
geologist Eduard Suess postulated a supercontinent called Gondwanaland, and American astronomer
William Henry Pickering suggested in 1907 that the continents broke up when the Moon was separated
from the Earth.

These theories found near-hostile scorn in the scientific community. So did a theory of a meteorologist
named Alfred Wegener. He regarded the Earth as fundamentally dynamic. He believed the great
continent, eventually named Pangaea, had broken apart due to continental drifting.

TOGETHER, DECADES APART, THEY PROVED IT

Courtesy of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar

and Marine Research

Alfred Wegener (1880 — 1930)

Alfred Wegener was not the first to present continental drifting, but he was the first to put together
extensive evidence from several different scientific approaches. Submitting fossil evidence of tropical life
on Arctic islands to matching geographical features and formations on separate continents, he argued
against transcontinental land bridge claims. He also disputed the theory that mountains formed like
wrinkles on the skin of a drying apple, proposing instead that they were created by continents drifting.

But he was unable to explain what force could be immense enough to cause continents to plow through
the Earth's crust. Wegener would eventually perish during a ski journey on the Greenland ice cap
conducting his scientific research.

Courtesy of Princeton University Archives

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Harry Hess (1906 — 1969)

During World War II, Harry Hess was placed in command of an attack transport ship in the Pacific Ocean.
His ship was using a new sonar technology that emitted underwater sound waves to detect enemy
submarines. But, driven by his own scientific curiosity even during wartime, he kept the sonar turned on to
read the topography of the ocean bottom.

Using his own data along with newer research from the Atlantic, Hess postulated that the ocean floors
were growing through the process he called seafloor spreading. Further research along the Mid-Atlantic
Rift in the 1960s confirmed Hess's theory — it was discovered that rocks closest to the rift are newer than
those farther away. The Earth's crust was now shown to be growing and spreading apart along the rift.

Submitted by:
Josette O. Bonador
BSED 1- Social Studies

Submitted to:
Mrs. Maribel M. Naz
Geography 2 Professor