Tour of a Map-Reader's Brain, Part 2: Conditions and Comparisons

Each location on earth has its own mix of climate, minerals, land cover, politics, religion, and other features. Geographic inquiry starts (but does not end) with careful observation of these conditions, because geographers assume that they can influence what happens in that place. Future articles in this series will look at different modes of spatial reasoning that geographers use to analyze these influences. This article is about the basic process of geographic observation.