The book simplifies the essential ingredients of an explicitly scientific human geography to the point at which they can be readily understood by the beginning student. It reflects, therefore, the conceptual rather than the technical advances of the past ten to fifteen years; the revolution in geography has, after all, been as much one of concept as it has been one of quantitative technique. Since these conceptual advances have included generality in description, ...
The careful reader will detect a tendency to group the separate elements of physical geography into features or categories that can be related to climatic patterns. This purely arbitrary organization was considered advisable because the amount of quantitative data available on climatic differences over the earth surface is much greater than the amount available for the other elements. Several other approaches, however, could have been used. This textbook has been ...