Foundational Concepts: The Biophysical Environment

For the past two weeks, we have thought about the important influence humans have over their environments. Yet our environments also shape us, and play a critical role in influencing the types of social arrangements that are possible (this perspective is in fact integral to human-environment geography as you learned last week). This week introduces some of the major physical and biological factors underlying human-environment relations with the goal of helping us begin to understand how the environment influences also influences us. In other words, this week we’ll begin to think about how it’s not simply possible to draw a one-way arrow from humans to the environment; our environments also shape the possibility space for our actions and act on human society in a variety of ways.

While this week will be easiest for you if you have prior exposure to concepts and material from physical geography or environmental studies, the overarching goal is to develop a shared vocabulary we can draw on in future weeks as we think about more specific sites and cases of human-environmental change and debate. Try to engage with each of the concepts you are exposed to without feeling like you need to master each if this is your first encounter with this type of material. As you think through the physical and biological factors underlying human-environmental relations, also try to think about how we can find the “Environmental” in even the seemingly most human-dominated of spaces: the city (we’ll think about this question through this week’s film).