Early history and etymology , reconstituted from
Ptolemy's
Geography () in the 15th century The term "technical geography" is a combination of the words "
technical", from the Greek
τεχνικός (tekhnikós, translated as artistic, skillful, professional), meaning relating to a particular subject or activity and involving practical skills, and "
geography", from the Greek
γεωγραφία (geographia, a combination of Greek words 'Geo', the Earth, and 'Graphien', to describe. Literally "earth description"), a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Technical geography as a distinct term in the English language within the discipline of geography dates back at least as far as 1739 to ''Geography Reform'd'', an anonymous book published by English printer
Edward Cave at
St John's Gate, Clerkenwell.
Eratosthenes has been called the "founder of mathematical geography", and his activities are described as "little different from what we expect of a technical geographer." Within the "Ptolemaic tradition" of geography started by
Ptolemy, scholars have identified distinct "technical elements" in "Ptolemaic cartographic theory" such as map projection, lines of latitude and longitude, coordinates, grids, scales, and the theory of astronomically defined climates.
Islamic geographers later adopted these technical elements when Ptolmey's book,
Geographia, was translated into Arabic in the ninth century, often mixing them with elements of traditional Islamic cartography.
19th century By the late 1800s, the term "technical geography" was in use to some capacity in American public education and academia. For example, an article in the 1889 edition of the journal
School and Home Education stated that "we never hear teachers questioning whether technical geography shall be taught in the schools" and defined the term "technical" to mean "especially appropriate to any art or science." An 1890 publication advertised that the 1891
International Geographical Congress at Berne would have five divisions in its program, with the first being technical geography listing topics like mathematical geography,
geodesy, and cartography as examples of content within this division.
20th century Early 20th century passage between Wisconsin and Michigan in the 1930s resulted in a boundary defined without technical geography. In 1908, geography professor
George D. Hubbard included technical geography alongside
regional geography,
physical geography, and general research as courses that should be taught in U.S. university geography departments. Hubbard specifies that technical geography refers to topics such as "mathematical or astronomical geography", as well as cartography. This publication proposed how a field of scientific geography could be organized, and specified that "Phytogeography", "Zoogeography", and "Anthropogeography" could be areas where scientific principles could be applied.
Quantitative revolution Technical geography differentiated more clearly during the quantitative revolution in the 1950s and 1960s. Before this, the techniques and methods of handling
spatial information were primarily focused on supporting human or physical geography, rather than a subject of study itself.
World War II, which saw the extensive use of cartography and aerial photography, revolutionized these techniques and brought a new focus on their benefits. In the years before the quantitative revolution, geography was generally fragmented and focused on descriptive approaches, and many United States universities were eliminating geography departments around the country. To address this, geographers began to debate the merits of more scientific, methods-based approaches to the discipline and to advocate for the benefits these methods had for other technical courses. Some, such as the preeminent cartographer
George Jenks, went as far as to suggest that cartography should be a separate academic discipline from geography entirely, even if only at a few academic institutions. This approach was shunned by more traditional geographers, who viewed it as a deviation from how geographers had always viewed and interacted with maps. While the best approach to the technical aspect of geography was heavily debated among geographers, geography departments at universities across the United States began to teach a more scientific approach to geography.
Laws of geography , originator of
Tobler's first and
second law of geography The quantitative revolution is primarily credited with shifting descriptive, or
idiographic, geography to an empirical law-making, or
nomothetic, geography. The first of these laws was proposed by
Waldo Tobler in a 1970 paper, and more have been proposed since. Some geographers argue against the idea that laws in geography are necessary or even valid. These criticisms have been addressed by Tobler and others. French geographer Ionel Haidu noted Tobler's first law of geography, and the associated concept of spatial autocorrelation, as central concepts to technical geography. These terms often compete and overlap with each other and often originate in separate countries, such as geographic information science in the United States, geomatics in France, and geoinformatics in Sweden. Three major technologies, remote sensing (RS), Geographic information systems (GIS), and the global positioning system (GPS) are highlighted as examples of technologies characterizing technical geography.
James W. Bagley's 1941 textbook titled
Aerophotography and Aerosurverying stated the following in the first line of its preface: During the
Cold War, advancements in photography, aircraft (such as the
Lockheed U-2 and
Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird), and rockets only increased the effectiveness of remote sensing techniques. As the technology became available to the general public, geographers were soon overwhelmed with large volumes of satellite and aerial images. New techniques were required to store, process, analyze, and use this new data source, birthing remote sensing scientists.
Computer cartography and GIS Interface Screenshot with Map of Median Income in Houston (2010) Coinciding with the quantitative revolution was the emergence of early computers. The interdisciplinary nature of geography compels geographers to consider developments in other fields, and they tend to observe and adapt technological innovations from other disciplines rather than develop unique technologies for geographic studies. More than a decade after the first computers were developed,
Waldo Tobler published the first paper detailing the use of computers in the map-making process titled "Automation and Cartography" in 1959. While novel in terms of application, the process detailed by Tobler did not allow for storing or analyzing of geographic data. As computer technology progressed and better hardware became available, geographers rapidly adopted the technology to create maps. These tools revolutionized the discipline of geography by contributing to the
positivist scientific approaches to the discipline during the quantitative revolution. In the 1985 book
Technological Transition in Cartography,
Mark Monmonier speculated that computer cartography facilitated by GIS would largely replace traditional pen and paper cartography. {{Blockquote With the emergence of GIS, researchers rapidly began exploring methods to apply the technology to various geographic problems. In academia, students saw GIS as a way to be more employable after graduation, and in response universities began rapidly expanding course offerings, growing from fewer than 10 universities in the U.S. and Canada with a GIS class in the early 1980s, to over 2000 by the early 1990s. GIS is considered one of the primary technologies employed by technical geographers. This facilitated a level of rapid acquisition of spatial coordinates that previously would have been expensive. Geographers began studying methods and applications for this data. In subsequent years, other countries have launched satellite constellations enabling
Satellite navigation, including Russia's
GLONASS, China's
BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, and the European Union's
Galileo navigation satellite system.
New subdisciplines During the quantitative revolution, several new subdisciplines arose from within the field of technical geography. These include
quantitative geography,
geomatics,
geoinformatics, and
geographic information science. This part of technical geography focuses on spatial statistics and visualizing spatial information, emphasizing quantitative data and the scientific method.
Geomatics In 1960,
Bernard Dubuisson coined the term "géomatique" in French. English-speaking Canadians Pierre Gagnon and David Coleman translated the term as "geomatics", which was popularized in Canada through the 1980s and early 1990s. In Canada, an effort was made to replace and absorb the term geodesy with geomatics, but this attempt was not successful. Globally, the term "geodesy" is generally considered "immutable". This term has been described as being outside the branch of geography entirely and instead placed fully under the discipline of computer science. In 1995, the
University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) was established in the United States to support the field of GIScience, such as the creation of a "model curricula" by geographer
Duane Marble to help educators teach GIScience. Many geographers, including Michael Goodchild, continue to advance the use of the term today. In Cave's discussion of technical geography in
Geography Reformed (1749),
critical geography was considered an important part of correcting errors in maps and other products to improve models of the world. These frameworks were advanced mostly by human geographers, leading to an observed gap between human and physical geographers. In response to the ideas and philosophies advanced during the quantitative revolution, particularly positivism and the emphasis on quantitative methods, the term critical geography was applied to ideological and theoretical criticisms of the methods and ideas of technical geographers. Other geographers, such as
Yi-Fu Tuan, criticized the quantitative geography for moving away from the abstract, unquantifiable aspects of
place that are essential to the understanding of geography. In the history of geography since the quantitative revolution, theorists from critical geography are often viewed as in confrontation with those of technical and quantitative geography. Some, such as
Peter Gould, argued that these criticisms were largely due to the difficulty in learning the emerging novel technologies. Some geographers, including
Stewart Fotheringham, argue that many of the early criticisms of quantitative methods have been addressed with advances in technology, and persist due to ignorance of quantitative geography. In a 2016 paper within this journal,
Ionel Haidu stated: After listening to critiques from critical human geographers, GIScientists began to "straddle the fence" and incorporate social and
feminist theory, and use
qualitative methods such as
public participation GIS. In response to this, in 2006, the UCGIS published
Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge (GISTBoK), building on the "Model curricula" of the mid 90s. The GISTBoK is designed to inform curriculum teaching GIS and other geospatial technologies. The benefit of this wording is that it is consistent with the other two branches and clearly places the discipline within geography. The categorization of technical geography in the EOLSS as a branch is expanded upon by Ionel Haidu in his 2016 paper "What is technical geography" as being a consequence of cartography shifting from simply producing maps to producing spatial information, influenced by a culmination of
information theory and technology like the
World Wide Web. ==Sub-branches==