What Geosciences Are? Essay Example

Geoscience, or Earth science, is the study of solid Earth and how it interacts with our atmosphere, oceans and biosphere. It is the most comprehensive scientific study, from the core of the Earth, to the atmosphere surrounding it. Geoscientists apply knowledge gained in areas such as chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics and chronology. By combining all of these disciplines, they are able to build a solid foundation for an understanding of how the Earths systems work, and also how it has evolved to its current state. Through this, we are able to understand how the almighty forces, which acted millions of years ago, worked to create the spectacular landscape we see today. In some sense, geoscience is the history of the Earth. Since geoscience is such an all-encompassing topic, there are many different fields of study.

Geography, or specifically physical geography, is a geoscience discipline which studies soil, hydrology, meteorology, climatology, etc. This is a field of geoscience that is on the front line, helping tackle some of the major challenges the world faces today. These issues include climate change, how to supply the developing world with clean water, how to continue using the Earths natural resources while mitigating some of the negative effects, and how we can better predict natural disasters.

Humans are the predominant cause of change to the Earth today. While human geography is a social science, it looks at the interactions between humans and their environments. Since the industrial revolution, humans have been responsible for warming the planet, pollution, the exploitation of natural resources, and urbanization of natural areas among many other things. It only makes sense that the species responsible for all of that, also be held responsible in learning ways to mitigate the effects of our inhabitance.