GEOGRAPHICAL SYSTEMS AND ECONOMIC-GEOGRAPHICAL SYSTEMS

A group of physical geographers of the Institute of Geography in Moscow, the principal academic research institution in geography, published an article in 1974 seeking to define and categorize terms and concepts now being used in Soviet geography. The article said the term geosystem (geographical system) applied equally to physical-geographical and socio-economic entities, and the term “geographical environment”, in actual research practice, referred not only to the physical setting of human activities, but also to engineering elements and social conditions. The present writer contends that such a definition of the geographical environment, incorporating both natural and social elements, smacks of a unified geography, and that geosystems, as originally defined, refer only to natural terrestrial systems, excluding man.