ABSTRACT
Geography is fundamentally a spatial discipline. Geographers rely on location, direction, and distance as the conceptual building blocks to analyze interactions that occur in or on the space of the earth. Humans seem to possess a spatial concern for where something is located, how to get there, and how long it will take. Geographers perceive human affairs differently from psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and economists. A haze covered an area one-third the size of the continental United States; a single day’s exposure equaled smoking forty cigarettes. In the 1940s, Florida had not yet become the crowded and bustling state that it is today. Ecological courses in academia exploring the human-earth relationship are not new; they were being taught in departments of geology in American universities more than a hundred years ago. William Morris Davis, who taught in the geology department at Harvard around 1900, is credited with starting modern geography in America.
