Latin America covers part of North America, South America, and the West Indies. It stretches from lifeless Atacama desert to rugged highlands and Alpine glaciers of the Andes mountains. The fertile plains of the Pampas are one of the world's richest agricultural regions. The Amazon Basin is the largest and wettest lowland in the world. Culturally, Latin America is a great mixture of European, indigenous and African cultures.

In this course, we will examine the peoples and places of Latin America from a geographical perspective. We will explore the geographical dimensions of economic, cultural, political, and physical forces influencing Latin America as a region. We will have a mixture of thematic and regional approaches to study the concepts and look into various physical and historical processes that have shaped dynamic and diverse cultural landscapes. We will study contemporary environmental and developmental issues, trends in migration, agricultural change, and globalization to understand Latin America's position in the global economy.

COURSE LEVEL LEARNING OUTCOMES

Define Latin America as a world region.
Identify the main physical and cultural features and characteristics of Latin America.
Interpret maps, graphs, and visuals as tools for analyzing the distribution patterns of phenomena and understanding their importance in the context of Latin America.
Explain the impacts of European colonialism in Latin America.
Evaluate how changing cultural, social, political, and economic characteristics of Latin American countries influence internal strife and external intervention.
Explain the complexities that contributed to the social inequality, political conflict, and environmental concerns prevalent in some Latin American countries.
Discuss the changing political and economic relationships between the United States and countries in Latin America.

Addresses how humans interact with the environment and how human systems are geographically distributed over space.

Table of contents:

1. Thinking Geographically
2. Geographic Tools & Methods
3. Population, Migration, & Spatial Demography
4. Interpreting Place & Cultural Landscape
5. Nature & Society
6. Agricultural & Food Systems
7. Economy & Development
8. Power, Politics, & Place
9. Geography of Religion
10. Geography of Language
11. Urban & Suburban Spaces

Introduction to Human Geography by Finlayson provides students with an accessible and concise introduction to the study of Human Geography. This text follows the approach of the successful open textbook World Regional Geography in offering students an engaging approach to geography informed by best practices in geography education. Introduction to Human Geography covers the key concepts and topics students need to succeed, providing commentary and reflection to help students deepen their understanding.

Human geography emphasizes the importance of geography as a field of inquiry and introduces students to the concept of spatial organization. Knowing the location of places, people, and events is a gateway to understanding complex environmental relationships and interconnections among places and across landscapes.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Introduction to Human Geography
Chapter 2: Population and Migration
Chapter 3: Cultural Patterns and Processes
Chapter 4: Political Borders, Boundaries, and Governments
Chapter 5: Sustainable Development
Chapter 6: Food, Water, and Agriculture
Chapter 7: Rural and Urban Landscapes
Chapter 8: Global Environmental Issues
Chapter 9: Living with Disasters

Geography is a diverse discipline that has some sort of connection to most every other academic discipline. This connection is the spatial perspective, which essentially means if a phenomenon can be mapped, it has some kind of relationship to geography. Studying the entire world is a fascinating subject, and geographical knowledge is fundamental to a competent understanding of our world. In this chapter, you will learn what geography is as well as some of the fundamental concepts that underpin the discipline. These fundamental terms and concepts will be interwoven throughout the text, so a sound understanding of these topics is critical as you delve deeper into the chapters that follow.

This book is about how to read, use, and create maps. Our exploration of maps will be informed by a contextual understanding of how maps reflect the relationship between society and technology, and how mapping is an essential form of scientific and artistic inquiry. We will also explore how mapping is used to address a variety of societal issues, such as land use planning and political gerrymandering. You will gain insight into the technical underpinnings of mapping as a science approach, complement on-going interest and activities, or provide an applied focus for research or policy.

The intent of this textbook is to update and build upon the body of knowledge that exists within the geographic discipline. Unless otherwise noted within each chapter of the textbook, this body of work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

In essay format, this textbook considers examples of various sub-categories of Geography in combination with five regions of the Western World.

Rather than present students with a broad, novice-level introduction to geography, emphasizing places and vocabulary terms, this text approaches geography as experts understand the discipline, focusing on connections and an in-depth understanding of core themes. This thematic approach, informed by pedagogical research, provides students with an introduction to thinking geographically. Instead of repeating the same several themes each chapter, this text emphasizes depth over breadth by arranging each chapter around a central theme and then exploring that theme in detail as it applies to the particular region. In addition, while chapters are designed to stand alone and be rearranged or eliminated at the instructor's discretion, the theme of globalization and inequality unites all of the regions discussed. This core focus enables students to draw connections between regions and to better understand the interconnectedness of our world. Furthermore, the focus on both globalization and inequality helps demonstrate the real-world application of the concepts discussed. Colonialism, for instance, rather than a historical relict, becomes a force that has shaped geography and informs social justice. This thematic approach is also intended to facilitate active learning and would be suitable for a flipped or team-based learning-style course since it more easily integrates case studies and higher-order thinking than the traditional model.

The discipline of geography bridges the social sciences with the physical sciences and can provide a
framework for understanding our world. By studying geography, we can begin to understand the
relationships and common factors that tie our human community together. The world is undergoing
globalization on a massive scale as a result of the rapid transfer of information and technology and
the growth of modes of transportation and communication. The more we understand our world, the
better prepared we will be to address the issues that confront our future. There are many approaches
to studying world geography. This textbook takes a regional approach and focuses on themes that
illustrate the globalization process, which in turn assists us in better understanding our global
community and its current affairs.