Geography seeks to understand the physical and human organization of the surface of the Earth. In the field of geography, inter-related themes are frequently seen. These are scale, pattern and process. Scale is defined as the level of structure on organisation at which a phenomenon is studied. Pattern is defined as the variation observed in a phenomenon studied at a particular scale. The third theme, process, further connects the first two. Process is defined as the description of how the factors that affect a phenomenon act to product a pattern at a particular scale. For instance, when apassenger on an aircraft looks out of the window, the view changes according to the scale. At the global scale when the aircraft maintains its height, he can see the chunks of clouds in all their pattern, the sun or the moon, as per the time. When the aircraft loses a little height, passengers can see the land and water masses in their different colours and the shape of land masses. At the continental scale, the passengers can see the shapes of the land features and how they are distributed. The pattern emerges as the variation of land and water and the proportion of each. Looking carefully, passengers can note how each land mass aligns with the others and how each mountain bears the signs of the process through which it emerged.
The processes in a geography change in a regular and repetitive manner. One instance of this is the annual solar cycle of the sun and the earth. Most systems in nature display time cycles that are organised in a rhythm of their own. As these time cycles and natural processes are always active, the environment of the earth is always in a state of dynamism. This environmental change is not only the result of natural process but also the result of human activity. Physical geography works towards understanding the interaction between man and nature and also the results of this interaction in order to manage global climate change better.
The alignment of landmass with other elements can be seen by a passenger on a flight on a:
