Best products from r/geography

ESRI products are great and you can steal them online, but if you're going to get education in GIS stuff at a University or IT then you will learn that stuff there. QGIS is a free platform that is a good place to start, but honestly if you can fully explore Google Earth capabilities that might be more applicable as many companies and organizations use it to some degree. Whatever free GIS platform you choose, just go through every tool and understand how to use it, you will be good to go.

That said, just read a book and learn about geographic and cartographic principles. Maybe look into what area of GIS you are interested in, like environmental modelling or more civil stuff.

Learn about remote sensing and the capabilities of the specifications on the satellites, drones, cameras, sensors, and other equipment out there.

I have worked in GIS for over 7 years, working for hydrologists, geologists, wildlife biologists, engineers, and city planners. It is a fun field that is ever-evolving. It is important to have some advanced computer skills, especially regarding spreadsheets and databases. Understanding VBA SQL and Python are helpful, but I only know a bit of each. I do not like developing tools and writing scripts, so I don't. I use model-builder to get the most out of available tools. Get a solid geography background too, I don't mean name all the rivers in Europe, people can look that up in 5 seconds, learn the principles and understand projections and how maps are used and how surveys work... If you are going to higher Ed you will learn most this anyway.

Try making maps for something you like, like a hiking trail or your back yard, improve them, share them, see what people think. If you have a smartphone, try some GPS and GIS apps, go collect some data points, lines, or areas and try to make a map. Maybe even use a GIS or a drawing app for the map (but a desktop or laptop computer is easier to work with for that). Mobile technology is an exploding realm within GIS these days. It is important for me to be able to send non-GIS people into the field with a smartphone or tablet and ask them to collect data with many attributes. have them correct and QA the data, then upload it onto a website that will automatically update a web map.

If you search online a bit you will find more than enough material on GIS and free GIS platforms to fill your days with. You can learn lots in school, but they leave a lot out too. Having your own projects is not only fun it will give you an advantage in the job market.

Edit: I didn't edit anything except this line. I apologize for my abysmal grammar and structure.

Here are some resources that I have come across in classes or in my own personal studies:

Documentaries/Videos -

• Urbanized
  
• Blue Gold
  
• Guns, Germs, and Steel
  
• CrashCourse - World History Here, i'd look at videos "#1 Agricultural Revolution", "#23 The Columbian Exchange", "#32 Coal, Steam, and The Industrial Revolution", "#33 Capitalism and Socialism", "#39 USA vs USSR Fight!", "#40 Decolonization and Nationalism Triumphant", and "#41 & #42 Globalization". All of these topics were discussed in a 100 level Human Geography class.
  
• CrashCourse - Ecology All videos. These topics were referenced to in upper level physical geography courses.
  
• CrashCourse - Biology Here, i'd look at videos "#2 Water Liquid Awesome", "#7 ATP & Respiration", "#8 Photosynthesis", "#9 Heredity", "#14 Natural Selection", "#15 Speciation", "#18 Population Genetics", "#20 Evolution: It's a Thing", and "#40 Ecology - Rules for Living on Earth". Many of these topics have been covered or referenced to in Physical Geography courses.
  
• TED: Why Geography Matters and TED: Parag Khanna maps the future of countries both interesting talks.
  
  Readings -
  
  
• GIS Fundamentals by Paul Bolstad. A Good book to start off with, as far as Geospatial Geography goes.
  
• Applied GIS This site has academic articles on various applications of GIS. I found the ones that I did read were very interesting.
  
• Python Geospatial Development it's a good book to start off with if you have some programming experience.
  
• Blogs
  
• Once you have a good foundation on Geospatial Geography I would do a google search for academic articles on GIS and Remote Sensing.
  
• I'm sure there is also Human Geography & Physical Geography specific search terms & books too, hopefully others could suggest. As I am more interested in GIS & Remote Sensing.
  
  And here are some tips...
  
  
• If you become interested in GIS learn some programming. There's a Coursera Course that teaches programming for beginners. There is also MIT Intro to Programming. Your school probably has Computer Science classes too. In which case you may want to minor/double-major in C.S. and look for Programming and Database classes.
  
• Definitely go to classes, read, ask questions, participate.
  
• Join a Geography Club. Anthropology, Ecology, Economics clubs will do too.
  
• Befriend your professors, you may need their recommendations later on.
  
• Do a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). I did one and it's fun to just immerse yourself in a study/topic/discipline, not to mention it increases your knowledge.
  
• One piece of advice a professor gave to me was "Just come with the desire to learn and everything else will fall into place."
  
  I guess I should say a little about myself, so you know where in my advice you should take with a grain of salt or lots of salt. I'm a 2nd year senior, majoring in Geography and minoring in Computer Science. My interest, as mentioned above, is in GIS, GIS development, & Remote Sensing.

Geomorphology is fascinating, it's a story of how earth came to be what it is today! Of course, it's important to have interesting recourses and even better if it's a teacher that's passionate about the subject. I definitely recommend this book https://www.amazon.com/New-Views-Planet-Tjeerd-Andel/dp/0521447550 plus I think I've got a pdf of earth system history somewhere. Both are great for starters (the earth system one has more drawings, btw)

At lot of people mentioned some pretty cool map books already, but these are two geography-related books I'm getting for Christmas: How the States Got Their Shapes (probably better if she's American) and Guns, Germs, and Steel. The latter is less to do with maps and more to do with how geography influences civilizations. Hope that helps!

Some books I can recommend for map nerds: Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities, How to Lie With Maps, and a related book that's a bit more useful for data visualization - Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics.

The typographic maps from Axis Maps are pretty awesome and there's all kinds of map-related stuff on Etsy.

General historical geography books that are good:

Key Concepts in Historical Geography

Hodder Arnold Historical Geography (and in general I've found Hodder Arnold review texts to be useful.)

For books that are works of historical geography, broadly defined:

Late Victorian Holocausts (I actually found this book a bit disappointing, but a lot of people like it.)

The Hungry World (actually written by a historian so not very embedded in historical geography theoretically but very much in the same spirit which might be useful for you.)

American Commodities in an Age of Empire (Mona Domosh is currently president of the AAG.)

For the theory of/in geography:

For Space

This syllabus from Rutgers covers a lot of the most essential texts in human geography. I think you could skip the books and stick just to the articles and still have a really good understanding of the field.

Great Maps seems to come up sometimes when people are talking about good geography books, as well as Maps: Their Untold Stories. I have a list somewhere of good map books, I'll check when I get home.

For geology, Assembling California is pretty accessible, as are most of his books.

If they haven't read it, Guns, Germs, and Steel is pretty great for people who are interested in geography. It's more anthropology, but he talks a lot about how the physical spaces people built settlements in affected how they developed.

Do you know any more details of what kind of geology in particular they like?

One of the definitive texts in the subject was Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology by Leopold, Wolman & Miller. ($15.49! and it's available in Kindle Format!) There are newer and probably easier texts out there, but this one is fairly foundational to the field.

I might also recommend "River Meandering", Proceedings of the Conference Rivers `83, edited by Charles M. Elliot. You'll probably need to hit up the University Library for this one, and photocopy any papers you want to keep.

Which leads me to the last solution, Journal articles. They can be a little daunting at first, but if there's any chance you might want to go on in your education, you'll have to get used to reading these at some point. And eventually you might come to prefer the journal format when it comes to answering particular questions you might have.

Depends on what's there and what you value. It basically sacrifices the current hydrosphere of whatever waterway you're separating, and you get two lesser, out of whack ones. Any migrating aquatic species will die off or be a pitiful reminder of what once was. Ecosystem elements that depend on a dry season or flood season will be significantly messed up. And if you have a particularly dry year or three, then dams might not even serve their functions for power, navigation or water for crops.

Then there's the social element. It's pretty hard to find a place to do this that wouldn't displace people, usually the poor people who already have hard lives. B Street talks about this around the construction of Washington state's Grand Coulee Dam on Native American land. Arunhati Roy's book Power Politics focuses on India but documents this on global scale.

There's an efficiency factor, too (both economic and functional), where big dams work much better for generation, navigation and irrigation than small ones. They tend to involve corporations like Bechtel, Halliburton, KBR, etc who tend to be in the business of politics because they require government cooperation and budgets to do what they do.

I live in Seattle. We have cheap and clean power because of our dams. You can run a boat from the Pacific all the way up the Columbia to Idaho because of these dams. But the salmon runs have been decimated. Lots of people just had their land taken from them (and given hardly anything in return) for these projects. They're also insanely expensive to replace. As several of these things have silted over or reached structural failure, we've started to remove them. I think solar and wind power are better ways to go.

You've already had some good suggestions, which I'd suggest following. I have a BA in geography and even after school found these interesting reads.

Cultural and Historical Geography

Eratosthenes' "Geography"

The World of Gerard Mercator: The Mapmaker Who Revolutionized Geography

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Race And Culture: A World View

Technical, GIS, Cartography

How to Lie with Maps

Thinking About GIS: Geographic Information System Planning for Managers

An Introduction to Geographical Information Systems

I know most of these won't be of much use with a BS degree, but gives you a good foundation for thinking geographically. For the more science aspects; a good understanding of physics, chemistry, and to a lesser extent biology, will really give you a leg up when starting out.

I think you're mixing up two visually similar maps, with two highly different concepts.

This one that you're talking about. http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/a/aa/Annual_Average_Temperature_Map.jpg

And this that I think you should be focusing on: http://www.authentichistory.com/1914-1920/1-overview/1-origins/MAP-1914_Colonization.jpg

Also: here is a rough map of your observations about general wellbeing. http://debitage.net/humangeography/images/GDP_per_capita.png

Countries with low levels of prosperity generally have relatively recent history of slavery or other types of subjugation effecting large swathes of the population. Africa is a perfect example as shown on the second and the third map.

There are exceptions to everything, but countries with high quality of life were either colonizers (Spain, UK, Holland), or were colonized mainly through genocide (Canada, US, Australia, some southern countries in South America).

The purposeful destruction of culture and the devaluation of whole peoples seems inseparable from the process of colonization, and it sets back the people effected for over a hundred years. Take a look at what has happened to remaining native populations of Canada, the US, and Australia, and you'll see the same patterns as what you're observing in what is called "The Global South". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_divide

I could go on forever but I think studying colonization and oppression will help you explore the concepts you brought forward. This is a good resource on oppression: http://www.amazon.com/Challenging-Oppression-Confronting-Privilege-Mullaly/dp/0195429702

Remember the important difference between correlation and causation!

A different question you may also be asking now is "Why did the Northerners get to oppress the Southerners?" A lot of it has to do with luck (to have metal, to learn to use it, and to be accustomed to filthy diseases), and I think this book gives a really interesting starting point. http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552

The Strange Maps book! (It's by the guy who runs the Strange Maps blog