A famous Naturalist, Carl Linnaeus felt his work was reflecting the harmony of nature and geography when he said in 1754: "the earth is then nothing else but a museum of the all-wise creator's masterpieces, divided into three chambers: plants, animals, and minerals." Geography categorizes different geographic features, or physical features, into biomes and regions. Geography is divided into physical and human characteristics. Physical geographic is naturally occurring landforms, while human geography describes how humans have interacted with the environment. Landforms are characterized as regions that have different plants, animals, climate, and economic activities. Regions, when claimed by nations, are called territories, and the lines or boundaries between them are called borders. 

Natural History: A Study of Existence

Natural history is a lot of things, but is mostly concerned with the ancient Earth and how it has changed over time. It covers topics such as astronomy, geography, geology, biology, technology, medicine, and religion, as well as many others. Most simply, it is similar to the study of geography.

D.S. Wilcove and T. Eisner called natural history, "The close observation of organisms—their origins, their evolution, their behavior, and their relationships with other species" While H.W. Greene and J.B. Losos said "Natural history focuses on where organisms are (geography) and what they do in their environment, including interactions with other organisms. " Marston Bates: "Natural history is the study of animals and Plants—of organisms. ... I like to think, then, of natural history as the study of life at the level of the individual—of what plants and animals do, how they react to each other and their environment, how they are organized into larger groupings like populations and communities"

Where you live affects how you live...

Geography is the study of Earth and it's inhabitants. Geography is studied with the use of maps, among other tools, to describe the world around us. Geographers study the many environments, or regions of Earth, such as plants and animals, as well as how human societies interact with it. Each environment can be divided into different kinds of regions, different regions have different natural resources, and different cultures were built around the use and trade of these resources. Civilizations are usually characterized by domestication or organized agriculture and have complex institutions such as economies and governments that rule over their territory. The people in territories are governed by these institutions through what is called their consent to be governed, or social contract theory. 

Latitude and Longitude are imaginary lines on the globe used to determine exact location. The things useful to humans that can be found in the environment are called Natural Resources.  Geography is a study of how physical features such as elevation, landforms, or climate can affect how humans adapt or modify to their environment in order to make use of natural resources. Humans have long used technology to change their environment to make life easier. Physical geography is the study of Earth’s seasons, climate, atmosphere, soil, watersheds (streams and rivers), landforms, and oceans. These factors can cause changes to the landscape over time, such as erosion, or the carving out of a flood plain or canyon by a river, creating a river valley. Floodplains and river valleys are the foundation of many societies and civilizations, no matter the type of region, because river valleys can support agriculture (farming).

All of these things together tell the story of history, both natural and recorded. It is the "story of you and I and how we got here" (John Green, Crash Course). It is the story of how the world we live in came to be, and it is what we will be studying this year. European Colonization of the Americas begins with Christopher Columbus' voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492. After Christopher Columbus, the Spanish, English, and French were among the major European powers to Colonize what was called the "New World," even though it was only "new" to Europeans.