Carl O.Sauer Biography, Age, Weight, Height, Friend, Like, Affairs, Favourite, Birthdate & Other

Carl Ortwin Sauer was one of the most prominent geographers in America during the twentieth century. He was an advocate of the effect of human intervention in the formation of the landscape, cultures, societies, history and environment of various areas around the globe especially Latin America and less industrialized zones of North America.

He was a fierce critic of environmental determinism though he had been a teacher of the subject at one point of time. He focused on the diffusion of animals and plants and the impact on the geography due to the conquest of the indigenous people in North America, the Red Indians, by the whites. He was extremely critical of the government for not providing any policy that could bring about a sustainable use of land and its resources. He started a new school of thought that the geography of an area is more dependent on the humans who have changed it rather than nature.

He introduced the term landscape into American geography which could be a natural landscape or a cultural landscape. He suggested that landscape is a viable alternative to environmental determinism which describes the casual influence of the environment on humans, whereas, the landscape approach studies the impact of humans on the environment. In his opinion geography is cultural landscape rather than natural landscape.