Physical geography (also known as geosystems or physiography) is one of the two major subfields of geography[1], as opposed to the cultural or built environment, the domain of human geography. Within the body of physical geography, the Earth is often split either into several spheres or environments, the main spheres being the atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and pedosphere. Research in physical geography is often interdisciplinary and uses the systems approach.

Physical geography is that branch of science which deals with the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like atmosphere, biosphere and geosphere.

A Tapestry of Time and Terrain:
The Union of Two Maps - Geology and Topography

for more detail, click on physiographic regions of the United States

  from “Religion and the Presidential Vote,”
The Pew Research Center, 12-6-04

Concentration of U.S. Parts Plants
(click for larger version of map below)
from Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, October 20,2005,
 Delphi and Midwest Auto Parts

United States, 2008 Presidential Election

see Electoral Explorer

Data from the DailyKos, "Birthers are mostly Republican and Southern," by kos, Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 08:20:37 AM PDT

regional variation

            variation by network

         

Institutions, Organizations, and Inter-Organizational Networks

from Charles Perrow, Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 3-8 (emphasis added):

This book ends with the decade 1910.  In future work I intend to show how the organizational revolution that the railroads effcted spread to government, schools, and religious and voluntary organizations in subsequent decades.  But by 1910 or so, the organizational mold was set. Big bureaucratic organizations were turned out in all sectors in society, making it the form of choice for public and private problem solving by the end of World War II.  The relevance of family, friendship groups, neighborhood associations, and small independent business and social service organzations conversely waned.  Their vital functions, once a right of citizenship rather than of employment status, were increasingly absorbed by large organizations, creating a "society of organizations" rather than communities.  The centralization of wealth and power increased in the nineteenth century as a result of the growth of large organizations.  Not until the 1930s was it checked, as a result of steady, if mild, redistributive efforts over the next forty years by the federal government and by a variety of political and voluntary organizations.  But centralization surged again in the 1970s and continued through the end of the century, as large private organizations grew, and wealth was further concentrated.