Physical geography is a process, conducted by people, of integration and synthesis of ideas and observations to advance scientific understanding of Earth’s surface and atmosphere and to apply this knowledge to the greater good of the planet and its people. Therefore, physical geography matters; that is, physical geography makes a difference to people and contributes to environmental decision making at various scales. Based upon presentations and discussion at the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting (see editorial above in this issue), we provide here a historical perspective and distillation of how and why, in our opinions, physical geography matters. Although we provide several specific examples, these represent only a small portion of the large body of excellent and relevant physical geography research.

中文翻译：

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自然地理贡献

自然地理学是一个由人们进行的思想和观察的整合和综合过程，以促进对地球表面和大气的科学理解，并将这些知识应用于地球及其人民的更大利益。因此，自然地理很重要；也就是说，自然地理对人们产生影响，并有助于各种规模的环境决策。根据 2019 年 AAG 年会的介绍和讨论（见本期上文社论），我们在此提供了一个历史视角和提炼，说明在我们看来，自然地理是如何以及为什么如此重要的。尽管我们提供了几个具体的例子，但这些仅代表了大量优秀且相关的自然地理学研究中的一小部分。