Geography is the science

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

 that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek mathematician, poet, athlete, geographer, astronomer, and music theorist.He was the first person to use the word "geography" and invented the discipline of geography as we understand it...

 (276-194 BC). Four historical traditions in geographical research are the spatial analysis

Spatial analysis

Spatial analysis or spatial statistics includes any of the formal techniques which study entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties...

 of natural and human phenomena (geography as a study of distribution), area studies

Area studies

Area studies are interdisciplinary fields of research and scholarship pertaining to particular geographical, national/federal, or cultural regions. The term exists primarily as a general description for what are, in the practice of scholarship, many heterogeneous fields of research, encompassing...

 (places and regions), study of man-land relationship, and research in earth science

Earth science

Earth science is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth. It is arguably a special case in planetary science, the Earth being the only known life-bearing planet. There are both reductionist and holistic approaches to Earth sciences...

s.