A type of problem-solving that uses geographical thinking. Four main areas of study are: the description and auditing of contemporary environmental conditions; the evaluation of the value of particular environments for specified future uses; the identification and analysis of environmental impacts, mainly of human action, actual and proposed; and the prediction and design of environmental works.

Applied geography is, according to Applied Geography: ‘research which utilizes geographic approaches (human, physical, nature-society and GIScience) to resolve human problems that have a spatial dimension. These problems may be related to the assessment, management and allocation of the world’s physical and/or human resources. The underlying rationale…is that only through a clear understanding of the relevant societal, physical, and coupled natural-humans systems can we resolve such problems’.

http://agsg.binghamton.edu/ Website of the Applied Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers.