Hello fellow Geog 030 students!

My name is Madison Halbom, I am a junior studying Environmental Systems Engineering at University Park. I transferred here this school year from the Abington campus. I was born and raised in Perkasie, PA about an hour outside of Philly. I plan on pursuing a job in the field of environmental engineering hopefully working in the area of water treatment. My interest in this course is to learn about the other nations and societies in the world and differences between my culture and theirs. I have only been out of the country to Mexico so I find other countries very interesting and would really love to travel to many places when I get older. Some fun facts about me is that I am a twin, my sisters name is Darby and she goes to Kutztown University located also in PA. I also have an older sister that teaches first grade in a low income area in North Carolina and a brother who is studying Civil Engineering at San Jose State in California.

Now with an introduction to various perspectives of geography, I consider a very interesting topic in the area of geography to be the interactions of the environment on humanity and the effect of humanity on the environment. A concept to consider is Governance, how people are forced to take into consideration the environment and how it may limit there choices. An example of this is the water resources in California, they are very limited, this being the case residents in areas of California needs to consider the risk of wild fires and lack of water in the earth and available to them. Also another concept is how human activities and humanity can exist and prosper without hurting or taking negative effects on the environment is known as the concept of sustainability. When I consider this concept I think of the efforts in rural PA working to preserve farmlands from being bought and developed with town-homes. This is a big issue in my home county of Bucks and we are constantly working to preserve the farmlands as much as possible to we maintain so of the environments integrity while living in the same community.