what five themes do geographers use to help them understand the world and how people live in it?

Answer 1

The five themes are not for geographers as much as they are for geography teachers. To specifically serve the teacher population, a publication entitled Guidelines for Geographic Education was published in 1984 and its contents became known popularly as the "Five Themes of Geography." These themes are:

1 Location
Relative Location
Absolute Location

2 Place
Human Characteristics
Physical Characteristics

3 Human-Environmental Interactions
Humans adapt to the environment
Humans modify the environment
Humans depend on the environment

4 Movement
People
Goods
Ideas

5 Regions
Formal
Functional
Vernacular (perceptual)

The five themes served as a framework upon which the content of geography can be taught and served the K-12 population until the national geography standards were published in 1994. Since the six elements of the national standards embrace the five themes, they remain a valuable tool for students to use in developing a "geographic perspective," while the standards strengthen instructional planning.

Answer 2

I don't know that there are 5 themes specifically, I suppose you could somehow generically group all the themes under 5 headings but that would be like classifying all the colors into 5 themes.

Five different geographical themes could be demographics, oceanography, topography, seismology and climatology but there are many, many more.