There have been four periods in the development of geography in modern Vietnam since 1954: 1954-1959, 1960-1974, 1975-1985, after 1986. Since 1990, faculties of geography in Vietnam have been modified to include new fields of study with a liberal policy from geography research methods and geography education under the influence of the former Soviet Union. Traditional physical geography includes soil science, geomorphology, climatology, and vegetation subjects with GIS, remote sensing, ecology, and sustainability recently added. In recent years, human geography has included rural geography, urban geography, social geography, tourism studies, and sustainable development studies. Considering global climate change and sea-level change, Vietnamese geographers are interested in studying the natural environmental and environmental change, and are aggressively promoting environmental change studies, especially on coastal areas. Vietnamese students studying in Japan are the main drivers of environmental change studies after returning to Vietnam.
