The Arctic region constituted an essential part of global regional geography until the 1980s. Studies of its regional geography previously focused mainly on physical features including the ocean with sea ice and land covered with tundra, barren ground, and glaciers. Therefore, Arctic regional geography was regarded as typical physical geography. The Arctic seemed to be isolated from the populated world to the south.

However, as economic activities spread to Arctic areas during the 1990s, regional geographic studies of the Arctic began to involve the regional geography of neighboring states. Thus, the previously defined field of Arctic regional geography vanished from global regional geography studies.

Reductions in the sea ice surface area, melting of permafrost in tundra, and risks to biodiversity resulting from global warming have become important environmental issues in the Arctic region. Moreover, increases in carbonhydrate mining and traffic in the Northern Sea routes exert substantial pressure on the Arctic ecosystem. To deal with these problems, the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental organization founded in 1996, established the Arctic region as closely connected areas, started to promote scientific research in the region, and now governs cooperation and interactions among the Arctic states and various Arctic communities. Thus, this newly defined Arctic region should be studied in terms of a new regional geography framework.

The Arctic region as defined by the Arctic Council involves not only the areas north of the boreal-forest limit but also wide areas in the subarctic zone with boreal forests. This region is referred to as the circum-Arctic Sea region and considered a functional region in regional division theories. The regional geography of the Arctic should therefore be studied and described in terms of the circum-sea region, overlapping with traditional continental and/or state regional geography of the Arctic. The traditional Arctic region north of the forest limit, where tundra and glacial landscapes predominate, should be studied to cover the topics of integrated physical geography.