Ap Human Geo Chapter One Vocab

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Agricultural Density

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This is the amount of farmers per unit of farmland. A large amount of agricultural density means that the farmers are most likely not efficient enough.

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Arthemetic Density

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This is the total number of objects within an area. In many different countries, it is used to compare the disruption of population. For example: the amount of people in an area would be arithmetic density. It’s the amount of people [or any other objects] divided by the area.

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Base Lines

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This is used in the Land Ordinance of 1785 system. These are east to west lines that separate townships.

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Cartography

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This is the science of map-making, and it’s what geographers use to map out locations and so on

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Concentration

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This is the extent of a features spread over a given space. If the objects are close together, then they are considered clustered. If they are relatively far apart they are considered to be dispersed. In order to accurately compare two area’s concentration, they need to have the same amount of the object and the same land area. Geographers use this to describe changes in distribution.

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Connections

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These are relationships among people and objects across the barriers of space. Geographers are mainly concerned with how these connections occur.

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Contagious Diffusion

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This rapid, widespread diffusion of a characteristic throughout the population. As the name applies, it’s a lot like the spread of a disease. AIDS is an example, and so are ideas spread by the internet. This is anything that can be accessed quickly and over a huge amount of area.

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Cultural Ecology

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This is the geographic study of human-environment relationships. This studies what changes happen when people try to change their surroundings.

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Cultural Lanscape

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This is a combination of cultural features such as language and religion, economic features such as agriculture and industry, and physical features such as climate and vegetation. Cultural landscape was defined by Carl Sauer.

Basically it’s a combination of language, religion, economy, and physical features.

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Culture

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Geographers claim that this is why each region on Earth is distinctive. Culture is the body of customary beliefs, material traits, and social forms that together constitute the distinct tradition of a group of people.

Basically its belongings, personal traits, and society that make up culture.

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Density

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This is the frequency at which something occurs in a specific area.

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Diffusion

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This is the process by which a characteristic spreads across space from one place to another over tome.

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Distance Decay

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This is the word that describes how typically the farther away one group is from another, the less likely the two groups are to interact. Contact diminishes with increasing distance and eventually disappears.

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Distribution

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This is the arrangement of a feature in a given space. There are three main properties of distribution: density, concentration, and pattern.

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Enviormental Determenism

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Humboldt and Ritter concentrated on how the physical environment caused social development, and this is what the approach is called. They claimed that your environment will affect your behavior.

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Expansion Diffusion

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This is the spread of a feature from one place to another in a snowballing process. It contains three different processes: hierarchical diffusion, contagious diffusion, and stimulus diffusion.

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Formal Region

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This type of region is also known as the uniform region or the homogenous region. It’s an area in which everybody shares in common one or more distinctive characteristics. In this region, the selected characteristics[s] have to be present throughout. It can also be predominant rather then universal. Examples: the Corn Belt and voting areas.

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Functional Region

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This is also sometimes called the nodal region. This region is organized around a node or focal point. The characteristic that explains this region is that this whole region dominates at a central focus or node and diminishes in importance outward. This could be anything ranging from transportation or communications or by economic or functional associations.

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Geographic Inforamtion System [GIS]

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This is a computer system that can capture store, query, analyze and display geographic data. The key to it is that it can position any object on Earth and can be measured and recorded with mathematical precision, then stored in a computer. It can store information in layers.

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Global Positioning System [GPS}

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This is a system that determines accurately the precise position of something on Earth. Works by using more then two dozen satellites.

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Globalization

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This is a force or process that involves the entire world and results in making something worldwide in scope. Globalization means that the scale of the world is shrinking in the ability or a person, object, or idea to interact with a person, object or idea in another place. The world is more uniform, integrated and interdependent.

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Greenwich Mean Time [GMT]

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This is also known as Universal Time [UT}. It is the master reference time for all points on Earth.

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Hearth

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The place from which all innovation/ diffusion comes from.

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Heirchial Diffusion

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This is the spread of an idea from persons or nodes of authority or power to other persons or places. Examples: these ides spread from politicians, celebrities, etc. Or it can be a node, such as a large urban center, and diffuse to smaller rural areas.

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International Date Line

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This line is usually 180 degrees longitude, and when you move past it, you have to turn your clock 24 hours. If you are heading to eastward America, you turn the clock back for a day, and if you are heading westward toward Asia you turn it ahead for a day.

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Land Ordinence of 1785

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This system divided much of the country into a system of townships and ranges to facilitate the sale of land to the settlers in the West. This is made by Thomas Hutchins.

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Latitude

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The numbering system to indicate the location of a parallel is called latitude. The equator is 0 latitude, the North Pole is 90 north latitude, while the South Pole is 90 south latitude.

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Location

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Geographers describe a feature’s place on Earth by identifying its location, the position that something occupies on Earth’s surface. There are four ways to identify location: place name, site, situation, and mathematical location.

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Longitude

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The location of each meridian s identified on Earth’s surface according to a numbering system known as longitude.

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Map

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This is a two-dimensional or flat-scale model of earth’s surface, or a portion of it. Geography is immediately distinguished from other disciplines by its reliance on maps to display and analyze information.

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Mental Map

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A useful way to identify a perceptual region is to get someone to draw a mental map, which is an internal representation of a portion of Earth’s surface. A mental map depicts what an individual knows about a place, containing personal impressions of what is in a place and where places are located.

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Meridian

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A meridian is an arc drawn between the North Pole and South Pole. Its perpendicular to the parallels [which are parallel to the Equator].

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Prallels

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This is a circle drawn around the globe parallel to the equator and at right angles to the meridians.

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Pattern

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The third party of distribution is pattern. It is the geometric arrangement of objects in a given amount of space. Some are put in geometric patterns while others are put in irregularly.

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Physiological Density

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This is the number of persons per unit of area suitable for growing agriculture. If there is a high number of this, it most likely means the country has a difficult growing its food and cant feed all its people.

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Place

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Geographers use two basic concepts to explain why every place is unique- place and region. To geographers, place is a specific point on Earth’s surface.

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Polder

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This is a piece of land that is created by draining water from an area. Polders, first created in the thirteenth century, were constructed primarily by private developers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and by the government during the past 200 years.

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Possibilism

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The ones who reject the theory of environmental determinism chose this theory instead. This theory states that even though the physical environment may limit some human action, people still have the ability to adjust their environment.

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Prime Meridian

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This is in Greenwich; England is located at exactly 0 degrees longitude. All other locations have numbers ranging from zero to 180 east or west.

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Principal Meridian

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These are located in townships, and are the south to north lines that separate the individual townships.

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Projection

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The scientific method of transferring locations on Earth’s surface to a flat map is called projection. Even though there are many new, more advanced methods to do so, none are perfect since the world ia sphere and can not be presented accurately in flat, two dimensional form. The scientific method of transferring locations on Earth’s surface to a flat map is called projection. Even though there are many new, more advanced methods to do so, none are perfect since the world ia sphere and can not be presented accurately in flat, two dimensional form.

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Region

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Geographers have two ways of explaining how each place is unique: place and region. A region is an area of Earth distinguished by a distinctive combination of cultural and physical features.

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Regional Studies

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This is the contemporary cultural landscape approach invented in France by Paul Vidal de la Blache Jean Brunhes. Carl Sauer and Robert Platt later adopted it. This theory claims that each region has its own distinctive landscape that results from a unique combination of social relationships and physical processes.

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Relocation Diffusion

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The spread of an idea through physical movement of people from one place to another is termed relocation diffusion.

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Remote Sensing

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The acquisition of data about Earth’s surface from a satellite orbiting Earth or from other long-distance methods is known as remote sensing. Remote-sensing satellites scan Earth’s surface, much like a television camera scans an image in the thin lines you can see on a TV screen. It basically takes a picture of the Earth at a certain given time. It is so detailed that it can even identify things that are only one meter large.

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Resource

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Resources are substances that are useful to people, economically and technologically feasible to access, and are socially acceptable to use

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Scale

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Scale refers to the relationship of a feature’s size on a map to its actual size on earth. It can be displayed in more then three ways: a fraction [1/24,000}, or a graphic bar scale, or a written statement [one inch equals one mile].

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Section

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A township is divided into 36 sections, each of which is one mile by one mile. They are numbered in a consistent order, from one in the northeast to thirty-six in the southeast. Then, each section is divided into quarter sections, labeled southeast, northwest, southwest, and northeast. Each section is 0.5 mile by 0.5 mile, which is 160 acres.

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Site

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This is the second way geographers describe the location of a place. This is the physical character of the place. Important characteristics of a site include: climate, water sources, soil, topography, latitude, vegetation, and elevation. It’s mainly the combination of physical features.

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Situation

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This is the location of a place relative to other places. Situation is a valuable way to indicate location for two reasons- finding an unfamiliar place, and understanding its importance.

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Space

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This refers to the physical gap or interval between two objects. Geographers observe that many objects are distributed across space in a regular manner, for discernible reasons.

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Space-Time Compression

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More rapid connections have reduced the distance across space between places, not literally in miles of course, but in time. Geographers apply the term space-time compression to describe the reduction in time it takes for something to reach another place.

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Stimulus Diffusion

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This is the spread of an underlying principle, even though a characteristic itself apparently fails to diffuse.

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Toponym

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This simply means a name given to a certain place on Earth.

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Township

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This is the main term in the Land Ordinance of 1785. A township is a square 6 miles on each side. It is then divided with lines called base lines and principal meridians, and further on.

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Township

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This is the main term in the Land Ordinance of 1785. A township is a square 6 miles on each side. It is then divided with lines called base lines and principal meridians, and further on.

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Transnational Corporation

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This type of corporation conducts research, operates factories, and sells products in many countries, not just where its headquarters and principal shareholders and located. Globalization of the economy has created many such companies.

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Uneven Develooment

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The increasing gap in economic conditions between regions in the core that results from globalization of the economy is known as uneven development.