Human Geography Unit 1 Key Terms

Front 1

Arithmetic Density

Back 1

The total number of people divided by the total land area.

Front 2

Cartography

Back 2

The science of making maps

Front 3

Concentration

Back 3

The spread of something over a given area.

Front 4

Contagious Diffusion

Back 4

The rapid, widespread Diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population.

Front 5

Cultural Ecology

Back 5

Geographic approach that emphasizes human-environment relationships.

Front 6

Cultural Landscape

Back 6

Fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group.

Front 7

Culture

Back 7

The body of customary beliefs, social forms, and martial traits that together constitute a group of people's distinct tradition.

Front 8

Density

Back 8

The frequency with which something exists within a given unit of area.

Front 9

Diffusion

Back 9

The process of spread of a feature or trend from one place to another over time.

Front 10

Distance Decay

Back 10

The effects of distance interaction, generally the greater the distance the less interaction.

Front 11

Distribution

Back 11

The arrangement of something across earth's surface.

Front 12

Environmental Determinism

Back 12

A nineteenth and early twentieth century approach to the study of geography that argued that the general laws sight by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. Geography was therefore the study of how the physical environment caused human activities.

Front 13

Expansion Diffusion

Back 13

The spread of a feature or trend among people from one area to another in a snowballing process.

Front 14

Formal Region

Back 14

Ab area in which everyone shares in common one or more distinctive characteristics.

Hint 14

Think uniform or homogenous region.

Front 15

Functional Region

Back 15

An area organized around a node or focal point

Hint 15

Aka nodal region

Front 16

Geographic information system

Back 16

A computer system that stores, organizes, analyzes, and display geographic data.

Hint 16

(GIS)

Front 17

Global positioning system

Back 17

A system that determines the precise position of something on Earth through a series of satellites, tracking stations and receivers.

Hint 17

GPS

Front 18

Globalization

Back 18

The process by which people in a local place mediate and asked regional, national and global processes.

Front 19

Hearth

Back 19

The region for which innovative ideas originate.

Front 20

Hierarchical Diffusion

Back 20

The spread of an idea from persons or nodes of authority or power to other persons or places.

Front 21

International date line

Back 21

An arc that for the most part follows 180° longitude. When you cross the international date line heading east (toward America) the clock moves back 24hrs. When you go west (toward Asia) the clock moves forward 24hrs.

Front 22

Latitude

Back 22

The numbering system used to indicate the location of parallels drawn on a globe and measuring distance north and south of the equator.

Front 23

Longitude

Back 23

The numbering system used to indicate the location of meridians drawn on a globe and measuring distance east and west of the prime meridian. (0°)

Front 24

Perceptual region

Back 24

An area that people believe to exist as part of their cultural identity.

Hint 24

Aka Vernacular Region

Front 25

Physiological Density

Back 25

The number of people per unit of area of arable land, which is land suitable for agriculture.

Front 26

Possibilism

Back 26

The theory that the physical environment may set limits on human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to the physical environment and choose a course of action from many alternatives.

Front 27

Projection

Back 27

The system used to transfer locations from Earth's surface to a flat map.

Front 28

Region

Back 28

An area distinguished by a unique combination of trends or features.

Front 29

Relocation diffusion

Back 29

The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another.

Front 30

Remote sensing

Back 30

The acquisition of data about Earth's surface from a satellite orbiting the planet or other long-distance methods

Front 31

Scale

Back 31

Generally the relationship between the portion of earth being studied and earth as a whole. specifically the relationship between the size of an object on a map and the size of the actual feature on Earth's surface

Front 32

Site

Back 32

The physical character of a place

Front 33

Situation

Back 33

The location of a place relative to other places

Front 34

Space-time compression

Back 34

The reduction in the time it takes to diffuse something to a distant place as a result of improved communications and transportation systems

Front 35

Stimulus diffusion

Back 35

The spread of an underlying principle even though a specific characteristic is rejected.

Front 36

Toponym

Back 36

The name given to a portion of Earth's surface.

Front 37

Absolute location

Back 37

The position or place of a certain item on the surface of the earth as expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds of latitude and longitude.

Front 38

Distortion

Back 38

Disadvantages for maps depicting the entire world of the: shape, distance, relative size, and direction of places on maps.

Front 39

Friction of distance

Back 39

A measure of how much absolute distance affects the interaction between two places

Front 40

Prime meridian

Back 40

The Meridian that passes through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich England 0 degrees longitude

Front 41

Relative location

Back 41

The location of a place with respect to other places

Front 42

Spatial Perspective

Back 42

An intellectual framework that looks at the particular locations of specific phenomena, how and why that phenomena is where it is, and how it is spatially related to phenomena in other places.

Front 43

Time distance decay

Back 43

The declining of degree of acceptance of an idea or innovation with increasing time and distance from its point of origin.

Front 44

Time zones

Back 44

There is a new zone for ever 15° west / 24 time zones \ allows time to follow with rotation of earth