Chapter 1 Basic Concepts Flashcards
Abiotic
Composed of no living or inorganic matter
Atmosphere
The thin layer of gases surrounding earth
Biosphere
All living organisms on earth
Biotic
Composed of living organism
Cartography
The science of making maps
Climate
The long-term average weather condition at a particular location
Concentration
The spread of something over a given area
Connection
Relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space
Conservation
The sustainable management of a natural resource
Contagious diffusion
The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature of trend throughout a population
Cultural ecology
A geographic approach that emphasizes human-environmental relationships
Cultural landscape
The fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group
Culture
The body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group’s distinct tradition
Density
The frequency with which something exists within a given unit if area
Diffusion
The process of spread of a feature or tend from one place to another over time
Distance decay
The diminishing in importance and eventual disappearance of a phenomenon with increasing distance from its origin
Distribution
The arrangement of something across earth’s surface
Ecology
The scientific study of ecosystems
Ecosystem
A group of living organisms and the abiotic spheres with which they interact
Environmental determinism
A 1800 and early 1900s approach to the study of geography which argued that the general laws sought by humans geographers could be found in the physical sciences
Geography was the study of how the physical environment caused human activities
Expansion diffusion
The spread of a feature or trend among people from one area to another in an additive process
Formal region
An area in which everyone shares in common one or more distinctive characteristics
Functional region (nodal)
An area organized around a node or focal point
Geographic information science (GIScience)
The development and analysis of data about earth acquired through satellite and other electronic information technologies
Geographic information system (GIS)
A computer system that stores, organizes, analyses and displays geographic data
Global Positioning System (GPS)
A system that determines the precise position of something in earth through a series of satellites, tracking stations, and receivers
Globalization
Actions or processes that involve the entire wiles and results in making something worldwide in scope