Semester Exam Review Flashcards
Latitude
East-West Lines
Longitude
North-south lines
What is located at 0 latitude?
Equator
What is located a zero longitude?
Prime meridian
What’s located at 90 N?
Tropic of Cancer
What’s located at 90 S?
Tropic of Capricorn
What is Geography?
The study of Earth, it’s physical features and its people.
What are the five themes of geography?
Movement, region, human-environment interaction, location, and place.
What is absolute location?
The exact location of a place (latitude and longitude lines determine this).
Relative Location
Not exact location. Ex: you can say that the school is located near Pizza Hut.
List in order the Earth’s layers.
Crust, mantle, outer core, inner core.
What is the lithosphere?
Consists of soil, rocks, landforms and other Earth surfaces.
What is the atmosphere?
The layer of air, water, and other substances above the surface.
What is the hydrosphere?
Consists of water, like oceans, lakes, rivers, and etc…
What is the biosphere?
The layer where living things are.
Names the 7 continents.
North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and Antarctica.
Name 4/5 oceans.
Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Artic
How are volcanoes formed?
Magma breaks through the Earth’s crust forming volcanoes.
Name five different landforms.
Mountains, plateaus,
Explain the theory of plate tectonics.
The Earth’s outer shell isn’t one piece of solid rock.
What theory did Alfred Lothar Wegener suggest?
The theory of continental drift.
What was the name of the supercontinent scientist believed the Earth first had?
Pangea
What is the Ring of Fire and where does it extend?
A circle of volcanoes surrounding the Pacific Ocean.
Lost four types of plate movements.
Subduction, spreading, converging, and faulting.
What is weathering?
The breakdown of rocks.
What is mechanical weathering?
Occurs when rock is actually broken or weakened physically.
What is chemical weathering?
Alters a rocks chemical makeup by changing minerals or combining minerals.
How does acid rain form?
Chemicals in polluted air combine with water vapor.
What is erosion?
The movement of weathered material.
What are the three most common causes of Erosion?
Water, wind, and glaciers.
What are glaciers? How do they cause erosion?
Big bodies of ice; they constantly move, causing rocks to move.
What is the difference between weather and climate?
Weather is the current temperature, etc.; climate is the overall temperature and precipitation.
What is rotation? How often does it occur?
When the Earth spins on its axis; 24 hours.
How long is a revolution?
One year.
What happens during the summer an winter solstices?
Summer: North pole tilts toward the sun (June 21); Winter: North Pole tilts away from the sun (Dec. 21).
What happens during the spring and fall equinoxes?
The sun falls directly on the equator Fall: Sept. 21 or 22; Spring: March 20 or 21.
What are “horse latitudes”?
Regions of light, unpredictable that are about 30 degrees N and S latitudes.
Climates is affected by latitude or longitude?
Latitude.
Time is based on latitude or longitude?
Longitude.
Explain what an ecosystem is.
The interaction of plant and animal life and their environment.
Define the term biome.
Major types of ecosystems that can be found in various regions.
What plant/animal life forms are found in a tropical rain forest?
Plants: Tall trees etc… Animals: Various birds, monkeys etc…
What are deciduous trees?
Trees that shed leaves on one season, found in mid-latitude forests.
Where are coniferous trees found? What are coniferous trees?
Northern North America, Europe, and Asia. They are trees that have cones to protect there seeds.
Where are savannas found? What are they?
They are massive grasslands with lots of wildlife including lions, zebras, and hyenas, etc. There are located in Africa etc.
What is a herbivore?
An organism that eats only plants.
What is a carnivore?
An organism that eats only meat.
What are temperate grasslands of North America called?
Prairies.
What temperatures are found in the tundra?
Cool or cold temperatures.
What is permafrost?
A layer of soil just below the surface.
The beliefs and actions that define a groups of people’s way of life are called what?
Culture.
The average number of people in a square mile or square kilometer is known as what?
Population Density.
What are some the most densely populated regions of the world?
Parts of Europe, Northeastern U.S, India , and other parts of Asia.
What is the difference between an immigrant and an emigrant?
Immigrants come in, emigrants leave a country.
Define what urbanization is.
The growth of city populations.
What is rural?
Farm areas.
Give an example of cultural convergence.
A hit music video from the U.S becomes famous worldwide.
The exchange of goods, food, plants, ideas, languages, and diseases from the New World to the Old World is known as what?
Colombian Exchange.
This government is one where leaders hold all, or nearly all political power.
Authoritarian
This is the most common form of authoritarian government where power is concentrated in a small group or a single person.
Dictatorship
This government controls every aspect of society; politics, the economy, peoples’ lives etc.
Totalitarianism
This government is one in which the leader’s position is inherited. For example, kings, queens, pharaohs, sultans, etc.
Monarchy
This government allows the people to choose their leaders and the people have the power to set government policy.
Democracy
List the types of economic systems and briefly explain each.
Traditional: subsistence economy; Market: free enterprise, capitalism; Command: government controlled
What is the difference between renewable and nonrenewable resources?
Renewable sources are constantly being regenerated or replaced, like water
Give examples of fossil fuels.
Coal, oil, natural gas (nonrenewable)
This agriculture is often found in developing countries where people grow only enough for their own family’s or village’s needs.
Subsistence farming
What are the countries of North America?
U.S, Canada, and Mexico
This economic organization made of the the U.S, Mexico, and Canada allows free trade with few barriers between these 3 nations to enhance economic cooperation.
NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)
What is Gross National Product (GNP)?
Total value of a nations goods and services.
This economic system is based on capitalism and allows individuals to own, operate, and profit from their own businesses in an open, competitive market. (Like the U.S)
Free enterprise system
What are metropolitan areas?
An area that comprises a major city and its suburbs.
Explain what the hinterlands are.
Areas that influence large cities.
A very large city is called what?
Megalopolis
A warm ocean current off South America’s northwestern coast that influences global weather patterns.
El Niño
What area in the U.S is known as “The Nation’s Breadbasket”?
The Midwest
An area of high flat land is known as what?
Plateau
What is a strip of land the juts into a body of water called?
Peninsula
Describe some of the physical characteristics/landforms found in Mexico.
There are lots of plateaus, peninsulas, it has lots of mountain ranges.
What is one of the greatest concerns facing Mexico today?
Volcanoes, earthquakes
Know at least 3 common features the countries of Central America share.
They are all near water, most share a common language, and they were all once ruled by Spain or another country.
What is the largest country of South America?
Brazil
What are favelas?
Slum communities
Why is deforestation a concern in Brazil?
It ruins the homes of many wildlife.
What mountain range is the world’s longest unbroken chain?
Andes Mts.
Is Spanish the only language spoken in South America?
No
Why has it been easy for Switzerland to remain neutral in past world wars?
Because Napoleon was defeated.
What is the capital city of France?
Paris
What happened to Germany and its capital Berlin after WWII?
Germany was separated to West and East Germany. West was the Federal Republic of Germany and East was the Communist Germany Democratic Republic.
Economic and political union of 27 states of Europe which encourage economic trade between member states.
European Union
What are Polders? Where are they commonly found?
Polders are land reclaimed from the sea, they’re commonly found in the Netherlands.
A treeless zone dominated by small plants and animals adopted to polar conditions is what?
Tundra
A layer of soil that is always frozen.
Permafrost
Past Russian monarchs were called what?
Czars
Policy of openness in the Soviet Union.
Glasnost
What Soviet leader introduced glasnost and perestroika?
Gorbachev
