Unit 1: Introduction to Human Geography Flashcards
Absolute direction
A cardinal direction or compass direction, such as north, south, east, and west.
Absolute distance
A measurement in standard unit lengths, such as miles or kilometers.
Absolute location
The position of a certain item expressed in latitude and longitude.
Accessibility
The ease with which a destination may be reached from some other place. Relates to opportunity for contact or interaction.
Agricultural density
The number of farmers per unit area of arable land.
Arithmetic density
The total number of a phenomenon divided by total land area.
Base line
An east-west line designated under the Land Ordinance of 1785.
Built landscape
An area of land represented by its features and patterns of human occupation and use of natural resources.
Cartography
The science of mapmaking.
Centralized pattern
Arrangement of phenomenon that is clustered at a specific point.
Clustered
Arrangement of objects closely together.
Agglomerated
Arrangement of objects closely together.
Concentration
The extent of a feature’s spread over space. We refer to the extent specifically by using words like clustered or dispersed.
Contagious diffusion
Rapid, widespread spreading of a characteristic throughout the population; diseases and ideas are good examples.
Connectivity
The directness of routes linking pairs of places; all tangible and intangible means of linking places together through transit, communication, etc.
Cultural ecology
The geographic study of human-environment relationships and human adaptations to social and physical environments.
Cultural landscape
The combination of cultural features such as language and religion, economic features such as agriculture and industry, and physical features such as climate and vegetation seen in the land.
Culture
The belief systems, behaviors, and material objects shared by a group of people.
Density
The frequency of phenomenon over a given amount of space.
Diffusion
The process by which a characteristic spreads across space from one place to another.
Dispersed
Arrangement of objects in an area with relatively large distances between them - far apart.
Scattered
Arrangement of objects in an area with relatively large distances between hem - far apart.
Distance decay
The diminishing in importance and eventual disappearance of a phenomenon with increasing distance from is origin.
Distribution
Arrangement of features in space. Composed of three main properties: density, concentration, pattern.
Environmental determinsm
Theory that states that the physical environment causes social development.
Expansion diffusion
The spread of a feature or trend among people in a snowballing process. Could be contagious, hierarchical, or stimulus.
Fieldwork
The study of geography by visiting places and observing the people or objects and how they react with changes there.
Formal (uniform) region
An area marked by homogeneity in one or more phenomena.
Friction of Distance
A measure of the restricting effect of distance on spatial interaction.
Functional (nodal) region
An area organized around a focal point/place where there is a central focus that diminishes in importance outward. Displays information about economic connections in communication and transportation.
Geocaching
A treasure hunt. A cache is uploaded online with absolute location as the hint.
Geographic Information System (GIS)
Computer hardware and software that permits spatial data to be collected, recorded, stored, retrieved, manipulated, analyzed, and displayed to the user in layers on a map.
Global positioning system (GPS)
Satellite-based system for determining the absolute location of places or geographic features.
Globalization
The expansion of economic, political, and cultural processes to the point that they are global in scale and impact.
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
The time zone encompassing the prime meridian.
Hearth
The place from which an innovation originates and diffuses from there to other places.
Hierarchical diffusion
Spread of an idea from persons or nodes of authority or power to other persons or places of power.
Human-Environment Interaction
Theme of geography: the interactions between human social systems and the rest of the ecosystem.
Human Geography
Branch of geography dealing with the study of people and their communities, cultures, economies, and interactions with the environment by studying their relationships across space and place.
International Date Line
An arc that follows the 180 degree longitude line with minor deviations to avoid dividing land areas; divides one day from the next.
Land Ordinance of 1785
A law that divided much of the US into a system of townships to facilitate the sale of land to settlers.
Latitude
Lines that run East to West and measure North to South from the Equator.
Linear Pattern
Arrangement of phenomena in space such that they form a line. (Especially true of settlements that follow transit routes)
Location
The position that something occupies on Earth’s surface.
Longitude
Lines that run North and South and measure East to West from the Prime Meridian.
Map
A two-dimensional (flat) representation of Earth’s surface or a portion of Earth’s surface.
Mental map
An image of the way space is organized as determined by an individual’s perception, impression, and knowledge of that space.
Meridian
A line of longitude; drawn on a map and running between the North and South poles.
Natural landscape
The physical landscape and environment that is unaffected by human activities.
Network
A group or system of interconnected (linked) people or things.
Parallel
A line of latitude that runs East to West.
Pattern
The arrangement of objects in space.
Physiological density
The number of persons per unit of area suitable for agriculture (arable land).
Physical attributes
Same as natural landscape.
Place
The unique characteristics that help to define areas as distinct from others.
Placelessness
The concept that as areas lose distinct characteristics and become homogeneous, each area becomes uniform and lacks a unique identity.
Polder
Low-lying area from which seawater has been drained to create new farmland.
Possibilism
Theory that environmental restrictions limit human actions but that humanity is capable of adjusting to these limitations and making decisions.
Prime Meridian
Zero degrees longitude.
Principal meridian
A North-South line designated in the Land Ordinance of 1785 to facilitate the surveying and numbering of townships in the United States.
Projection
The process of transferring the Earth’s surface to a flat map. (Robinson, Mercator, Peters examples).
Random pattern
Arrangement of objects in space that has no clear linear or centralized arrangement.
Region
An area of Earth distinguished by a unique combination of cultural or physical features.
Regional studies
An approach to geography that emphasizes the relationships among social and physical phenomena in a particular area of study.
Relative direction
Non-cardinal means of communicating location of objects in space or describing how to get from one location to another without use of cardinal directions.
Relative distance
A measure of distance that includes the costs of the friction of distance between two locations. Includes social, cultural, or economic connectivity (use of time to travel, number of traffic lights, tolls, etc. as examples)
Relative location
A description of how a place is related to other places.
Relocation diffusion
A form of spreading of a feature over space by physical movement of the owners of the phenomena.
Remote sensing
A method of collecting data or information through the use of instruments that are physically distant from the area or object of study.
Resource
A substance in the environment that is useful to people, is economically and technologically feasible to access, and is socially acceptbale to use.
Reverse hierarchical diffusion
The process of spread of a phenomena over space that moves from places of less importance to those of more importance.
Scale
The size of the unit studies (local, regional, global).
Map scale
The mathematical relationship between the size of an area on a map and its actual size on Earth.
Sections
A square with 1 mile sides dividing townships.
Sequent occupance
The notion that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape.
Sense of place
State of mind derived through the infusion of a place with meaning and emotion by remembering important events that occurred in that place or by labeling a place with certain characteristics.
Site
The physical characteristics of a place.
Situation
The location of a place relative to other places.
Space
The physical gap or interval between two objects.
Space-time compression
The notion that communication and transportation improvements have reduced the time it takes to diffuse something to a distant location.
Spatial Analysis
Examining the locations, attributes, and relationships of features through analytical techniques in order to address a question or gain useful knowledge.
Stimulus diffusion
The spread of an underlying idea or principle with modification specific to the new location.
Toponym (place name)
The name given to a place.
Township
A square with six mile sides as directed in the Land Ordinance of 1785.
Transnational corporation
A firm with operations in multiple countries, not just where the company headquarters is located.
Uneven development
The idea that there exists in the world levels of development that are geographically unequal, with core regions creating a larger wealth gap with peripheral regions.
Vernacular/perceptual region
An area that exists based on perceived cultural interconnetions of a shared history, mutual interests, and common identity.
