Unit 1 - Thinking Geographically Flashcards
Absolute Distance
A distance that can be measured with a standard unit of length, such as a mile or kilometer (anything with meter)
Absolute Location
The exact position of an object or place, measured within the spatial coordinates of a grid system
Accessibility
The relative ease with which a destination may be reached from some other place
Aggregation
To come together into a mass, sum, or whole
Anthropogenic
Human-induced changes in the natural environment
Azimuthal Projection
A map projection in which the plane is the most developed surface
Breaking Point
The farthest reach of a city’s social and economic influence is known as its __________.
Cartograms
A type of thematic map that transforms space such that the political unit with the greatest value for some type of data is represented by the largest relative area.
Cartography
The theory and practice of making a visual representation of Earth’s surface in the form of maps
Choropleth map
A thematic map that uses tones or colors to represent spatial data as average values per unit area - SHOWS DENSITY NO DISTRIBUTION
Cognitive Map
mental map of places
Complementarity
The actual or potential relationship between 2 places, usually referring to economic interactions
Connectivity
The degree of economic, social, cultural, or political connection between 2 places
Contagious Diffusion
The spread of a disease, an innovation, or cultural traits through direct contact with another person, or place
Cultural ecology
AKA NATURE-SOCIETY Geography, the study of interactions between societies and the natural environments in which they live.
Cultural Landscape
The human-modified natural landscape specifically containing the imprint of a particular culture or society.
Distance Decay Effect
The decrease in interaction between two phenomena, places or people as the distance between them increases.
Dot Maps
Thematic maps that use points to show the precise locations of specific observations or occurrences, such as crimes, car accidents, or births.
Earth System Science
A systematic approach to physical geography that looks at the interaction between Earth’s physical systems and processes on a GLOBAL scale
Expansion Diffusion
The spread of ideas, innovations, fashion, or other phenomena to surround areas through contact and exchange,
Formal Region
Definition of regions based on common themes such as similarities in language, climate, land use, etc.
Friction of Distance
A measure of how much absolute distance affects the interaction between two places
Fuller Projection
maintains the accurate size and shape of landmasses but completely rearranges direction such that the 4 cardinal directions no longer have meaning
Functional Region
Definition of regions based on common interaction (or function example, a boundary line drawn around the circulation of a particular newspaper.
Geographical Information System (GIS)
A set of computer tools used to capture, store, transform, analyze, and display geographic data.
GEOID
The actual shape of Earth, which is rough and oblate, or slightly squashed. Earth’s diameter is longer around the equator than along the north-south meridians.
Gravity Model
A mathematical formula that describes the level of interaction between two places, based on the size of their populations and their distance from each other.
Hierarchial Diffusion
A type of diffusion in which something is transmitted between places because of a physical or cultural community between those places.
International Date Line
The line of longitude that marks where each new day begins, centered on the 180th meridian.
Intervening Opportunity
If one place has a demand for some good or service and two places have a supply of equal price and quality, the supplier closer to the buyer will represent an intervening opportunity, thereby blocking the third from being able to share its supply of goods or services. Intervening opportunities are frequently used because transportation costs usually decrease with proximity.
Law of Retail Gravitation
A law stating that people will be drawn to larger cities to conduct their business since larger cities have a wider influence on the surrounding hinterlands.
W. D. Pattison
A geographer who claimed that geography drew from four distinct traditions: earth-science tradition, the culture-environment tradition, the locational tradition, and the area-analysis tradition.
Perceptual Region
Highly individualized definition of regions based on perceived commonalities in culture and landscape
Prime Meridian
Marks the 0-degree line of longitude
Qualitative Data
Data associated with a more humanistic approach to geography, often collected through interviews, empirical observations, or the interpretation of texts, artwork, old maps, and other archives.
Quantitive Data
Data associated with mathematical models and statistical techniques used to analyze spatial location and association.
Relative Distance
A measure of distance that includes the costs of overcoming the friction of absolute distance separating two places. Relative distance often describes the amount of social, cultural, or economic connectivity between two places.
Relative Location
The position of a place relative to the places around it.
Relocation Diffusion
The diffusion of ideas, innovations, behaviors, and so on from one place to another through migration.
Carl Sauer
Geographer from the University of California at Berkeley who defined the concept of the cultural landscape as the fundamental unit of geographical analysis. This landscape results from the interaction between humans and the physical environment. Sauer argued that virtually no landscape has escaped alteration by human activities.
Site
The absolute location of a place, described by local relief, landforms, and other cultural or physical characteristics.
Situation
The relative location of a place in relation to the physical and cultural characteristics of the surrounding area and the connections and interdependencies within that system; a place’s spatial context.
Spatial Diffusion
The ways in which phenomena, such as technological innovations, cultural trends, or even outbreaks of disease, travel over space.
Time-Space Convergence
The idea that distance between some places is actually shrinking as technology enables more rapid communication and increased interaction among those places
Transferability
The costs involved in moving goods from one place to another.
Types of Geospatial Data
5 - GIS, GPS, remote sensing, satellite imagery, census
Uses of geospatial info
4 Main - Government, disaster response, business, personal decision making
Environmental determinism
The theory that the physical environment controls human character and behavior and consequently human cultures and societies
Possiblism
The term Possibilism means that the environment only limits the number of choices that a person has. At its heart, possibilism follows the notion that humans have commanding power over their environment, albeit within certain limits.
Trouble with boundaries
3 - overlapping, transitional, contested
reference maps example
a road map or atlas
thematic maps example
dot map that shows an instance of petty crimes in the London metropolitan area
____ maps work well for locating and navigating between places, while ____ maps display one or more variables across a specific space
reference & thematic
formal region example
the pan-Arab region of northern Africa & Southwest Asia is best classified as a formal region
