Vocab Flashcards
Abiotic
Composed of nonliving or inorganic matter.
Acculturation
The process of changes in culture that result in the meeting of two groups each of which retains distinct cultural features.
Assimilation
The process by which a group’s cultural features are altered to resemble those of another more dominant group.
Atmosphere
The thin layer of gases surrounding the Earth.
Behavioral Geography
The study of the psychological basis for individual human actions in space.
Biosphere
All living organisms on Earth, including plants and animals as well as microorganisms.
Biotic
Composed of living organisms.
Cartography
The science of making maps.
Citizen Science
Scientific research by amateur scientists.
Climate
The long term average weather condition at a particular location.
Concentration
The spread of something over a certain area.
Connection
The relationship among people and objects across the barrier of space.
Cultural Landscape
An approach to geography that emphasizes the relationships among social and physical phenomena in a particular study area.
Conservation
The sustainable management of a natural resource.
Contagious Diffusion
The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population.
Cultural Ecology
A geographic approach that emphasizes human-environment relationships.
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 of area.
Diffusion
The process of spreading a feature or trend from one place to another over time.
Distance Decay
The diminished importance and eventual disappearance of a phenomenon with increasing distance from it’s 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 nineteenth and early twentieth-century approach to the study of geography which argued that the general laws fought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. Geography was therefore 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 additive process.
Formal Region (or Uniform Region)
An area in which everyone shares in common one or more distinctive characteristics.
Functional Region (or Nodal Region)
An area organized around a node or focal point.
Geographic Information Science
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, analyzes, and displays geographic data.
Geotagging
Identification and storage of a piece of information by its precise latitude and longitude coordinates.
Global Positioning System (GPS)
A system that determines the precise position of something on Earth through a series of satellites, tracking stations, and receivers.
