AP Human Geography Spring Final Study Guide 2025

Vocabulary flashcards for AP Human Geography Spring Final Study Guide 2025

Functional Region

A region defined by a specific function or activity.

Isoline Map

A map that uses lines to connect points of equal value.

Map Scale

The relationship between the size of an object on a map to its size on Earth.

Scale of Analysis

The level at which data is aggregated and analyzed.

A system for transferring locations from a globe to a map

Map projection

Primary assumption of environmental determinism

The physical environment determines human actions.

Key difference between qualitative and quantitative data

Qualitative data is descriptive, while quantitative data is numerical.

Columbus’s journey taking 40 days compared to under a week today illustrates

Space-time compression.

Population Pyramid

A visual representation of the age and sex composition of a population.

Replacement Rate

The number of births needed to maintain a stable population (i.e., no growth or decline).

Distance Decay

The decline of an activity or function with increasing distance from its point of origin.

Most likely cause of death in countries in Stage 5 of the Epidemiological Transition Model

Degenerative diseases, such as heart disease and cancer.

Most prominent form of migration worldwide

Rural-to-urban migration.

Intervening Obstacle

An environmental or cultural feature that hinders migration.

The Gravity Model of Migration

A model that predicts migration based on population size and distance.

Common social and economic consequences of rural-to-urban migration in LDCs

Overpopulation, unemployment, and inadequate infrastructure.

Urban challenge illustrated by slums in cities like Mumbai, India

Urban poverty and inadequate housing.

Unintended consequences of anti-natalist policies

Aging population, gender imbalance, and social isolation.

Belief that population growth will lead to war and famine is associated with

Thomas Malthus.

Cultural patterns distinguish folk culture from popular culture

Folk culture is traditional and localized, while popular culture is widespread and mass-produced.

Cultural Divergence

The process of a culture splitting apart or diverging.

Role of colonization in the development of creole languages

Colonization led to the blending of languages, creating new creole languages.

How the Columbian Exchange contribute to cultural diffusion

The Columbian Exchange facilitated the spread of crops, animals, and diseases.

World’s three largest religions

Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.

Why is Hebrew considered a unique case of language revival

Hebrew was revived after being virtually extinct.

Mentifacts are best described as elements that represent

Values, ideas, and beliefs.

The Black Lives Matter movement spread from large cities to rural areas and took on local meaning. What type(s) of diffusion?

Hierarchical and contagious diffusion.

Region or country benefited the LEAST from the Green Revolution

Sub-Saharan Africa.

Why is Norman Borlaug referred to as the 'Father of the Green Revolution'

He pioneered the development of high-yielding crop varieties.

Common strategies for increasing global food supply

Increasing land use, improving irrigation, and developing new food sources.

Von Thünen’s model

A model that explains agricultural land use patterns based on transportation costs and market prices.

Why a country with low agricultural density may still produce a large amount of food

Advanced technology and efficient farming practices.

Major economic drawbacks of plantation agriculture for LDCs

Dependence on foreign markets and exploitation of local resources.

Women’s role in agriculture in LDCs

Women play a significant role in subsistence farming and food production.

Regions most commonly practice slash-and-burn agriculture

Tropical regions, such as the Amazon and parts of Africa and Southeast Asia.

Unintended consequences of gentrification in urban communities

Displacement of low-income residents and loss of community identity.

Examples of coordinated government policies and investments aimed at creating more sustainable, livable, and economically viable urban spaces

Green spaces, public transportation, and mixed-use developments.

Infilling

The process of building on vacant or underused land within existing urban areas.

Favelas example in urban geography

Informal settlements or squatter settlements.

Urban model features edge cities and automobile-dependent growth

The Peripheral Model.

Trends define New Urbanism movements in city planning

Walkability, mixed-use development, and reduced car dependence.

Sequent Occupancy

The idea that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape.

First cities believed to have developed around 10,000 years ago

Mesopotamia.

Basis of China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea

Historical claims and control of islands and resources.

Features shared by the U.S.–Mexico wall, the Berlin Wall, and the Israel–Palestine wall

They are designed to control the movement of people and goods.

The Berlin Conference shaped the borders of African countries. What type of boundary did this create?

Superimposed boundary.

Describe the Arab Spring

A series of pro-democracy uprisings that spread across the Arab world.

Term best describes a group of people with shared culture and history, often without political sovereignty

Nation.

Largest stateless nation in the world, found across Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Armenia

The Kurds.

In political geography, how is Northern Ireland best characterized

A contested region with a complex mix of national and political identities.

Centripetal force in the campaign for Indian independence

A shared desire for independence from British rule.

Defining characteristic of a shatterbelt region

A region caught between conflicting external powers.

Long-term impact of U.S. sanctions on Cuba

Economic hardship and limited access to resources.

Common characteristic of all major chokepoints

Strategic importance for trade and transportation.

Commodity Dependence: What happens when a country is dependent on one or two commodities for export?

Economic instability and vulnerability to price fluctuations.

In 2017 the Ivory Coast exported cocoa products worth over half its total exports. What does this example reveal about commodity dependence?

The country is heavily reliant on a single commodity for its export revenue.

Germany exports cars to Saudi Arabia, while Saudi Arabia exports oil to Germany. What trade concept explains this?

Complementarity.

A global company designs in the U.S., sources from Congo, assembles in Vietnam, and sells in Europe. What does this illustrate?

Global supply chain.

Export Processing Zone

Areas where goods are manufactured for export, often with special regulations and incentives.

Higher-order services such as specialized hospitals in the context of Central Place Theory

Services that require specialized knowledge and expertise, often found in larger central places.

Agglomeration

The clustering of businesses and industries in a specific location.

Defining features of a postindustrial economy

A shift from manufacturing to service-based industries.

Typical characteristics of a Newly Industrialized Country (NIC)

Rapid economic growth, increasing industrialization, and urbanization.

Consequences of deindustrialization in the Rust Belt of the United States

Job losses, urban decay, and economic decline.

Wallerstein's World Systems Theory divides countries into what three categories?

Core, periphery, and semi-periphery.

How does World Systems Theory help explain global political and economic inequality?

It shows how core countries exploit periphery countries for resources and labor.

Pattern

The spatial arrangement of things

Sustainability

The use of Earth’s renewable and nonrenewable natural resources in ways that do not constrain resource use in the future.

Life Expectancy

Describes the average number of years a newborn infant can expect to live at current mortality levels.

Natural Increase Rate

The percentage growth of a population in a year.

Crude Birth Rate

Total number of live births in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society.

Crude Death Rate

Total number of deaths in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society.

Demographic Transition

The process of change in a society's population from a condition of high crude birth and death rates and low rate of natural increase to a condition of low crude birth and death rates, low rate of natural increase, and a higher total population

Migration

All types of movement from one location to another

Net migration

The difference between the level of immigration and the level of emigration.

International migration

Permanent movement from one country to another.

Internal migration

Movement from one region of a country to another.

Interregional migration

Long distance migration from rural areas to urban areas.

Intraregional migration

Migration from one town or city to another within the same urban area.

Brain Drain

A brain drain is the emigration of highly trained or intelligent people from a particular country

Culture

The body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group's distinct tradition.

Terroir

The contributions of a location's physical features to the way food tastes.

Creole

A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer’s language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated.

Dairy Farming

The system of farming most dependent on proximity to the market.

Horticulture

The growing of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

Intensive Subsistence Agriculture

A more labor-intensive and smaller-scale agriculture than is typically practiced in more developed countries.

Pastoralism

Refers to the raising of livestock.

Slash-and-burn agriculture

Agriculture that involves the cutting down and burning of forests and woodlands,

CBD

Central Business District, downtown.

Central City

An urban area that is not suburban; generally the older or original city or cities that were incorporated into a metropolis.

Gentrification

The process by which middle-class people move into deteriorated inner-city neighborhoods and renovate the housing.

Microstate

A group sharing an isolated or underdeveloped island

Buffer State

A zone separating two states in which neither state exercises political control.

State

A politically organized territory that is administered by a sovereign government and is recognized by a significant portion of the international community.

Multinational State

State with more than one nation within its borders.

Nation-state

State whose territory corresponds to that occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been transformed into a nationality.

Fragmented State

A state that contains several discontinuous pieces of territory.

Prorupted State

An otherwise compact state with a large projecting extension.

Perforated State

A state that completely surrounds another one.

Landlocked state

A state that does not have a direct outlet to the sea.