AP HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

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Absolute location

Exact location of a place on the earth described by global coordinates

Relative location

Location of a place in relation to other places

Site

Physical character of a place

Situation

The location of a place relative to its surroundings and other places

Distance decay

The diminishing in importance and eventual disappearance of a phenomenon with increasing distance from its origin.

Time-space compression

The reduction in the time it takes to diffuse something to a distant place, as a result of improved communications and transportation systems

Scale

The relationship between the portion of Earth being studied and Earth as a whole

Map scale

The relationship between the size of an object on a map and the size of the actual feature on Earth's surface.

Cartography

The science of making maps

Thematic maps

A map that demonstrates a particular feature or a single variable. Examples include choropleth, dot distribution, graduated symbol, isoline, and cartogram.

Reference maps

A general-purpose map that shows a variety of information such as boundaries, place names, and physical features

GPS (Global Positioning System)

A system that determines the precise position of something on Earth through a series of satellites, tracking stations, and receivers.

GIS (Geographic Information Systems)

A computer system that stores, organizes, analyzes, and displays geographic data.

Remote sensing

The acquisition of data about Earth's surface from a satellite orbiting Earth or from other long-distance methods.

Field observations

The act of physically visiting a location or place and recording firsthand information.

Census data

Official count of a population

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.

Quantitative data

Data associated with mathematical models and statistical techniques used to analyze spatial location and association.

Place

A specific point on Earth distinguished by a particular character.

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 a certain character.

Toponym

The name given to a portion of the Earth's surface.

Region

An area distinguished by a unique combination of trends or features.

Formal (uniform) region

An area in which everyone shares in common one or more distinctive characteristics

Functional (nodal) region

An area organized around a node or focal point

Perceptual (vernacular) region

An area that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity

Spatial patterns

The perceptual structure, placement, or arrangement of objects on Earth. Also, the organization of space in terms of the arrangement of places on Earth's surface

Environmental determinism

A 19th- and early 20th-century approach to the study of geography that argued that the general laws sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. Geography was therefore the study of how the physical environment caused human activities.

Possibilism

The theory that the physical environment may set limits on human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to the physical environment and choose a course of action from many alternatives.

Cultural landscape

The fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group.

Sustainability

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

Natural resources

Materials or substances such as minerals, forests, water, and fertile land that occur in nature and can be used for economic gain.

Demography

The scientific study of population characteristics.

Population density

A measurement of the number of people per given unit of land

Carrying capacity

The largest number of people that the environment of a particular area can sustainably support.

Population pyramid

A bar graph representing the distribution of population by age and sex.

Age-sex structure

Composition of a population as determined by the number or proportion of males and females in each age category.

Dependency ratio

The number of people under age 15 and over age 64 compared to the number of people active in the labor force.

Crude birth rate (CBR)

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

Crude death rate (CDR)

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

Natural increase rate (NIR)

The percentage growth of a population in a year, computed as the crude birth rate minus the crude death rate.

Doubling time

The number of years needed to double a population, assuming a constant rate of natural increase.

Infant mortality rate

The total number of deaths in a year among infants under one year old for every 1,000 live births in a society.

Life expectancy

The average number of years an individual can be expected to live, given current social, economic, and medical conditions. Life expectancy at birth is the average number of years a newborn infant can expect to live.

Total fertility rate (TFR)

The average number of children a woman will have throughout her childbearing years.

Demographic Transition Model (DTM)

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.

Epidemiologic Transition Model

Distinctive causes of death in each stage of the demographic transition.

Malthusian theory

The theory that population grows geometrically, while food supply increases arithmetically

Neo-Malthusians

Group who built on Malthus' theory and suggested that people wouldn't just starve for lack of food, but would have wars about resources

Antinatalist policy

Government policies that seek to reduce birth rates

Pronatalist policy

Government policies that encourage child birth

Migration

A form of relocation diffusion involving a permanent move to a new location.

Push/pull factors

Factors that induce people to leave old residences and move to new locations.

Voluntary migration

Permanent movement undertaken by choice.

Forced migration

Permanent movement compelled usually by cultural factors.

Refugees

People who are forced to migrate from their home country and cannot return for fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion.

Internally displaced persons (IDPs)

People who have been forced to migrate for similar political reasons as refugees but have not migrated across an international border

Asylum seekers

Someone who has migrated to another country in the hope of being recognized as a refugee

Step migration

Migration to a distant destination that occurs in stages

Chain migration

Migration of people to a specific location because relatives or members of the same nationality previously migrated there

Transnational migration

Migration across national borders

Guest workers

Workers who migrate to the developed countries of Northern and Western Europe, usually from Southern and Eastern Europe or from North Africa, in search of higher-paying jobs.

Remittances

Money migrants send back to family and friends in their home countries, often in cash, forming an important part of the economy in many poorer countries

Brain drain

Large-scale emigration by talented people.

Intervening obstacle

An environmental or cultural feature that hinders migration.

Intervening opportunity

The presence of a nearer opportunity that greatly diminishes the attractiveness of sites farther away.

Ravenstein’s Laws of Migration

A set of 11 generalizations about migration, including distance, gender, and socio-economic status

Gravity model

A model which holds that the potential use of a service at a particular location is directly related to the number of people in a location and inversely related to the distance people must travel to reach the service.

Population policies

Government actions taken to affect the size, distribution, or composition of its population.

Culture

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

Cultural trait

A single element of normal practice in a culture

Cultural complex

A related set of cultural traits, such as prevailing agricultural practices. Business, sports, and religious practices are other examples.

Cultural landscape

The fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group.

Folk culture

Culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups.

Popular culture

Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics.

Cultural relativism

The practice of judging a culture by its own standards.

Ethnocentrism

The practice of judging another culture by the standards of one's own culture.

Taboo

A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.

Cultural hearth

The region from which innovative ideas originate.

Cultural diffusion

The spread of a cultural trait from one society to another.

Assimilation

The process of giving up cultural traditions and adopting the social customs of the dominant culture of a place.

Acculturation

The process of adjustment to the dominant culture, while retaining features of a folk culture.

Syncretism

The amalgamation or attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought.

Multiculturalism

The doctrine that several different cultures (rather than one national culture) can coexist peacefully and equitably in a single country.

Language family

A collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed long before recorded history.

Language branch

A collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed several thousand years ago; differences are not as extensive or as old as with language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that the branches derived from the same family.

Dialect

A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.

Lingua franca

A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages.

Creole language

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

Isolated language

A language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any language family.

Official language

The language adopted for use by a government for the conduct of business and publication of documents.

Religion

A system of beliefs and practices that attempts to order life in terms of culturally perceived ultimate priorities.

Monotheism

The belief in one God

Polytheism

The belief in or worship of more than one god.

Religious hearth

The origin of religious beliefs and a central place in how those beliefs are transmitted around the world.

Secularism

A doctrine that rejects religion and religious considerations.

Ethnicity

Identity with a group of people who share distinct physical and mental traits as a product of common heredity and cultural traditions.

Race

Identity with a group of people descended from a common ancestor.

Gender roles

Cultural expectations about the way men and women should behave.

Ethnic enclave

A place with a high concentration of an ethnic group that is distinct from those in the surrounding area.

Centripetal force

An attitude that tends to unify people and enhance support for a state.