AP Human Geography Summer Preparation Flashcards

A complete set of vocabulary flashcards for AP Human Geography summer preparation, covering geographical nature, population, culture, politics, agriculture, industry, and urban land use.

Cultural landscape

Fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group; the essence of how humans interact with nature.

Arithmetic density

The total number of people divided by the total land area; how many people per area of land.

Physiological density

The number of people per unit of area of arable land, which is land suitable for agriculture.

Hearth

The region from which innovative ideas originate.

Diffusion

The process of spread of a feature or trend from one place to another over time.

Distribution

The arrangement of something across 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.

Transnational Corporation

A company that conducts research, operates factories, and sells products in many countries, not just where its headquarters or shareholders are located.

Site

The physical character of place; what is found at the location and why it is significant.

Situation

The location of a place relative to other places.

Space Time Compression

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

Distance Decay

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

Space

Refers to the physical gap or interval between two objects.

Scale

Representation of a real-world phenomenon at a certain level of reduction or generalization; the ratio of map distance to ground distance.

Formal Region

(Uniform) or homogenous region is an area within which everyone shares in common one or mare distinctive characteristics.

Functional Region

(Nodal region) Area organized around a node or focal point, where the chosen characteristic dominates at a central focus and diminishes outward.

Vernacular Region

(Perceptual Region) is a place that people believe exists as a part of their cultural identity, often identified using a mental map.

Possibilism

The theory that the physical environment may limit some human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to their environment.

Carry capacity

The population level that can be supported, given the quantity of food, habitat, water and other life infrastructure present.

Demographic Transition model

A model with 5 steps: Stage 1 (low growth), Stage 2 (High Growth), Stage 3 (Moderate Growth), Stage 4 (Low Growth), and Stage 5 (zero or negative population group).

Dependency ratio

The number of people who are too you or too old to work compared to the number of people in their productive years.

Doubling time

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

Ecumene

The proportion of earth’s surface occupied by permanent human settlement.

Brain Drain

Large-scale emigration by talented people.

Epidemiological transition model

Identifies a distinctive cause of death in each stage of the demographic transition.

Infant mortality rate (IMR)

The annual number of deaths of infants under one year of age, compared with total live births; expressed as deaths per $1000$ births.

Malthus, Thomas

One of the first to argue that the world’s rate of population increase was far outrunning the development of food population.

Crude Birth Rate (Natality)

The ratio of live births in an area to the population; expressed as the number of births per year to every $1000$ people alive.

Neo-Malthusian

Theory building on Malthus that considers population growth in LDCs and the outstripping of resources other than food.

Agricultural density

The number of farmers per unit of area of farmland.

Population pyramid

Population displayed by age and gender on a bar graph; shape is determined primarily by crude birth rate.

Rate of natural increase

The percentage by which a population grows in a year, calculated as $CBR - CDR = NIR$, excluding migration.

Sex ratio

The number of males per hundred females in the population.

Zero population growth

When the crude birth rate equals the crude death rate and the natural increase rate approaches zero.

Chain migration

When one family member migrates to a new country and the rest of the family follows shortly after.

Forced Migration

People removed from their countries and forced to live in other countries because of war, natural disaster, and government.

Gravity Model

Predicts that the optimal location of a service is directly related to the number of people in the area and inversely related to the distance traveled to access it.

Migration

Form of relocation diffusion involving a permanent move to a new location.

Push-Pull Factors

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

Cultural core/periphery pattern

The idea that the core houses main economic power of a region and the periphery houses lesser economic ties.

Cultural Ecology

The geographic study of human environmental relationships.

Culture

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

Popular Culture

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

Folk Culture

Culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogenous, rural group living in relative isolation.

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.

Animism

Belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like thunderstorms and earthquakes, have a discrete spirit and life.

Buddhism

Major universalizing religion with $365$ million adherents, especially in China and Southeast Asia.

Christianity

Monotheistic religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth; the most popular religion in the world.

Ethnic Religion

A religion with a rather concentrated distribution whose principles are likely based on the physical characteristics of a particular location.

Hinduism

Created in India with approximately one billion followers; third largest religion; incorporates the concept of Karma.

Islam

Monotheistic religion originating with the teachings of Muhammad; second largest religion in the world.

Judaism

Religion of ancient Hebrews, said to be one of the first monotheistic faiths.

Universalizing Religion

An attempt to be global and appeal to all people; core examples include Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism.

Apartheid

The segregation of blacks in South Africa from $1948$ to $1994$ to keep the white minority in power.

Balkanization

The fragmentation or breakup of a region or country into smaller regions or countries.

More Developed Country (MDC)

A country that has progressed relatively far along a continuum of development.

Centrifugal

Forces such as religious, political, or economic conflict that cause disunity in a state.

Centripetal

An attitude that unifies people and enhances support for the state.

Colonialism

The attempt by a country to establish settlements and impose political and economic control and principles.

European Union

A supranational union of $27$ democratic member states of Europe with around $500$ million people.

Forward capital

A symbolically relocated capital city usually because of either economic or strategic reasons, such as Brasília.

Frontier

A zone where no state exercises complete political control; usually uninhabited or sparsely inhabited.

Gerrymander

The process of redrawing legislative boundaries for the purpose of benefiting the political party in power.

Agribusiness

Commercial agriculture characterized by integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, usually through ownership by large corporations.

Biotechnology

Using living organisms in a useful way to produce commercial products like pest resistant crops.

Crop Rotation

The practice of rotating use of different fields from crop to crop each year to avoid exhausting the soil.

First agricultural revolution

Occurred around $8000\text{ B.C.}$ when humans first domesticated plants and animals.

Green Revolution

Rapid diffusion of new agricultural technology, especially new high-yield seeds and fertilizers, between the $1970\text{s}$ and $1980\text{s}$.

Sauer, Carl O.

Defined cultural landscape as an area fashioned from nature by a cultural group.

Von Thunen, Johann Heinrich

Proposed a model in $1826$ where commercial farmers compare the cost of land versus the cost of transporting production to market.

Development

The improvement in material conditions of a place as a result of diffusion of technology and knowledge.

Gross domestic product (GDP)

The total value of goods and services produced in a year in a given country.

Human Development Index (HDI)

An aggregate index of development taking into account GDP, literacy, education, and life expectancy.

Purchasing power parity (PPP)

An index of income related to GDP that takes into account price differences between countries.

World Systems Theory

Perspective explaining a power hierarchy where wealthy 'core' societies dominate and exploit weak peripheral societies.

Bid rent theory

Refers to how the price and demand on land changes as the distance towards the Central Business District (CBD) increases.

Assembly line production/Fordism

Industrial arrangement for continuous flow of work pieces in mass production operations.

Least Cost Theory

Alfred Weber's model stating manufacturing location is determined by minimizing labor, transportation, and agglomeration expenses.

Stages of Growth Model

W. W. Rostow's linear theory of development involving five stages: Traditional Society, Transitional Stage, Take Off, Drive to Maturity, and High Mass Consumption.

CBD

Central Business District; location of skyscrapers and companies; the center of the three urban models.

Centrality

The strength of dominance of an urban center over its surrounding area.

Christaller, Walter

Created the Central Place Theory to explain the distribution of services based on market area and threshold.

Concentric Zone Model

Created by E.W. Burgess; city grows outwards from a central area in five zones.

Counterurbanization

A net migration from urban to rural areas occurring in very developed areas.

Primate city rule

A pattern where the largest settlement in a country has more than twice as many people as the second-ranking settlement.

Rank-size rule

A pattern where the nth largest settlement is $1/n$ the population of the largest settlement.

Favela

A shantytown or slum, especially in Brazil.

Gentrification

The process in which low cost neighborhoods are renovated by the middle class to increase property values.