Population Geography and Density Patterns

Vocabulary flashcards covering core human geography concepts from the lecture notes, including spatial distribution patterns, environmental/physical factors, human/historical influences, and density measurements.

Population distribution

Where people live within a geographic area.

Uniform pattern

A pattern of population distribution in which individuals or settlements are spread out evenly over an area.

Clustered pattern

A population distribution pattern where individuals or settlements are grouped or clumped together around a central point.

Linear pattern

A pattern of population distribution that forms long and narrow lines.

Dispersed pattern

A pattern of population distribution in which individuals or settlement features are spread out across an area.

Random pattern

A population distribution pattern in which individuals or settlements are distributed without apparent order or logic.

Climate

The long-term patterns of weather in an area, established by averaging temperature, precipitation, wind, and atmospheric conditions over decades.

Growing season

The period of the year when temperature and rainfall allow plant growth.

Elevation temperature drop

The atmospheric rate of cooling where the average temperature drops by approximately $3^\circ\text{F}$ with every $1,000\,\text{foot}$ rise in elevation.

Alluvial soils

Rich, fertile soils created when the flow of rivers and streams slows, allowing particles of suspended soil and organic matter to settle in lower reaches, river valleys, and deltas.

Aquifers

Underground water sources accessed by humans for agriculture, industry, sanitation, and drinking supplies.

Human migration

The process that occurs when people make a permanent move from one place to another.

Norilsk, Siberia

A city located far north of the Arctic Circle where nearly $200,000$ people live despite harsh winter conditions to access the world's largest known deposits of nickel.

Khmer Rouge

Leaders of Cambodia who forced more than $2\,\text{million}$ residents of Phnom Penh to migrate to the rural countryside in 1975, causing an estimated $1.5\,\text{million}$ to $2\,\text{million}$ deaths.

Center-pivot irrigation

A type of irrigation using rotating sprinklers fed by deep underground water reserves, used to convert arid desert into viable farmland in places like Saudi Arabia.

Brasília

The capital city established by the Brazilian government in 1960 to stimulate inland economic activity and encourage population redistribution to central Brazil.

Abuja

Nigeria's first planned city built in the 1980s to replace coastal Lagos as the capital, chosen for its central inland location, accessibility, and climate.

Migration period

An era between 300 and 700 C.E. during which Central Asian populations migrated into Europe, shaping human population concentrations across Europe, Northern Africa, and western Asia.

Population density

The number of people occupying a unit of land.

Arithmetic density

Also called crude density, it measures the total number of people divided by the total land area, yielding an overall average density without indicating spatial distribution patterns.

Physiological density

The total number of people per unit of arable land, indicating the amount of agricultural pressure a population places on cultivable land.

Arable land

Land that can be used to grow crops.