The Cultural Landscape - Chapter 1: This Is Geography

A detailed vocabulary review set covering essential terms, definitions, and concepts from Chapter 1 of The Cultural Landscape textbook.

Geography

The scientific study of where people and activities are found across Earth's surface and the reasons they are found there.

Map

A two-dimensional, or flat, representation of Earth's surface or a portion of it.

Cartography

The science of making maps.

Global Positioning System (GPS)

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

Geotagging

Identification and storage of a piece of information by its precise latitude and longitude coordinates.

Geographic Information Science (GIScience)

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.

Remote Sensing

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

Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)

Creation and dissemination of geographic data contributed voluntarily and for free by individuals.

Citizen Science

Scientific research by amateur scientists.

Participatory GIS (PGIS)

Community-based mapping, representing local knowledge and information.

Mashup

A map that overlays data from one source on top of a map provided by a mapping service.

Mental Map

A representation of a portion of Earth's surface based on what an individual knows about a place, containing personal impressions of what is in the place and where the place is located.

Map Scale

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

Projection

A system used to transfer locations from Earth's surface to a flat map.

Meridian

An arc drawn on a map between the North and South poles.

Longitude

The numbering system used to indicate the location of meridians drawn on a globe and measuring distance east and west of the prime meridian ($0^\circ$).

Prime Meridian

The meridian, designated as $0^\circ$ longitude, that passes through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England.

Parallel

A circle drawn around the globe parallel to the equator and at right angles to the meridians.

Latitude

The numbering system used to indicate the location of parallels drawn on a globe and measuring distance north and south of the equator ($0^\circ$).

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)

The time in the zone encompassing the prime meridian, or $0^\circ$ longitude.

International Date Line

An arc that for the most part follows $180^\circ$ longitude; when crossed heading east (toward America), the clock moves back $24$ hours, and when crossed heading west (toward Asia), the calendar moves ahead one day.

Place

A specific point on Earth, distinguished by a particular characteristic.

Location

The position of anything on Earth's surface.

Toponym

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

Site

The physical character of a place.

Situation

The location of a place relative to another place.

Region

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

Cultural Landscape

An approach to geography that emphasizes the relationships among social and physical phenomena in a particular study area, or an area fashioned from nature by a cultural group.

Formal Region

An area in which everyone shares in common one or more distinctive characteristics (also called a uniform region).

Functional Region

An area organized around a node or focal point (also called a nodal region).

Vernacular Region

An area that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity (also called a perceptual region).

Culture

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

Spatial Association

The relationship between the distribution of one feature and the distribution of another feature.

Globalization

Actions or processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in scope.

Transnational Corporation

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

Spatial Division of Labor

A arrangement in which a region's workers specialize in particular tasks based on local labor characteristics such as skill level, wage rates, and attitudes toward unions.

Distribution

The arrangement of something across Earth's surface.

Density

The frequency with which something exists within a given unit of area.

Concentration

The spread of something over a given area, categorized as clustered or dispersed.

Pattern

The geometric or regular arrangement of something in a particular area.

Poststructuralist Geography

The study of space as the product of ideologies or value systems of ruling elites.

Humanistic Geography

The study of different ways that individuals form ideas about place and give those places symbolic meanings.

Behavioral Geography

The study of the psychological basis for individual human actions in space.

Assimilation

The process by which a group's cultural features are altered to resemble those of another more dominant group.

Acculturation

The process of changes in culture that result from the meeting of two groups, each of which retains distinct culture features.

Syncretism

The combining of elements of two groups into a new cultural feature.

Diffusion

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

Hearth

The region from which innovative ideas originate.

Relocation Diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another.

Expansion Diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend among people from one area to another in an additive process.

Hierarchical Diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of authority or power to other persons or places.

Contagious Diffusion

The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population.

Stimulus Diffusion

The spread of an underlying principle even though a specific characteristic is rejected.

Network

A chain of communication that connects places.

Distance Decay

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

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 systems.

Uneven Development

The increasing gap in economic conditions between core and peripheral regions as a result of the globalization of the economy.

Resource

A substance in the environment that is useful to people, is economically and technologically feasible to access, and is socially acceptable to use.

Sustainability

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

Renewable Resource

Something produced in nature more rapidly than it is consumed by humans.

Nonrenewable Resource

Something produced in nature more slowly than it is consumed by humans.

Conservation

The sustainable management of a natural resource to meet human needs.

Preservation

The maintenance of resources in their present condition, with as little human impact as possible.

Biotic

Composed of living organisms.

Abiotic

Composed of nonliving or inorganic matter.

Atmosphere

The thin layer of gases surrounding Earth.

Hydrosphere

All of the water on and near Earth's surface.

Lithosphere

Earth's crust and a portion of upper mantle directly below the crust.

Biosphere

All living organisms on Earth, including plants and animals, as well as microorganisms.

Ecosystem

A group of living organisms and the abiotic spheres with which they interact.

Ecology

The scientific study of ecosystems.

Cultural Ecology

A geographic approach that emphasizes human-environment relationships.

Environmental Determinism

A nineteenth- and early twentieth-century approach to geography which argued that the general laws sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences, and that 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.

Polder

Land that the Dutch have created by draining water from an area.