AP Human Geography Unit 1-4 Notes

Vocabulary flashcards based on key concepts from AP Human Geography Unit 1-4.

Location

The absolute and relative positioning of a place, including latitude and longitude.

Place

The distinctive physical and human characteristics of a location.

Human Geography

The study of how humans interact with their environment.

Movement

The mobility of individuals, goods, and ideas, influencing spatial interactions and connectivity.

Regions

Areas defined by specific criteria that have one or more distinguishing characteristics.

Cartography

The science of mapmaking, traced back to Eratosthenes in ancient Greece.

Choropleth Maps

Thematic maps that use shading or coloration to represent data.

Isoline Maps

Maps that use lines to connect points of equal value, commonly used for data like elevation.

MDC

Most Developed Countries known for high levels of industrialization and standard of living.

LDC

Least Developed Countries characterized by lower economic development and quality of life.

NIC

Newly Industrialized Countries with emerging economies and developing industries.

Demographic Transition Model (DMT)

A model that explains the transition from high birth and death rates to lower birth and death rates as a country develops.

Environmental Determinism

The theory that the physical environment predisposes societies and states towards particular development trajectories.

Possibilism

The theory that the environment sets certain constraints or limitations, but culture is otherwise determined by social conditions.

Urbanization

The increasing population shift from rural to urban areas, often associated with economic development.

Census

An official count of a population, typically conducted every ten years to gather data on demographics.

Push and Pull Factors

Push factors are conditions that drive people away from a location, while pull factors attract people to a new location.

Remittances

Money that migrants send back to their home country, influencing economic conditions.

Brain Drain

The emigration of highly trained or qualified people from a particular country.

Cultural Landscape

The visible imprint of human activity on the landscape, consisting of how people use and alter the land.

Birth Rate

The number of live births per 1,000 people in a year.

Death Rate

The number of deaths per 1,000 people in a year.

Natural Increase Rate (NIR)

The percentage by which a population grows in a year, calculated as the birth rate minus the death rate.

Total Fertility Rate (TFR)

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

Infant Mortality Rate (IMR)

The number of deaths of infants under one year old per 1,000 live births.

Life Expectancy

The average number of years an individual is expected to live based on current mortality rates.

Population Pyramid

A bar graph displaying a population's age and sex composition.

Malthusian Theory

Theory that population growth tends to outpace food supply, leading to mass starvation.

Zero Population Growth (ZPG)

A state where the birth rate equals the death rate, and population growth ceases.

Epidemiologic Transition Model

A model describing changes in population dynamics due to shifting disease patterns.

Guest Workers

Foreign laborers allowed to temporarily live and work in a host country.

Refugee

A person forced to flee their country due to persecution, conflict, or violence.

Internally Displaced Person (IDP)

Someone forced to flee their home but remaining within their country's borders.

Voluntary Migration

Migration based on an individual's free will and initiative.

Forced Migration

Migration where individuals are compelled to move due to external factors.

Counter-urbanization

The movement of people from urban areas to rural areas, often seeking a different quality of life.

Culture Hearth

A center where cultures originated and from which they diffused.

Cultural Diffusion

The spread of cultural traits, ideas, or practices from one place to another.

Relocation Diffusion

The spread of an idea through physical movement of people.

Expansion Diffusion

The spread of a feature from one place to another in a snowballing process, often via hierarchical or contagious means.

Acculturation

The process by which one cultural group adopts traits from another culture through prolonged contact.

Assimilation

The process by which a person or group's culture comes to resemble those of another, often dominant, group.

Multiculturalism

The presence of, or support for the presence of, several distinct cultural or ethnic groups within a society.

Language Family

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

Dialect

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

Lingua Franca

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

Universalizing Religion

A religion that attempts to appeal to all people, not just those living in a particular location or specific ethnic group.

Ethnic Religion

A religion that is primarily associated with one ethnic group and does not seek converts.

Taboo

A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom, often considered sacred and forbidden.

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.

State

A political unit with a defined territory, a permanent population, a government, and internationally recognized sovereignty.

Nation

A group of people united by common culture, language, or ethnicity, with a shared sense of identity and often a desire for self-determination.

Nation-State

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

Sovereignty

The supreme authority of a state over its own affairs, free from external control.

Boundary

An invisible line marking the extent of a state's territory.

Centripetal Force

An attitude or force that unifies people and enhances support for a state.

Centrifugal Force

A force or attitude that tends to divide people and states, weakening central authority.

Primary Sector

Economic activities that directly extract natural resources from the Earth, such as agriculture, fishing, and mining.

Secondary Sector

Economic activities that involve the manufacturing and processing of raw materials into finished goods.

Dependency Ratio

The number of people too young or too old to work, compared to the number of people in their productive years.

Arithmetic Density

The total number of people divided by the total land area.

Physiological Density

The number of people per unit area of arable land.

Agricultural Density

The number of farmers per unit area of arable land.

Ecumene

The portion of Earth's surface occupied by permanent human settlement.

Doubling Time

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

Intervening Opportunity

A closer, more attractive alternative that diminishes an immigrant's desire to migrate to that original destination.

Chain Migration

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

Step Migration

Migration that follows a path of a series of stages or steps toward a final destination.

Transhumance

A seasonal periodic movement of pastoralists and their livestock.

Distance Decay

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

Activity Space

The space within which daily activity occurs.

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 places are located.

Vernacular Region (Perceptual Region)

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

Formal Region (Uniform Region)

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

Functional Region (Nodal Region)

An area organized around a node or focal point.

Site

The physical character of a place.

Situation

The location of a place relative to other places.

Pidgin Language

A form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary, used for communication between speakers of two different languages.

Creole Language

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

Official Language

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

Cultural Syncretism

The blending of two or more cultural traditions.

Secularism

The principle of separation of the state from religious institutions.

Fundamentalism

A strict adherence to the literal interpretation of religious texts and beliefs.

Gerrymandering

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

Supranationalism

The idea or practice of separate national governments coming together to form institutions and create policies that are in the common interest of all members.

Devolution

The transfer of power from a central government to regional or local governments.

Unitary State

A state where most power is placed in the hands of central government officials.

Federal State

A state which allocates strong power to units of local government within the country.

Tertiary Sector

Economic activities that involve the provision of services, such as retail, health care, and education.

Quaternary Sector

Economic activities that involve information processing, research and development, and knowledge-based services.

Quinary Sector

Economic activities that involve the highest levels of decision-making in a society or economy, such as top executives and government officials.

Gross National Income (GNI)

The total income earned by a country's people and businesses, including income earned abroad.

Human Development Index (HDI)

A composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, used to rank countries into four tiers of human development.

Rostow's Development Model

A five-stage model of economic development arguing that all countries can reach high economic development.

Wallerstein's World-System Theory

A theory that divides countries into core, periphery, and semi-periphery groups based on their economic and political power.

Concentric Zone Model

A model of urban structure that describes urban land usage in concentric rings spreading out from the city center.

Central Place Theory

A geographic theory that seeks to explain the number, size, and location of human settlements in a residential system.

Von Thünen Model

A model that explains the spatial distribution of agricultural activities around a market center, based on transportation costs.

Green Revolution

A large increase in crop production in developing countries achieved by the use of fertilizers, pesticides, and high-yield crop varieties.