Midterm review

Irish Potato Famine (1840s)

Irish Potato Famine (1840s)

The potato crops in Ireland became diseased and the Irish starved. Set off the immigration to the U.S.

Population Change Factors

• Birth rate

• Death rate

• Migration

Black Death/Bubonic Plague

This killed between one-third and two-thirds of the population in less than five years. The epidemic spanned from China to England to North Africa, transmitted along the Silk Road and other trade routes.

Malthus Population Theory

food increases linearly, population increases geometrically. Eventually food crisis will occur.

AREAS IN A CITY

Throughout history, cities have exhibited variations in their size and distribution. Cities began undergoing changes as they matured. Often the business district was located in the city's center, surrounded by residential neighborhoods. As newcomers from the countryside moved to the center of the city, wealthier residents often begin to move to the city's outskirts.

settlement patterns

The way people distribute themselves in their environment, including where they locate their dwellings, how they group dwellings into settlements,and how permenant or transitory those settlements are

Urbanization

Movement of people from rural areas to cities

homogeneous society

a society with a common culture and language that gives it a strong sense of identity

heterogeneous societies

include people who are dissimilar in regard to social characteristics such as religion, income, or race/ethnicity

Population pyramids

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

Demographic Transition Model

rural population

those persons not living in urban areas

urban populations

people living in cities

Where do most people live? (climate, location/region, hemispheres, etc.)

Northern Eastern hemisphere,

Population trends for developed countries

Steady Increase in birth rates and small decline death rates

Population trends for developing cities

push factors

Something that causes someone to leave a location

pull factors

Something that attracts a person to settle in an area

population density

the average number of people living in an area.

Migration

Migration is the process of moving from one place to live in another.

Death rate

• It is expressed as the total number of deaths each year for every 1,000 people

Birth rate

The birth rate is the number of births each year for every 1,000 people living in a place.

Climate Types

tropical, arid, humid subtropical, Mediterranean, marine west coast, highland/alpine, polar/tundra

High Latitude

latitudes (polar regions) are cold year-round because they do not receive direct solar energy

Middle Latitude

middle latitudes have distinct seasons and are also called temperate climates

Low latitude

latitudes (tropics) are warm year-round because they have direct Sun

Seasons

each of the four divisions of the year (spring, summer, autumn, and winter) marked by particular weather patterns and daylight hours, resulting from the earth's changing position with regard to the sun.

Climate

weather conditions in a geographic location over a long period of time

Weather

condition of the atmosphere at a given time and place

Biome

A group of ecosystems with similar climates and organisms

Equinox

It is the autumnal equinox and each pole, north and south, is at a right angle to the Sun. This means 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness in the northern and southern hemispheres.

Solstice

the longest day of the year for places located north of Tropic of Cancer. The North Pole, receives nearly 24 hours of light because of its angle to the sun (directly above the Tropic of Cancer). During this same time period we find the South Pole tipped away from the Sun, reducing the amount of light that reaches the South Pole and creating up to 24 hours of darkness ("polar night").

Coniferous

term used to refer to trees that produce seed-bearing cones and have thin leaves shaped like needles

Dedicious forest

the most common forest ecosystems in the United States.

Tilt

tilt of the Earth determines seasons

Rotation

The spinning of Earth on its axis

Revolution

The path of this revolution is an elliptical orbit and it takes 365 ¼ days for us to revolve around the sun.

Fronts

occurs when winds push two air masses of different temperature or moisture together—precipitation often occurs along a front

Adiabatic Rate

Increase in elevation = temperature decrease with no loss of energy. Decrease in elevation = increase in temperature with no gain in energy.

Orographic Effect/ Rain photo

wind pushes moist air towards a mountain the barrier of the mountain forces the air up which causes it to cool, cool air condenses and forms precipitation on the windward side of the mountain, the side of the mountain not facing the wind (leeward side) is drier—this side is also called a rain shadow

El Nino

(oceanography) a warm ocean current that flows along the equator from the date line and south off the coast of Ecuador at Christmas time

Ocean currents and their effects

ocean currents help move heat back and forth between the polar regions and the tropics

Greenhouse effect

Earth's atmosphere traps heat energy in a process called the greenhouse effect the atmosphere allows light to pass through and this solar energy is converted to heat

Global Warming

human activities like burning coal, oil, and natural gas adds extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and carbon dioxide absorbs heat, so this could increase the greenhouse effect

VEI and Richter Scale

assigns a single number to quantify the amount of seismic energy released by an earthquake. measure of the explosiveness of volcanic eruptions.

Natural disasters caused by plate movements

Earthquakes

Landslides

Tsunami

Types of plate boundaries

• Transform

• Divergent

• Convergent

Transform Boundary

two plates are sliding horizontally past one another.

Convergent Boundary

Here crust is destroyed and recycled back into the interior of the Earth as one plate dives under another. Ring of fire

Divergent Boundary

new crust is created as two or more plates pull away from each other.

Subduction zone

Here crust is destroyed and recycled back into the interior of the Earth as one plate dives under another.

Continental Drift

was first proposed by Alfred Wegener. He said that the Earth's continents were once joined as a supercontinent called Pangea. About 200 million years ago the continents started to spread apart resulting in two landmasses called Gondwana and Laurasia.

Plate Tectonics

15 plates that are all moving in different directions and at different speeds in relationship to each other

Renewable Resources

a resource that can be renewed, solar, wind, water

Fossil Fuels

Coal, oil, natural gas, and other fuels that are ancient remains of plants and animals.

Watersheds

Smaller rivers that flow into larger ones are called tributaries. The area they drain is called a watershed.

External Forces of change

weathering and erosion

Layers of earth

Core, Mantle, Crust, inner core

Hemispheres

division tool used to break world into east, west, north and south.

Latitude

lines running parallel to equator ( 0 degrees) measuring distances north and south. Also called "parallels".

Longitude

lines running north and south (from pole to pole) measuring distances east and west. Marks the boundary between time zones. Called "meridians"

Mental Maps

A mental map is a person's point of view or perspective on an area of interaction.

Absolute Location

The exact location of a place on Earth. Uses lines of latitude and longitude.

Relative Location

A location of a place in relation to another place (i.e. south or downhill).

Formal Region

areas with one or more shared features that make it different from the surrounding areas.Formal regions are often made up of the boundaries for cities, counties, states, and countries.

Functional Region

are made up of different places that are linked together and function as a unit. The New York Metro Subway System is an example of a functional region because people use it daily to get from one part of the metro area to another.

Perceptual Region

reflect human feelings and attitudes (which may or may not be true) and are based on our understanding of the environment around us (just like a mental map).

Map projections

Map makers have different ways of presenting our round Earth onto a flat map.

Special purpose maps

focus on certain kinds of information about a place or a region.

Cartograms

A type of thematic map that transforms space such that the political unit with the greatest value for some type of data is represented by the largest relative area.

Research Methods

Spatial Perspective

Weathering

process wherein rocks are broken or decay over time.

Erosion

movement of surface material from one location to another.

Deposition

depositing of sediments in a different location.

Tropical humid

• found in the tropics, (between 23 1/2 degrees north & south of the equator (hot, wet weather year-round)

• heavy rainfall, no cold winters

• Rainforest biome (tropical)

Tropical wet and dry

-found north and south of Tropical Humid

• seasonal changes in rainfall, causing wet & dry seasons (also called "monsoon" climate)

• Tropical grassland (savanna) biome

Mediterranean

• found along S. Europe and west coasts of continents (near cool oceans or ocean currents)- considered "ideal climate"

• long, sunny summers and mild winters (little snow, freezing)

• Chaparral or Temperate forest biomes

Humid Subtropical

• widespread globally near warm ocean waters

• hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters (some snow, freeze)

• Temperate forest biome (Texas Hill Country), temperate grasslands

• many kinds of trees, vegetation

Marine West Coast

• found along west coasts of continents in middle upper latitudes

• mild weather year-round; generally cool; mild winters/summers

• storms from ocean bring rain/snow

• Temperate forest biome

Humid Continental

• found along east coasts of continents and in interior

-cold and warm air masses mix; distinct "four seasons"

• snowfall in winter, rains in summer