APHUG: Unit 5 Chapter 12 - Vocabulary (Human-Environment Interaction)

Intensive Agriculture

an agricultural practice in which farmers expend a great deal of effort to produce as much yield as possible from an area of land

Market Gardening

a type of farming that produces fruits, vegetables, and flowers and typically serves a specific market or urban area

Plantation Agriculture

a type of large-scale commercial farming of one particular crop grown for markets often distant from the plantation

Mixed Crop/Livestock System

a type of farming in which both crops and livestock are raised for profit

Extensive Agriculture

an agricultural practice with relatively few inputs and little investment in labor and capital that results in relatively low outputs

Shifting Cultivation

the agricultural practice of growing crops or grazing animals on a piece of land for a year or two, then abandoning that land when the nutrients have been depleted from the soil and moving to a new piece of land where the process is repeated

Nomadic Herding

a type of agriculture based on people moving their domesticated animals seasonally or as needed to allow the best grazing

Ranching

a form of agriculture focused on the raising of livestock for meat, wool, milk, and other animal products, typically on large tracts of land

Rural Settlement Pattern

the spatial organization and arrangement of communities in non-urban areas, highlighting how people live and interact with their environment

Clustered Settlement Pattern

a type of settlement pattern where buildings and homes are located close together, forming a compact group

Dispersed Settlement Pattern

a rural land-use structure characterized by isolated, individual farmsteads or homes spread far apart across a large area rather than concentrated in a village

Linear Settlement Pattern

a type of community layout where buildings and structures are arranged in a straight line, often along a transportation route such as a road or river

Rural Survey Method

techniques used to divide, map, and define property boundaries in non-urban areas, directly influencing rural settlement patterns and agricultural land use

Township and Range

divides land into a grid of townships, each typically six miles square, and further subdivides these into sections, which are one square mile each

Metes and Bounds

a traditional, irregular land surveying method that defines property boundaries using physical landscape features (bounds) and specific measurements of direction and distance (metes)

Domestication

the deliberate effort to grow plants and raise animals, making plants and animals adapt to human demands and using selective breeding to develop desirable characteristics

Fertile Crescent

a hearth in Southwest Asia that forms an arc from the eastern Mediterranean coast up into what is now western Turkey and then south and east along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to western parts of modern Iran