Geography Exam Review Flashcards

Flashcards for Geography Exam Review

Density

Ratio of an item per unit area

Arithmetic Density

People/Land area

Physiological Density

People/Arable Land

Agricultural Density

Farmers/Arable Land

Pro-natalism

Population policies aimed at increasing birth rate. Ex. Better maternity leave policies

Anti-natalism

Population policies aimed at decreasing birth rate. Ex. China's One-Child Policy or offering free family planning services & contraceptives.

Malthus Theory

The world's population was growing faster than the rate of food production, and as a result mass starvation would occur.

Ravenstein's Laws

A series of laws guiding migration; Include why people migrate, how they migrate, who migrates, and when they migrate

Push Factors

Conditions that induce a migrate to move away from their home. Ex. Environmental disaster, war, famine.

Pull Factors

Conditions in the destination location that attract migrants. Ex. Job opportunity or better climate.

Folk/Indigenous Cultures

Comprised of long-established behaviors, beliefs, and practices passed down from generation to generation; Characteristic of small homogenous populations.

Popular Culture

Widespread behaviors, beliefs, and practices of ordinary people in society at a given point in time; tend to change quickly. Characteristic of large heterogenous populations.

Ethnic Religions

Religions that are cultural and tied to the hearth. They tend not to diffuse widely since they do not seek converts.

Universalizing Religions

Religions that tend to appeal to a wide variety of cultures. They have a wider distribution since gaining converts is part of the goals of these religions.

Lingua Franca

A common language used among speakers of different languages for the purposes of trade and commerce.

Centripetal Force

A force that unites a group of people, cultural traits that create solidarity among a group and provide stability.

Centrifugal Force

A force that divides groups of people, cultural traits that sow division between the people of a country or region, sometimes leading to violence, civil unrest, or war.

Nation-State

A singular nation of people who fulfill the qualifications of a state.

Balkanization

The political term used when referring to the fragmentation or breakup of a region or country into smaller regions or countries.

Von Thunen's Model

A location theory/model suggesting that the perishability of the product and transportation costs to the market, factor into the location of agricultural land use and activity.

Subsistence Agriculture

Agriculture designed primarily to provide food for direct consumption by the farmer and farmer's family

Commercial Agriculture

Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off the farm

Intensive Agriculture

Agriculture that involves greater inputs of capital and paid labor relative to the space being used; a lot of labor for a small plot of land.

Extensive Agriculture

Agriculture that uses fewer inputs of capital and paid labor relative to the amount of space being used.

Green Revolution

Movement beginning in the 1950s and 1960s in which scientists used knowledge of genetics to develop new high-yield strains of grain crops and new fertilizers to expand land under cultivation.

Rank-Size Rule

A rule that states that the rank of a city within an urban system will predict the size of the city; for example, the nth largest settlement is 1/n the population of the largest settlement.

Primate City

A city that is more than twice as large as the next largest city; It is usually a social, political, or economic hub for the system.

Mega-city

More than 10 million people

Gentrification

Process of changing a neighborhood from lower income to middle class

Redlining

Banks designate areas in which they will not loan money

Threshold

Minimum number of people needed to support a good or service.

Range

Maximum distance one will travel for a good or service.

Rostow's Modernization Model

Suggests that all countries can be categorized on a spectrum from traditional to modern and that to become modern, all countries need to pass through distinct stages of economic development in succession.

Primary Sector

Jobs that extract from the earth. Ex. Farming, Mining, Fishing, Logging.

Secondary Sector

Jobs that connect producers to consumers. Ex. Manufacturing

Tertiary Sector

Selling a good or a service. The 'service sector'.

Quaternary Sector

Jobs dealing with processing large amounts of data, especially financial data.

Quinary Sector

High-level government jobs and research jobs

Wallerstein's Model

Theory describing the spatial and functional relationships between countries in the world economy; categorizes countries as part of a hierarchy consisting of the core, periphery, and semi-periphery.

Core

Countries that are highly interconnected, via good transportation and communication network infrastructure that supports economic activity. These countries are typically wealthier with high levels of education and advanced technology.

Semi-periphery

Countries that are in the process of industrializing and where both core and periphery processes occur.

Periphery

Countries that have less wealth, lower levels of education, and less sophisticated technology. They have less stable governments and poorer services such as health care.

Distance Decay

Interaction decreases as distance increases.

Toponym

The name given to a place.

Regions

Area with unifying characteristics

Formal (uniform)

Uniform characteristics throughout the clearly defined region. Ex. Country or State

Functional (nodal)

Activity is focused around a central node. Ex. Pizza delivery route

Vernacular (perceptual)

A region based on cultural perceptions; unclear boundaries Ex. "the South" or "Chinatown"