THE BIG AP HUMAN GEOGRAPHY VOCAB LIST

Acitve Solar Energy Systems

Solar energy system that collects energy through the use of mechanical devices like photovoltaic cells or flat-plate collectors

Agribusiness

Commercial agriculture characterized by integration of different steps in the food-proccessing industry, usually through the ownership by large corporations.

Agricultural Density

The ratio of the number of farmers to the total amount of land suitable for agriculture

1st Agricultural Revoluion

The time when human beings first domesticated plants and animals and no longer relied entirely on hunting and gathering.

Agriculture

The deliberate effort to modify a portion of the Earth's surface through the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock for sustenence or economic gain.

Air Pollution

Concentration of trace substances such as carbon monoxide, sulfur oxide, hydrocarbons, and solid particulates, at a greater level than occurs in average air.

Animism

Belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, such as thunderstorms and earthquakes, have discrete spirit and concious life.

Annexation

Legally adding land area to a city in the United States

Apartheid

Laws (no longer in effect) in South Africa that physicall separated different races into different geographic areas.

Arithmic Density

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

Autonomous Religion

A religion that does not have a central authority but shares ideas and cooperates informally.

Balance of Power

Condition of roughly equal strength between opposing countries or alliances of countries.

Balkanization

process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among its ethnicities.

Balkanized

A small geographic area that could not be successfully organized into one or more stable states because it was inhabited by many ethnicities with complex, long-standing antagonisms toward each other.

Base Line

An east-west line designated under the Land Ordinance of 1785 to facilitate the surveying and numbering of townships in the United States.

Basic Industries

Industries that sell their products or services primarily to consumers outside the settlement

Biochemical Oxygen Demand

Amount of oxygen required by aquatic bacteria to decompose given load of organic waste; a measure of water pollution.

Biodiversity

The number of species within a specific habitat.

Biomass Fuel

Fuel that derives from plant material and animal waste.

Blockbusting

A process by which real estate agents convinced white property owners to sell their houses at low prices because of fear that black families would soon be moving into the neighborhood.

Boundary

Invisible line that marks the extent of a state territory.

Brain Drain

Large-scale emigration by talented people.

Branch (of a religion)

A large and fundamental division within a religion.

Break-of-Bulk Point

A location where transfer is possible from one mode of transportation to another.

Bulk-gaining Industry

An industry in which the final product weighs more or comprises a greater volume than the inputs.

Bulk-reducing Industry

An industry in which the final product weighs less or comprises a lower volume than the inputs.

Business Services

Services that primarily meet the needs of other businesses.

Cartography

The science of making maps.

Caste

The class or distinct hereditary order into which a hindu is assigned according to religious law.

Census Tract

An area delineated by the U.S, Bureau of the Census for which statistics are published; in urbanized ares, they correspond roughly to neighborhoods.

Census

A compete enumeration of a population.

Central Business District

The area of the city where retail and office activities are clustered.

Central Place Theory

A theory that explains the distribution of services, based on the fact that settlements serve as centers of market areas for services; larger settlements are fewer and farther apart than smaller settlements and provide services for a larger number of people who are willing to travel further.\

Central Place

A market center for the exchange of services by people attracted from the surrounding area.

Centripetal Force

An attitude that tends to unify people and enhance a state.

Cereal Grain

A grass yielding grain for food.

Chaff

Husks of grain separated from the seed by threshing.

Chain Migration

Migration of paople to a specific location because of relatives or people of the same nationality previously migrated there.

Chlorofluorocarbon

A gas used as a solvent, a propelant in aerosols, a refrigerant, and in plastics foams and fire extinguishers.

Circulation

Short-term, repetative, or cyclical movemens that recur on a regular basis.

City-state

A sovreign state comprising a city and its immediate hinterland.

Clustered Rural Settlement

A rural settlement in which the houses and farm buildings of each family are situated close to each other and fields surround the settlements.

Colonialism

Attempt by one country to establish settlements and to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles in another territory.

Colony

A territory that is legally tied to a sovereign state rather than completely independent.

Combine

A machine that reaps, threshes, and cleans grain while moving over a field.

Commercial Agriculture

Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off the farm.

Compact State

A state in which the distance from the center to any boundary does not vary significantly.

Concentration

The spread of something over a given area.

Concentric Zone Model

A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are spatially arranged in a series of rings.

Connections

Relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space.

Conservation

The sustainable use and management of a natural resource, through consuming at a less rapid rate than it can be replaced.

Consumer Services

Businesses that provide services primarily to individual consumers, including retail services and personal services.

Contagious Diffusion

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

Cosmogony

A set of religious beliefs concerning the origin of the universe.

Cottage Industry

Manufacturing based in homes rather than in a factory, commonly found before the Industrial Revolution.

Council of Government

A cooperative agency consisting of representatives of local governments in a metropolitan area in the United States.

Counterurbanization

Net migration from urban to rural areas in more developed countries.

Creole

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

Crop Rotation

The practice of rotating use of different fields from crop to crop each year, to avoid exhausting the soil.

Crop

Grain or fruit gathered from a field as a harvest during a particular season.

Crude Birth Rate

The total number of live births in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society.

Crude Death Rate

The total number of deaths in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society.

Cultural Ecology

Geographic approach that emphasizes human-environment relationships.

Cultural Landscape

Fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group.

Culture

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

Custom

The frequent repetition of an act, to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group of people performing the act.

Demographic Transition

The process of change in a society's population from a condition of high crude birth and death rates and low rate of natural increase to a condition of low crude birth and death rates, low rate of natural increase, and a higher total population.

Demography

the scientific study of population characteristics

Density

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

Dependency Ratio

The number of people under the age of 15 and over age 64, compares to the number of people active in the labor force.

Desertification

Degradation of land, especially in semiarid areas, primarily because of human actions like excessive crop planting, animal grazing, and tree cutting.

Denomination

A division of a branch that unites a number of local congregations in a single legal and administrative body.

Development

A process of improvement in the material conditions of people through diffusion of knowledge and technology.

Dialect

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

Diffusion

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

Diocese

The basic unit of geographic organization in the Roman Catholic Church

Dispersed Rural Settlement

A rural settlement pattern characterized by isolated farms rather than clustered villages.

Distance Decay

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

Distribution

The arrangement of something across Earth's surface.

Double Cropping

Harvesting twice a year from the same field.

Doubling Time

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

Economic Base

A community's collection of basic industries.

Ecumene

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

Edge City

a large node of office and retail activities on the edge of an urban area

Elongated State

A state with a long, narrow shape.

Emigration

Migration from a location.

Enclosure Movement

The process of consolidating small landholdings into a smaller number of larger farms in England during the eighteenth century.

Environmental Determinism

A nineteenth- and early twentieth-century approach to the study of geography that argued that the general laws sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. Geography was therefore the study of how the physical environment caused human activities.

Epidemiology

Branch of medical science concerned with the incidence, distribution, and control of diseases that affect large numbers of people.

Epidemiological Transition

distinctive causes of death in each stage of the demographic transition

Ethnic Cleansing

Process in which more powerful ethnic group forcibly removes a less powerful one in order to create an ethnically homogeneous region.

Ethnic Religion

A religion with a relatively concentrated spatial distribution whose principles are likely to be based on the physical characteristics of the particular location in which its adherents are concentrated.

Ethnicity

Identity with a group of people that share distinct physical and mental traits as a product of common heredity and cultural traditions.

Expansion Diffusion

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

Extinct language

A language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no longer used.

Federal State

An internal organization of a state that allocates most powers to units of local government.

Ferrous

Metals, including iron ore, that are utilized in the production of iron and steel.

Filtering

a process of change in the use of a house, from single-family owner occupancy to abandonment

Fission

The splitting of an atomic nucleus to release energy.

Floodplain

The area subject to flooding during a given number of years according to historical trends.