Geography Vocabulary Flashcards

Flashcards for vocabulary review

Census data

An official count of individuals in a population, conducted every 10 years in the USA.

Reference maps

Maps designed for people to refer to for general information about places, with the main types being political and physical.

Thematic Maps

Maps used as communication tools to show how human activities are distributed (e.g., cartogram, choropleth, dot density, isoline, proportional symbol maps).

Clustering

Spatial pattern where features or phenomena are grouped or bunched together in an area.

Dispersal

Spatial pattern where features or phenomena appear to be distributed over a wide area.

Absolute location

The precise spot where something is located.

Relative Location

The location of something in relation to other things.

Distance Decay

The effect of distance on cultural or spatial interactions.

Time-Space Compression

The increasing sense of connectivity that seems to be bringing people closer together even though their distances are the same.

Sustainability

The goal of the human race reaching equilibrium with the environment; meeting the needs of the present without compromising resources for future generations.

Natural Resources

Physical materials constituting part of Earth that people need and value.

Scale of Analysis

How zoomed in or out you are when looking at geographic data (Global, Regional, National, State, and Local).

Formal Region

A region based on quantitative data that can be documented or measured (e.g., government areas).

Functional Region

A region based around a node or focal point (e.g., radio station broadcast area).

Vernacular (Perceptual) Region

An area that shares a common qualitative characteristic and is a region because people believe it is (e.g., the Midwest).

Ecumene

A term used by geographers to mean where people are settled on the earth.

Arithmetic Density

The total number of objects in an area; calculated by dividing the population by the total land area.

Physiological Density

The number of people supported by a unit area of arable land.

Agricultural Density

The ratio of the number of farmers to the amount of arable land.

Carrying Capacity

The maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the available resources.

Overpopulation

When there are not enough resources in an area to support a population.

Age/sex ratio

Comparison of the numbers of males and females of different ages.

Environmental Determinism

How the physical environment caused (determined) social development.

Possibilism

The physical environment may limit some human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to their environment.

Region

A place larger than a point and smaller than a planet that is grouped together because of a measurable or perceived common feature.

Demography

The scientific study of population characteristics.

Crude Birth Rate (CBR)

The number of live births per one thousand people in the population.

Crude Death Rate (CDR)

The number of deaths per one thousand people in the population.

Doubling time

The time period it takes for a population to double in size (assuming a constant growth rate).

Fertility

The number of live births occurring in a population.

Infant mortality rate (IMR)

The number of children who don't survive their first year of life per 1000 live births in a country.

Mortality

The number of deaths occurring in a population.

Rate of Natural Increase (RNI)

(birth rate - death rate)/10 - a positive NIR means a population is growing and a negative NIR means a population is shrinking.

Total fertility rate (TFR)

The average number of children a woman is predicted to have in her child bearing (fecund) years.

Demographic Transition Model

A model showing the transition from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates as a country develops from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economic system.

Epidemiological Model

Explains how society has developed and the change in how/why people are dying as we have progressed through the demographic transition model.

Malthus Theory

While population increases geometrically, food supply increases arithmetically (population will increase more quickly than food supply).

Neo-Malthusian theory

Earth's resources can only support a finite population, advocating for contraceptive and family planning to keep population low and protect resources and prevent famine and war.

Antinatalist policies

When a country provides incentives for people to have fewer children (sometimes including punishments).

Pronatalist policies

When a country provides incentives for people to have more children.

Contraception

Methods of preventing pregnancy.

Ravenstein’s Laws of Migration

A set of generalizations about migration, including concepts like step migration, short distances, and economic motivations.

Dependency ratio

The ratio of the number of people not in the workforce (dependents) and those who are in the workforce (producers).

Life expectancy

The average number of years a person born in a country might expect to live.

Voluntary migration

People choosing to migrate (not being forced).

Push Factors

Forces that drive people away from a place (e.g., no jobs, slavery, political instability).

Pull Factors

Forces that draw people to immigrate to a place (e.g., jobs, to be near family).

Asylum seeker

A person seeking residence in a country outside of their own because they are fleeing persecution.

Chain migration

A series of migrations within a group that begins with one person who, through contact with the group, pulls people to migrate to the same area.

Forced migration

When people migrate not because they want to but because they have no other choice.

Transhumance

Moving herds of animals to the highlands in the summer and into the lowlands in the winter.

Political Impact

Brain drain: when the majority of educated or skilled workers leave an area to pursue better opportunities elsewhere.

Cultural Impact

loss of culture or migrants bring in new language.

Sense of place

a strong feeling of identity that is deeply felt by inhabitants and visitors of a location

Language

is a set of mutually intelligible sounds and symbols that are used for communication

Gender

For our purposes in class, it refers to the cultural di erences in how men are treated di erently than women

Expansion

The spread of an idea through a population in a way that the number of those influenced becomes continuously larger. Includes contagious, hierarchical, and stimulus diffusion

Contagious

Transmission of a phenomenon through close contact with nearby places, like diseases

Hierarchical

An idea spreads by passing first among the most connected individuals, then spreading to other individuals (large connected cities to other large connected cities, then to smaller connected cities)

Stimulus

A form of diffusion in which a cultural adaptation is created as a result of the introduction of a cultural trait from another place. In other words, it is the spreading of an underlying principle of an idea when the idea as a whole cannot spread to a particular culture.

Colonialism

an e ort by one country to establish settlement in a territory and to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles on that territory

Imperialism

The policy of extending a country’s influence through political or military force to areas already developed by an indigenous people.

Globalization

World interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology.

Acculturation

adoption of cultural traits, such as language, by one group under the influence of another

Assimilation

the process of a person or group losing the cultural traits that made them distinct from the people around them

Multiculturalism

when various ethnic groups coexist with one another without having to sacrifice their particular identities

State

political unit with a permanent population and boundaries that are recognized by other states that allows for the administration of laws, collection of taxes, and provision of defense.

Nation

people who think of themselves as one based on a shared sense of culture and history and who desire political autonomy

Nation-states

a state with a single nation (very few of these exist)

Devolution

the transfer of decision-making power from a central government to a lower level.

Neocolonialism

gaining indirect control of another country through economic or cultural pressures (as opposed to colonialism which generally used military power (Example: After colonization- Africa continued to export raw materials- resulted in underdevelopment of economie)

Territoriality

the perceived connection of people, their culture, and their economic systems to the land

Boundary

line that determines the limit of state jurisdiction (the o cial power to make legal decisions and judgement) that is a vertical plane that cuts through the subsoil and extends into the airspace above and often coincides with cultural, national, or economic divisions.

Redistricting

when voting districts are redrawn due to changes in population.

Gerrymandering

redrawing voting district boundaries to give

Agriculture

modifying the environment to raise plants or animals for food or other uses

Domestication

the process of taming plants or animals for human use

Rural Urban Migration

movement of people (typically farmers) from rural settlements to urban centers in search of jobs

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

The value of the total number of goods and services produced in a country in a given time period (normally one year).

Sustainable Development

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.