AP Human Geo Vocab

Absolute Direction

Corresponds to the directions on a compass (East, West, North, South, Northeast, Southwest)

Absolute Distance

Distance that can be measured with units of length (foot, yard, mile, kilometer)

Absolute Location

A precise position on Earth’s surface

Cartographer

A person who makes maps

Census

An official number of the population (take every 10 yrs)

Contagious Diffusion

A spread of ideas (kind of like a contagious disease)

Cultural Ecology

The study of relationships between societies and their environments

Cultural Landscape

The forms that cultural groups build while inhabiting the Earth

Diffusion

A phenomenon like the movement of people and their ideas move from a location through space and time

Ecosystem

A system of the interaction between humans and the environment

Elevation

The distance above and below sea level

Environmental Determinism

When your environment determines your culture

Expansion Diffusion

when ideas spread throughout a population and more people find out about it

Fieldwork

Learning and doing research outside of the classroom

Formal Region

An area with people with one or more traits in common (Government usually decides)

Friction of Distance

Distance requires effort, money, and energy to overcome

Functional region

A area that has been designed to function politically, socially, culturally, or economically (usually economic like stores where your buying or selling something)

Geographic Information System (GIS)

A software, for capturing, storing, checking, and displaying data

Global Positioning System

24 satellites that orbit Earth twice a day and transmit radio signals toward earth

Hierarchical Diffusion

When ideas go from one important person or community to another

Interdependence

The ties between religions and countries that create a global economic system

Map Projection

A way to represent the surface of the Earth (they all distort some aspect of Earth’s surface