APHG unit 1 vocab

Abiotic

Composed of nonliving matter

Concentration

Spread of something over a given area

Connection

Relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space

Contagious Diffusion

Widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population

Cultural Ecology

Geographic approach that emphasizes human-enviornment relationships

Cultural landscape

Fashioning a natural landscape by cultural group

Culture

Body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traights forming a group’s distinct tradition

Density

Frequency with which something exists within a given unit of area

Distance decay

Diminishing in importance and eventual disappearence of a phenomenon with increasing distance from its origin

Ecosytstem

A group of living organisms and the abiotic spheres

Expansion diffusion

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

Formal region

An area in which everyone shares in common one or more distinctive characteristics

Functional Region

An area organized around a node or focal point

Geographic information science

The development and analysis of data about Earth acquired through satellite and other electronic information technologies

Geographic information system

A computer system that stores, organizes, analyzes, and displays geographic data

Globalization

Actions or processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in scope

Greenwich Mean Time

The time in the zone encompassing the prime meridian, or 0° longitude

Hierarchial diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of authority or power to other persons or places

Houysing bubble

A rapid increase in the value of houses followed by a sharp decline in their value

International date line

An arc that for the most part follows 180° longitude, although it deviates in several places to avoid dividing land areas

Latitude

The numbering system used to indicate the location of parallels drawn on a globe and measuring distance north and south of the equator

Lithosphere

Earth's crust and a portion of upper mantle directly below the crust

Longitude

The numbering system used to indicate the location of meridians drawn on a globe and measuring distance east and west of the prime meridian

Map scale

Relationship between the size of an object on the map and the size of it on Earth’s surface

Mental map

A map based on what an individual knows about a place, containing personal impressions of what is in the place and where it is located

Meridian

An arc drawn on a map between the North and South poles

Parallel

A circle drawn around the globe at right angles to the meridians

Polder

Land created by the Dutch by draining water from an area

Projection

System used to transfer locations from Earth’s surface to a flat map

Region

An area distinguished by a unique combination of trends or features

Regional studies

An approach to geography that emphasizes the relationships among social and physical phenomena in a particular study area

Relocation diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another

Remote sensing

The acquisition of data about Earth's surface from a satellite orbiting the planet or from other long-distance methods

Site

The physical character of a place

Situation

The location of a place relative to another place

Space-time compression

The reduction in the time it takes to diffuse something to a distant place as a result of improved communications and transportation systems

Stimulus diffusion

The spread of an underlying principle even though a specific characteristic is rejected

Transnational corporation

A company that conducts research, operates factories, and sells products in many countries, not just where its headquarters or shareholders are located

Uneven development

The increasing gap in economic conditions between core and peripheral regions as a result of the globalization of the economy

Vernacular region

An area that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity

Geospatial

Relating to or denoting data that is associated with a particular location

Mercator

Rectangular map projection

Goode homolosine

Squiggly map projection

Gall Peters

Vertical distorted map projection

 Azimuthal

Circular map projection

Robinson

Oval map projection

Cartogram

A map where the geometry of regions is distorted (inflated/deflated) to convey information

Proportional symbol

Maps that use symbols scaled to the value of a phenomenon placed where the phenomenon occurs

Choropleth

Map using colors to mark staticstics

Isoline

Presents numerical data using lines on a map