APHUG Unit 1 Vocab

Behavioral Geography

An approach to human geography that emphasizes the importance of understanding the psychological basis for individual human actions in space.

Cartogram

A map in which the projection and scale are distorted in order to convey the information of the variable.

Cartography

The science of making maps.

Choropleth map

A map in which areas are shaded or patterned in proportion to the measurement of the variable.

Citizen science

Scientific research by amateur scientists.

Conservation

The sustainable management of a natural resource to meet human needs.

Cultural ecology

A geographic approach that emphasizes human-environment relationships.

Cultural landscape

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

Diffusion

The process by which a feature spreads from one place to another over time.

Distance decay

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

Dot distribution map

A map that depicts data that consists of discrete observations. Each dot represents a predetermined number of observations, which could be one or many.

Ecology

The scientific study of ecosystems.

Ecosystem

A group of living organisms and the abiotic spheres with which they interact.

Expansion diffusion

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

Globalization

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

Graduated symbol map

A map that displays symbols that change in size according to the value of the variable.

Humanistic geography

An approach to human geography that emphasizes the different ways that individuals form ideas about place and give those places symbolic meanings.

Isoline map

A map that connects places of a particular value by lines.

Lithosphere

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

Participatory GIS

Community-based mapping, representing local knowledge and information.

Photogrammetry

The science of taking measurements of Earth’s surface from photographs.

Poststructuralist geography

Geographic approach that examines how the powerful in a society dominate, or seek to control, less powerful groups, how the dominated groups occupy space, and confrontations that result from the domination.

Remote sensing

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

Sustainability

The use of Earth’s renewable and nonrenewable natural resources in ways that do not constrain resource use in the future.