Unit 1B Vocab

AP Human Geo

built environment

The human-made space in which people live, work, and engage in leisure activities on a daily basis.

climate

The average pattern of weather over a 30-year period for a particular region.

cultural ecology

The study of the interactions between societies and their local environments.

cultural landscape

The built forms that cultural groups create in inhabiting Earth — farm fields, cities, houses, and so on and the meaning, values, representations, and experiences associated with those forms.

culture

The shared practices, technologies, attitudes, and behaviors that a society transmits from one generation to the next.

environmental determinism

The belief that the physical environment is the dominant force shaping cultures and that humanity is a passive product of its physical surroundings.

field observations

The act of physically visiting a location, place, or region and recording, firsthand, information there.

Flow (diffusion)

Patterns and movement of ideas, people, products, and other phenomena

formal region

A geographical area inhabited by people who have one or more traits in common.

functional regions (nodal regions)

A geographic area that has been organized to function politically, socially, culturally, or economically as one unit.

human-environmental interaction

The effect that humans have on their environment and the effect that the environment has on humans.

location

The position of anything on Earth's surface.

map scale

The distance on a map in relation to distance in actual space; for example, 1 inch on a map might indicate a distance of 100 miles.

mental map

A personal representation of a portion of Earth’s surface.

Perceptual/Vernacular region

An area that people believe exists; is part of their cultural identity. A geographic area that is perceived to exist by its inhabitants, based on the widespread acceptance and use of a unique regional name.

physical geography

The study of Earth’s physical characteristics and processes: how they work, how they affect humans, and how humans affect them.

place

A specific point on Earth, distinguished by a particular characteristic.

possibilism

The belief that any physical environment offers a number of possible ways for a society to develop and that humans can find ways to overcome environmental challenges.

prime meridian

The zero-degree longitude line that runs through Greenwich, England; also known as the Greenwich Meridian.

qualitative data

Descriptive rather than numerical or statistical in nature. Qualitative geography involves methods such as ethnography, interviews, and participant observation to gather data and make sense of the complexity and diversity of human geography.

quantitative data

Data that can be counted or measured in numerical values.

region

A geographical unit based on one or more common characteristics or functions.

regionalization

The process of dividing up the earth into smaller regions or units or the tendency to form decentralized regions.

sense of place

How a person feels about a particular place and why it is important to them.

site

The physical character of a place.

situation

The location of a place relative to another place.

space

The areas we occupy as humans; it has no value until the people who occupy it make it their own.

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. The decreasing distance between places, as measured by travel time or cost; often summarized by the phrase “the world is shrinking”.

spatial association

The relationship between the distribution of one feature and the distribution of another feature.

subregions

A part of a larger region or continent and are usually based on location.

sustainability

The group of practices that meet the needs of the present without compromising future generations' ability to meet their needs.

toponyms

The name given to a portion of Earth's surface.

Transnational corporations (TNC)

A firm with the power to coordinate and control operations in more than one country, even if it does not own those operations.