Ap hug exam

Concentration

The spread of something over a given area.

Contagious

diffusion

The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature throughout a population.

Cultural ecology

A geographic approach that emphasizes human-environment

relationships.

Environmental

determinism

The study of how the physical environment caused human activities.

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

(or nodal region)

An area characterized around a node or focal point.

Geographic

Information System (GIS)

The development and analysis of data about Earth acquired through

satellite and other electronic information technologies.

Global Positioning

System (GPS)

A system that determines the precise position of something on Earth

through a series of satellites, tracking stations, and receivers.

Greenwich Mean

time (GMT)

The time in the zone encompassing the prime meridian, or 0-degree

longitude.

Hierarchical

diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of

authority or power to another person or places.

International Date

Line

An arc that for the most part follows 180-degree longitude When you

cross the Line heading east (toward America), the clock moves back 24

hours. When you go west (toward Asia), the calendar moves ahead

one day.

Latitude

The numbering system used to indicate the location of parallels drawn

on a glove and measuring distance north and south of the equator.

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

The relationship between the size of an object on a map and the size

of the actual feature on earth’s surface.

Meridian

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

Nonrenewable

resource

Something produced in nature more slowly than it is consumed by

humans.

Possibilism

the physical environment may set limits on human actions,people

have the ability to adjust to the physical environment

Prime meridian

The meridian, designated as 0 degrees longitude that passes though

the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England.

Region

An area distinguished by a unique combination of trends or features.

Regional (or cultural

landscapes) 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.

Situation

The location of a place relative to another place.

Site

The physical character of a 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.

Vernacular region

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

Agricultural

Density

The ratio of the number of farmers to the total amount of land suitable

for agriculture.

Arithmetic

Density

The total number of people divided by the total land area.

Demography

The scientific study of population characteristics.

Dependency

Ration

The number of people under the age of 15 and over the age 64,

compared to the number of people active in the labor force.

Ecumene

The portion of Earth's surface occupied by permanent human

settlement.

Pandemic

Disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects a very high

proportion of the population.

Physiological

Density

The number of people per unit of area of arable land, which is land

suitable for agriculture.

Zero Population

Growth (ZPG)

A decline in the total fertility rate to the point where the natural increase

rate equals zero.Brain Drain

Brain Drain

Large scale emigration bt talented people

Counter

Urbanization

Net Migration from Urban to rural areas in more developed countries.

Genocide

Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,

ethical, racial, or religious group.

Global Scale

Migratiom

Migration that takes place across international boundaries and between

world regions.

Immigration

The act of a person migrating into a particular country or era.

Quotas

Established limits by governments on the number of immigrants who can

enter a country each year.

Step Migration

Migration to a distant destination that occurs in stages, for example,

from farm to nearby village and later to a town and city

Transhumance

A seasonal periodic movement of pastoralists and their livestock

between highland and lowland pastures.

Custom

The frequent repetition of an act, to the extent that it becomes characteristic

of the group of people performing the act.

Folk Culture

Culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in

relative isolation from other groups.

Popular

Culture

Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits

despite differences in other personal characteristics.

Taboo

A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.

Creole, or

creolized language

A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer’s language with

the indigenous languages if the people being dominated.

Dialect

A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling,

and pronunciation.

Isogloss

A boundary that separates regions in which different language usages

predominate.

Language branch

A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that

existed several thousands of years ago.

Language family

A collection of languages related to each other through a common

ancestor long before recorded history.

Language group

A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in

the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in

grammar and vocabulary,

Lingua franca

A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people

who have different native languages.

Official language

The language adopted for use by the government for the conduct of

business and publication of documents.

Pidgin language

A form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited

vocabulary of a lingua franca; used for communications among speakers

of two different dialects.

Standard language

The form of a language used for official’s government business,

education, and mass communication.

Agnosticism

Belief that nothing can be known about whether God exists.

Animism

Belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like

thunderstorms and earthquakes, have discrete spirit and conscious life.

Atheism

Belief that God does not exist.

Monotheism

The doctrine of or belief in the existence of only one God.

Universalizing

religion

A religion that attempts to appeal to all people, not just those living in a

particular location.

Balkanization

A process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among its

ethnicities.

Blockbusting

A process by which real estate agents convince white property owners

to sell their houses at low prices because of fear that persons of color

will soon move into the neighborhood.

Centripetal forces

An attitude that tends to unify people and enhance support for a state.

Autocracy

A country that is run according to the interests of the ruler rather than

the people.

Colonialism

An attempt by one country to establish settlements and to impose its

political, economic, and cultural principles in another territory.

Gerrymandering

The process of redrawing legislative boundaries for the purpose of

benefitting the party in power

Multinational

state

A state that contains two or more ethnic groups with traditions of self-

determination that agree to coexist peacefully by recognizing each

other as distinct nationalities.

Self-determination

The concept that ethnicities have the right to govern themselves.

Gross domestic product

(GDP)

The value of the total output of goods and services produced in a

country in a given time period (normally one year).

Gross national income

(GNI)

The value of the output of goods and services produced in a

country in a year, including money that leaves and enters the

country.

Housing bubble

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

decline in their value.

Human Development

Index (HDI)

An indicator of the level of development for each country,

constructed by the United nations, that is based on income,

literacy, education, and life expectancy.

Agribusiness

Commercial agriculture characterized by the integration of different

steps in the food processing industry, usually through ownership by

large corporations.

Commercial

agriculture

Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off the

farm.

Crop rotation

The practice of rotating use of different fields from crop to crop each

year to avoid exhausting the soil.

Food security

Physical, social, and economic access at all times to safe and nutritious

food sufficient to meet dietary needs and food preferences for an active

and healthy lifestyle.

Green revolution

Rapid diffusion of new agricultural technology, especially new high-yield

seeds and fertilizers.

Horticulture

The growing of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

Intensive

subsistence

agriculture

A form of subsistence agriculture in which farmers must expend a

relatively large amount of effort to produce maximum feasible yield

from a parcel of land.

Shifting cultivation

A form of subsistence agriculture in which people shift activity from one

field to another; each field is used for crops for a relatively few years

and left fallow for a relatively long period.

Subsistence

farming

Agriculture designed primarily to provide food for direct consumption

by the farmer and the farmer’s family.

Sustainable

agriculture

Farming methods that preserve long-term productivity of land and

minimize pollution, typically by rotating soil-restoring crops with cash

crops and reducing inputs of fertilizer and pesticides.

Break-of-bulk point

A location where transfer is possible from one mode of transportation

to another.

Bulk-Gaining

Industry

An industry in which the final product weighs more or compromises a

great volume than the inputs

Bulk-reducing

industry

An industry in which the final product weighs less or comprises a lower

volume than the inputs.

Greenhouse effect

The anticipated increase in Earth’s temperature caused by carbon

dioxide (emitted by the surface).

Outsourcing

A decision by a corporation to turn over much of the responsibility for

production to independent suppliers.

Business

services

Services that primarily meet the needs of other businesses, including

professional, financial, and transportation services.

Central place

A market center for the exchange of services by people attracted from the

surrounding area.

Consumer

services

Businesses that provide services primarily to individual consumers,

including retail services and education, health, and leisure services.

Gravity model

A model which holds that the potential use of a service at a particular

location is directly related to the number of people in a location and

inversely related to the distance people must travel to reach the service.

Market area

(or hinterland)

The area surrounding a central place from which people are attracted to

use the place’s goods and services.

Primate city

The largest settlement in a country, if it has more than twice as many

people as the second-ranking settlement.

Public services

Services offered by the government to provide security and protection

citizens and businesses.

Central

business district

(CBD)

The area of a city where retail and office activities are clustered.

Concentric zone

model

A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are

spatially arranged in a series of rings.