APHG - Unit 1 Vocabulary

Test 9/9/25

Physical Geography

The study of natural processes and the distribution of features in the environment.

Human Geography

The study of events and process that have shaped how humans understand, use, and alter Earth.

Spatial perspective

Refers to where things are located and why they are located there.

Ecological perspective

Refers to the relationship between living things and their environments.

What three questions can geography be summed up by?

Why? Why there? Why care?

Location

The position that a point or object occupies on Earth.

Site

Refers to a place’s absolute location and physical characteristics, such as landforms, climate, and resources.

Situation

Refers to a place’s connection to other place’s, such as transportation routes, political associations, and cultural and economic ties.

Mental map

Internalized representation of a place such as a school, neighborhood, or town. People generally have a clearer mental map of where they live than of a place that is far away.

Space

Refers to the area between two or more things on Earth’s surface.

Distribution

How things are arranged within a given space.

Density

Number of things in a specific area.

Pattern

How things are arranged in a particular space.

Flow

Movement of people, goods, and information from one place to another.

Distance decay

A principle that says the farther away one thing is from another, the less interaction the two things will have.

Friction of distance

The concept that distance requires time, effort, and cost to overcome.

Time-space compression

Describes the shrinking of relative distance between places due to advances in transportation and communication.

Environmental determinism

Discredited theory that behavior is largely controlled by the physical environment.

Possibilism

A theory favored by modern geographers, argues that humans are active agents in determining their behaviors.

Sustainability

Use of Earth’s resources in ways that ensure they will be available in the future.

Scales of analysis

Scales refer to the area of the world being studied. Ex: Global, regional, national, state, and local.

Region

An area of Earth’s surface with certain characteristics that make it distinct from other areas.

Formal

An area with one or more shared traits. Ex: landforms, climate, religion

Functional

An area organized by its function around a node.

Node

May be central business area or transportation hub.

Perceptual/vernacular

A region defined by people’s feelings or attitudes about the area.

Globalization

Related to the geographic concepts of location, space, place, and flows. Expansion of economic, cultural, and political processes on a worldwide scale.

Sustainable development

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Core

Countries with the best economy, militaries, transportation, communication and infrastructure.

Semi-periphery

Countries in the process of industrializing, manufacturing, exporting, having the potential to grow into core.

Periphery

Countries often with unstable governments, lower wealth, lower education levels, natural resources go to core countries, inferior transportation and communication, and inadequate infrastructure.

Absolute location

The exact location of an object. It may be expressed in coordinates of latitude and longitude.

Relative location

Description of where a place is in relation to other places or features.

World system theory

Seeks to explain the history of uneven economic development. Itis based on the idea that the interdependence among countries has created an economy that is a single entity within a single market and division of labor. Long-standing economic dominance of certain countries. Divided countries into three tiers. Ex: Core, Semi-peripheral, periphery.

Model

Abstract generalization of real-world geographies that share a common pattern.

Place

An area of bounded space of some human importance.

Small scale maps

Small scale maps are maps that show a large area with a small amount of detail. For example, a map showing whole countries or  world regions would be a small scale map.

Large scale maps

Large scale maps are maps that show a small area with a large amount of detail. For example, a closeup of a county or community would be a large scale map. 

Global

Shows the world at one level of data. No country lines

Regional

Shows data by continent or major world regions.

National

Shows data for one or more countries.

Local

Shows data at a subnational level.