ap human final

Chapter 1: Geography-Its Nature and Perspectives

Cartography: The science and practice of making maps.

Concentration: The extent of a feature’s spread over space; can be clustered or dispersed.

Contagious diffusion: The rapid, widespread diffusion of a characteristic throughout the population by direct contact.

Cultural ecology: The study of human-environment relationships, focusing on how culture adapts to and modifies the environment.

Cultural landscape: The visible imprint of human activity and culture on the landscape.

Culture: The body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that constitute a group’s distinct tradition.

Density: The frequency with which something occurs in space, such as population per unit of area.

Diffusion: The process by which a feature spreads across space from one place to another.

Distance-decay: The diminishing importance and eventual disappearance of a phenomenon with increasing distance from its origin.

Distribution: The arrangement of a feature in space; includes density, concentration, and pattern.

Environmental determinism: The (largely rejected) theory that the physical environment causes social development.

Expansion diffusion: The spread of a feature from one place to another in a snowballing process.

Formal region: An area within which everyone shares one or more distinctive characteristics.

Functional region: An area organized around a node or focal point (e.g., a metropolitan area).

GIS (Geographic Information System): A computer system that captures, stores, analyzes, and displays geographic data.

GPS (Global Positioning System): A system that determines the precise position of something on Earth using satellites.

Globalization: The process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or operate on an international scale.

Hierarchical diffusion: The spread of an idea from persons or nodes of authority to other persons or places.

Hearth: The region from which innovative ideas originate.

Housing bubble: A rapid increase in the value of houses followed by a sharp decline.

International Date Line: An arc that for the most part follows 180° longitude, where the date changes by one day when crossed.

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

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

Nonrenewable resource: A resource that is produced in nature more slowly than it is consumed by humans.

Pattern: The geometric arrangement of objects in space.

Possibilism: The theory that the physical environment may set limits on human actions, but people have the ability to adjust.

Projection: The method of transferring locations from Earth’s surface to a flat map.

Relocation diffusion: The spread of an idea through physical movement of people from one place to another.

Remote sensing: The acquisition of data about Earth’s surface from a satellite or other long-distance methods.

Scale: The relationship between the portion of Earth being studied and Earth as a whole.

Site: The physical characteristics of a place (e.g., topography, climate, water resources).

Situation: The location of a place relative to other places.

Space-time compression: The reduction in the time it takes for something to reach another place due to improved communications and transportation.

Stimulus diffusion: The spread of an underlying principle, even though a specific characteristic is rejected.

Sustainability: The use of Earth’s resources in ways that ensure their availability in the future.

Toponym: The name given to a place on Earth.

Transnational corporation: A company that conducts research, operates factories, and sells products in many countries.

Uneven development: The increasing gap in economic conditions between core and peripheral regions due to globalization.

Vernacular region: An area that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity; also called a perceptual region.

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

Renewable resource: A resource produced in nature more rapidly than it is consumed by humans.

Place: A specific point on Earth distinguished by a particular characteristic.

Chapter 2: Population and Health

Agricultural density: The ratio of the number of farmers to the total amount of arable land.

Agricultural revolution: The time when humans first domesticated plants and animals and no longer relied entirely on hunting and gathering.

Arithmetic density: The total number of people divided by the total land area.

Census: A complete enumeration of a population.

Child mortality rate (CMR): The number of deaths of children under age five per 1,000 live births.

Contraception: Methods of birth control.

Crude death rate (CDR): The total number of deaths in a year for every 1,000 people alive.

Crude birth rate (CBR): The total number of live births in a year for every 1,000 people alive.

Demographic transition: The process of change in a society’s population from high crude birth and death rates to low rates.

Demography: The scientific study of population characteristics.

Dependency ratio: The number of people under age 15 and over age 64 compared to the number of people active in the labor force.

Doubling time: The number of years needed to double a population, assuming a constant rate of natural increase.

Ecumene: The portion of Earth’s surface occupied by permanent human settlement.

Epidemiologic transition: Distinctive causes of death in each stage of the demographic transition.

Industrial revolution: A series of improvements in industrial technology that transformed the process of manufacturing goods.

Infant mortality rate (IMR): The number of deaths of infants under one year old per 1,000 live births.

Life expectancy: The average number of years an individual can be expected to live.

Medical revolution: Medical technology invented in Europe and North America that is diffused to poorer countries.

Natalism (pro- and anti-): Policies that encourage (pro-) or discourage (anti-) childbearing.

Natural increase rate (NIR): The percentage by which a population grows in a year.

Neo-Malthusians: Modern supporters of Thomas Malthus’s theory that population growth could outpace resources.

Overpopulation: When a population exceeds the capacity of the environment to support it.

Physiological density: The number of people per unit of arable land.

Population pyramid: A bar graph representing the distribution of population by age and sex.

Replacement fertility: The total fertility rate needed to keep a population stable.

Sex ratio: The number of males per 100 females in the population.

Thomas Malthus: British economist who argued that population growth would outpace food supply.

Total fertility rate (TFR): The average number of children a woman will have throughout her childbearing years.

Zero population growth (ZPG): A decline of the total fertility rate to the point where the natural increase rate equals zero.

Chapter 3: Migration

Brain drain: Large-scale emigration by talented people.

Brain gain: The beneficial influx of skilled workers to a country.

Chain migration: Migration of people to a specific location because relatives or members of the same nationality previously migrated there.

Circulation: Short-term, repetitive, or cyclical movements that recur on a regular basis.

Counterurbanization: Net migration from urban to rural areas.

Emigration: Migration from a location.

Immigration: Migration to a location.

Forced migration: Permanent movement compelled by cultural or environmental factors.

Gravity model: A model that predicts interaction between places based on population size and distance.

Guest worker: A foreign laborer living and working temporarily in another country.

Internal migration: Permanent movement within the same country.

International migration: Permanent movement from one country to another.

Intervening obstacle: An environmental or cultural feature that hinders migration.

Interregional migration: Movement from one region of a country to another.

Intraregional migration: Movement within one region of a country.

Lee’s Model of Migration: A model that describes the push and pull factors affecting migration.

Migration: A permanent move to a new location.

Migration transition: Change in the migration pattern in a society that results from social and economic changes.

Net migration: The difference between the number of immigrants and the number of emigrants.

Push factor: A factor that induces people to leave old residences.

Pull factor: A factor that induces people to move to a new location.

Quotas: Laws that place maximum limits on the number of people who can immigrate to a country each year.

Ravenstein’s Laws: A set of theories about migration patterns developed by E.G. Ravenstein.

Refugee: A person forced to migrate to another country to avoid the effects of armed conflict, violence, or disasters.

Remittances: Money migrants send back to family and friends in their home countries.

Suburbanization: The process of population movement from within towns and cities to the rural-urban fringe.