AP Human Geography Vocabulary

AP Human Geography flashcards for vocabulary review.

Mercator Projection

Shows the shapes of continents and landforms accurately but drastically distorts the size of continents.

Goode's Homolosine Projection

Shows area accurately but gives the impression that the Earth’s surface has been torn, peeled, and flattened.

Robinson Projection

Shows the world with slight distortions to all four properties (shape, size, distance, direction), rather than having one property correct and the other three drastically distorted.

Map Scale

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

Map

A two-dimensional flat representation of a geographic area or place.

Cartography

The science of mapmaking.

Distortion

The necessary error resulting from trying to represent the round Earth on a flat plane, or map.

Cardinal Directions

North, south, east, and west.

Intermediate Directions

Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest.

Map Projections

The process of “flattening” the Earth using geometric shapes to display it.

Planar (aka Azimuthal) Projections

Commonly used to show polar regions; also referred to as “Polar Projections”.

Reference Maps

Maps that show common features such as boundaries, roads, highways, mountains, and cities; can be physical or political.

Thematic Maps

Maps that focus on one feature, such as climate, religion, or political party.

Isoline Maps

Display the lines that connect points of equal value.

Choropleth Maps

Shows a pattern of some variable by using various colors or degrees of shading.

Proportional Symbol Maps

Uses one symbol (such as a circle) to display the frequency of a variable; the larger the symbol, the higher the frequency.

Dot Density Maps

Use dots to represent the frequency of a variable in a given area.

Cartogram Maps

Use proportionality to show a particular variable; the larger or more frequent the variable, the more space it will occupy.

Density

The number of people occupying an area of land.

Arithmetic Density

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

Physiological Density

The total number of people per unit of arable land.

Agricultural Density

The number of farmers per unit of arable land.

Arable

Land that is farmable.

Age Structure

The proportion of the total population in each age group.

Demographic Transition Model (DTM)

Explains the transformation of countries from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates.

Epidemiological Transition Model Stage One: Pestilence and Famine

Infectious and parasitic diseases, crop failure, animal attacks

Epidemiological Transition Model Stage Two: Receding Pandemics

Improved sanitation, better nutrition/food security, and medicine.

Epidemiological Transition Model Stage Three: Degenerative Diseases

Fewer infectious disease deaths; rise in deaths from aging (cancer, strokes, heart disease).

Epidemiological Transition Model Stage Four: Delayed Degenerative & Lifestyle Diseases

Medical advances extend life expectancy to its highest.

Epidemiological Transition Model Stage Five: Reemergence of Infectious Disease

Infectious diseases come back due to antibiotic resistance, stronger immunities, and disease mutation.

Malthus' Theory

Believed that the population would eventually exceed the food supplies because population is geometric, while food supplies are arithmetic.

China's One-Child Policy

Limits couples living in urban areas to having only one child, although the policy has been relaxed in recent years.

Singapore's Stop at Two Program

Singapore program to legalize abortions and sterilizations and encourage women to get sterilized after their second child.

Migration

The permanent move to a new location.

Emigration

The movement from a location.

Immigration

The movement to a location.

Intervening Opportunity

A new opportunity that arises along a journey that is more attractive to the person and diminishes the attractiveness of the final destination.

Intervening Obstacle

A barrier encountered on a journey that prevents or interferes with getting to the final destination.

Net-in Migration

The number of immigrants exceeds the number of emigrants.

Net-out Migration

The number of emigrants exceeds the number of immigrants.

Push and Pull Factors

The migration of people can be caused by these reasons: cultural, environmental, and economic

Remittances

The transfer of money by workers to countries which they emigrated from; globally, the amount annually is over $500 billion.

International migration

The permanent move from one country to another.

Guest worker programs

Programs where countries bring in foreign workers to fill labor shortages.

Internal migration

Migration within the same country.

Interregional Migration

Moving from one region to another region.

Intraregional Migration

Moving within the same region.

Rural-to-urban migration

Migration of people from the country (farms) to cities; the most common type of migration globally.

Step migration

When people move up in a hierarchy of location with each move to a more advantageous or economically prosperous place.

Chain migration

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

Return migration

Migrants returning to their place of origin after living elsewhere.

Seasonal migration

Workers brought in during a specific time of year, usually associated with agricultural workers during the harvest season.

Refugees

People who have been forced to move to another country because of war, terrorism, or persecution.

Asylum Seekers

A person who has migrated to another country but has yet to be recognized as a refugee.

Internally displaced persons (IDPs)

An internally displaced person is the same as a refugee but hasn’t left their country.

Culture

The shared understanding that guides behavior and values and conditions a group’s perception of the world; learned from one generation to the next and evolves over time.

Material Culture

Made up of things created by people – cars, clothes, games, food.

Non-Material Culture

Ideas made up by society – laws, culture.

Cultural Relativism

Seeking to understand different cultures by looking at different moralities and celebrating diversity.

Ethnocentrism

Looking at other cultures through one's own cultural lens and biases.

Cultural Landscape

The visible imprint of human activity on the landscape.

Diffusion

The phenomenon of cultures spreading outward from their hearth, or starting point.

Relocation diffusion

Ideas spread through people who bring their culture with them.

Reverse Hierarchical diffusion

Ideas spread from less populated areas to larger cities and people in authority.

Expansion diffusion

Cultural idea spreads.

Contagious diffusion

Culture spreads rapidly to almost everyone.

Hierarchical diffusion

Ideas spread from the top down, or from large cities to smaller towns.

Stimulus diffusion

The main idea spreads, but not its entirety.

Colonialism

A country establishes their own colonies or territories on foreign soil.

Imperialism

A country controls another country or region.

Creolization

Process of mixing different cultures together and creating a new one, primarily with languages, resulting in pidgin and creole languages.

Acculturation

When a less dominant culture adopts elements and practices of the more dominant culture while still retaining their own culture of origin.

Religion

A set of beliefs and activities that are created to help humans celebrate and understand their place in the world.

Universalizing religions

Religions that try to have a universal appeal and attract all people to their beliefs.

Ethnic religions

Religions that attempt to appeal to one group, perhaps in one place of one ethnicity.

Monotheistic

The belief in one God or supreme being.

Polytheistic

The belief in more than one god or supreme being.

Castes

Social divisions that separate Hindu society

Language Family

A group of languages that originated from an earlier language; the largest language family is the Indo-European language family.

Devolution

The process of transferring some power from the central government to regional governments.

Neocolonialism

Neocolonialism occurs when developed countries exert economic power over developing countries.

Shatterbelts

Areas where larger regional or global divisions collide, causing conflict at a local scale.

Choke Points

Narrow geographic openings that make travel between two points difficult.

Redistricting

Involves redrawing voting district boundaries based on population changes after a census.

Gerrymandering

Politicians redraw district boundaries to favor their reelection, resulting in districts with irregular shapes.

Irredentism

A movement to unite parts of a nation that are spread over other borders.

Centripetal force

Unify a state’s people.

Centrifugal force

Divides a state’s people.

Agriculture

The deliberate modification of the Earth’s surface through cultivation of plants and rearing of animals to obtain sustenance or economic gain.

Intensive Agriculture

Requires large amounts of labor and capital, uses small plots of land near population centers, and has a high yield per acre.

Extensive Agriculture

Requires less capital and labor, uses larger plots of land further from population centers, and has a smaller yield per acre.

Monocropping

Growing the same crop on the same land year after year, typical in commercial agriculture.

Multi-Cropping

Growing two or more crops on the same land during a single growing season, typical in subsistence agriculture.

Bid-Rent Theory

The closer land is to the center of a town or city, the more expensive that land will be.

Commodity Chain in Agriculture

A series of links connecting a commodity’s many places of production, distribution, and consumption.

Economies of Scale

Cost advantages to manufacturers that arise from high-volume production because the average cost of production falls with increasing output.

Von Thünen Model

Explains the importance of proximity to market in crop choice on commercial farms, predicting agricultural land use patterns.

Alteration of landscapes in Agriculture

Terrace farming is used to maximize agricultural lands in densely populated areas.

Pesticides

They cause damage to insects and animal populations. They also can cause hormone disorders, neurological diseases and cancers in humans.

Fair Trade

Attempts to ensure that farmers in developing countries receive fair prices for their products, promoting sustainability and ethical production.