AP Human Geography Important Vocabulary

From chino valley school district website. I own nothing

Sequent Occupance

Successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape.

Cultural Landscape

Fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group, showing how humans interact with nature.

Arithmetic Density

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

Physiological Density

The number of people per unit of area of arable land.

Hearth

The region from which innovative ideas originate.

Diffusion

The process of spread of a feature or trend from one place to another over time.

Relocation Diffusion

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

Expansion Diffusion

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

Hierarchical Diffusion

The spread of an idea from persons or nodes of authority or power to other persons or places.

Contagious Diffusion

The rapid, widespread diffusion of a characteristic throughout the population.

Stimulus Diffusion

The spread of an underlying principle, even though a characteristic itself apparently fails to diffuse.

Absolute Distance

Exact measurement of the physical space between two places.

Relative Distance

Approximate measurement of the physical space between two places.

Distribution

The arrangement of something across Earth’s surface.

Environmental Determinism

A 19th- and early 20th-century approach that Geography was the study of how the physical environment caused human activities.

Absolute Location

Position on Earth’s surface using the coordinate system of longitude and latitude.

Relative Location

Position on Earth’s surface relative to other features.

Site

The physical character of a place.

Situation

The location of a place relative to other places.

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.

Friction of Distance

Distance requires effort, money, and/or energy to overcome. Spatial interactions tend to take place more often over shorter distances.

Distance Decay

The diminishing in importance of a phenomenon with increasing distance from its origin.

Networks

A set of interconnected nodes without a center.

Connectivity

The relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space.

Accessibility

The degree of ease with which it is possible to reach certain location from other locations.

Space

Refers to the physical gap or interval between two objects.

Spatial Distribution

Physical location of geographic phenomena across space.

Scale

Representation of a real-world phenomenon at a certain level of reduction or generalization.

Formal Region

Area within which everyone shares in common one or mare distinctive characteristics.

Functional Region

Area organized around a node or focal point.

Vernacular Region

A place that people believe exists as a part of their cultural identity.

Possibilism

People have the ability to adjust to their environment.

Pattern

Geometric arrangement of objects in space.

Place Name

Often referred to as a place's toponym (the name given to a place on Earth.)

Age Distribution

Two back-to-back bar graphs, one showing the number of males and one showing females in a particular population in five-year age groups. (Population pyramid)

Carry Capacity

The population level that can be supported, given the quantity of food, habitat, water and other life infrastructure present.

Cohort

Population of various age categories in an age-sex population pyramids.

Demographic Equation

The formula that calculates population change. (births - deaths) + net migration

Demographic Momentum

Tendency for growing population to continue growing after a fertility decline because of their young age distribution.

Dependency Ratio

The number of people who are too you or too old to work compared to the number of people in their productive years.

Doubling Time

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

Ecumene

The proportion of earth's surface occupied by permanent human settlement.

Infant Mortality Rate

The annual number of deaths of infants under one year of age, compared with total live births.

Maladaption

This is an adaptation that has become less helpful than harmful.

Mortality

Infant mortality rate and life expectancy.

Natality

Crude Birth Rate

Neo-malthusian

Theory that builds upon Malthus’ thoughts on overpopulation. Takes into count two factors that Malthus did not: population growth in LDC’s, and outstripping of resources other than food

Overpopulation

Relationship between the number of people on Earth, and the availability of resources. Problems result when an area’s population exceeds the capacity of the environment to support them at an acceptable standard of living.

Population Densities

The frequency with which something occurs in space is density

Population Distributions

The arrangement of a feature in space is distribution. Geographers identify the three main properties as density, concentration, and pattern.

Rate of Natural Increase

The percentage by which a population grows in a year (Excludes migration).

Sex Ratio

The number of males per hundred females in the population.

Standard of Living

Refers to the quality and quantity of goods and services available to people and the way they are distributed within a population.

Sustainability

Providing the best outcomes for human and natural environments both in the present and for the future Relates to development that meets today’s needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Underpopulation

It is the opposition to overpopulation and refers to a sharp drop or decrease in a region’s population.

Zero Population Growth

When the crude birth rate equals the crude death rate and the natural increase rate approaches zero.

Activity Space

Space allotted for a certain industry or activity

Chain Migration

When one family member migrates to a new country and the rest of the family follows shortly after

Forced Migration

People removed from there countries and forced to live in other countries because of war, natural disaster, and government.

Refugee

People forced to migrate from their home country and cannot return for fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in social group, or political opinion.

Acculturation

Process of adopting only certain customs that will be to their advantage

Assimilation

Process of less dominant cultures losing their culture to a more dominant culture

Cultural Ecology

The geographic study of human environmental relationships

Cultural Identity

Ones belief in belonging to a group or certain cultural aspect

Culture

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

Animism

Belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like thunderstorms and earthquakes, have a discrete spirit and life.

Ethnic Religion

A religion with a rather concentrated distribution whose principles are likely to be based on the physical characteristics of the particular location where its adherents are located.

Fundamentalism

Literal interpretation and strict adherence to basic principles of a religion.

Geomancy

A method of prediction that interprets markings on the ground, or how handfuls of dirt land when someone tosses them.

Monotheism/polytheism

Monotheism this is the belief in one god and polytheism is the belief in many gods.

Secularism

This is the belief that humans should be based on facts and not religious beliefs.

Sharia Law

It is the legal framework within which public and some private aspects of life are regulated for those living in a legal system based on Muslim principles.

Annexation

Incorporation of a territory into another geo-political entity.

Apartheid

Afrikaans for apartness, it was the segregation of blacks in South Africa from 1948 to 1994.

Balkanization

Fragmentation or breakup of a region or country into smaller regions or countries.

Border Landscape

Exclusionary is meant to keep people out. Inclusionary is meant to facilitate trade and movement, such as the U.S.-Canada border.

Buffer State

A country lying between two more powerful countries that are hostile to each other.

Centrifugal

Religious, political, economic, conflict, etc. that causes disunity in a state.

Centripetal

An attitude that unifies people and enhances support for the state.

City-State

A region controlled by a city and that has sovereignty.

Colonialism

The attempt by a country to establish settlements and impose political and economic control and principles.

Decolonization

The movement of American/European colonies gaining independence.

Devolution

Devolution is the both the decentralization of a government from a unitary to a federal system or a fracturing of a government like Balkanization.

Domino Theory

The idea that if one land in a region came under the influence of Communists, then more would follow in a domino effect.

Enclave/exclave

An enclave is a country or part of a country mostly surrounded by the territory of another country or wholly lying within the boundaries of another country (Lesotho). An exclave is a country which is geographically separated from the main part by surrounding alien territory (Azerbaijan).

Ethnic Conflict

A war between ethnic groups often as a result of ethnic nationalism or fight over natural resources.

Federal

Federalism is a political philosophy in which a group or body of members are bound together with a governing representative head.

Forward Capital

A symbolically relocated capital city usually because of either economic or strategic reasons.

Frontier

A zone where no state exercises complete political control.

Geopolitics

The study that analyzes geography, history and social science with reference to international politics.

Gerrymander

The process of redrawing legislative boundaries for the purpose of benefiting the political party in power.

Global Commons

That which no one person or state may own or control and which is central to life.

Immigrant State

A type of receiving state which is the target of many immigrants.

Agribusiness

Commercial agriculture characterized by integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, usually through ownership by large corporations.

Agriculture

The deliberate effort to modify a portion of Earth’s surface through the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock for subsistence or economic gain.

Commercial Agriculture

Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off the farm.

Extensive Subsistence Agriculture

Shifting Cultivation and Nomadic herding/pastorilism.

Intensive Subsistence Agriculture

A form of subsistence agriculture in which farmers must expend a relatively large amount of effort to produce the maximum feasibly yield from a parcel of land.

Subsistence Agriculture

Agriculture designed primarily to provide food for direct consumption by the farmer and the farmer’s family.

Truck Farming

Commercial gardening and fruit farming, so named because truck was a Middle English word meaning bartering or the exchange of commodities. Predominant in Southeastern U.S.A, because of the long growing season and humid climate, accessibility to large markets of New York, Philadelphian, and Washington.