AP human geo vocab unit 1-7

all the ap human geography vocabulary of the year

**absolute distance**

The distance that can be measured with a standard unit of length, such as a mile or kilometer

**relative distance** 

a measure of the social, cultural and economic relatedness or connectivity between two places - how connected or disconnected they are - despite their absolute distance from each other

**absolute direction**

Compass direction reading such as North or South

**relative direction**

Left, right, forward, backward, up, down, directions based on people’s surroundings and perception.

**clustered**

Growing or situated in a group

**dispersal**

**t**he action or process of distributing things or people over a wide area.

**elevation**

The action or fact of raised

Acculturation

the process of changes in culture that result from the meeting of two groups

Assimilation 

the process by which a group’s cultural features are altered to resemble those of another

Site

physical character of a place

Situation

The location of a place relative to another place.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

A computer system that captures, stores, queries, and displays geographic data.

Global Positioning System (GPS)

A system that determines the precise position of something on Earth through a series of satellites, tracking stations, and receivers.

Geospatial/Geographical Data

relating to or denoting data that is associated with a particular location

Online Mapping

he process of using the internet to view, analyze, or share a visual representation of geospatial data in map form

Remote Sensing 

The acquisition of data about Earth’s surface from a satellite orbiting the planet or from other long-distance methods.

Census

A complete enumeration of a population.

Distance Decay

the theory that there is decreasing importance of a phenomenon when increasing the distance from its origin.

Time-Space Compression

The reduction in the time it takes to diffuse something to a distant place as a result of improved communications and transportation systems.

Toponyms

The name given to a portion of Earth’s surface.

Pattern

The geometric or regular arrangement of something in a particular area.

Location

The position of anything on Earth’s surface.

Sustainable Development

economic development that is conducted without depletion of natural resources.

Natural Resources

materials or substances such as minerals, forests, water, and fertile land that occur in nature and can be used for economic gain.

Environmental Determinism 

the belief that environment dictates the success of a society

Possibilism

the belief that the physical environment plays a role in the success of a society, but culture can overcome environmental factors. 

Globalization

Actions or processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in scope.

Transnational Corporations

A company that conducts research, operates factories, and sells products in many countries, not just where its headquarters or shareholders are located.

Formal Region

An area in which most people share in one or more distinctive characteristics.

Functional Region

An area organized around a node or focal point.

Perceptual/Vernacular Region

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

carrying capacity

The ability of the land to sustain a certain number of people

pronatalist policy

Government policy that supports higher birth rates.

ex: Singapore

antinatalist policy

Government policy that supports lower birth rates.

transhumance

Seasonal migration of livestock between mountain and lowland pasture area.

guest worker

A term once used for a worker who migrated to the developed countries of Northern and Western Europe, usually from Southern and Eastern Europe or from North Africa, in search of a higher-paying job.

step migration

Migration that follows a path of a series of stages or steps toward a final destination.

Arithmetic Density 

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

Physiological Density 

The number of people per unit area of arable land, which is land suitable for agriculture.

Agricultural Density

The ratio of the number of farmers to the total amount of arable land (land suitable for agriculture).

Population Pyramids 

show the age and sex demographics of a particular country, city, or neighborhood

Fertility Rate

The average number of children a woman will have throughout her childbearing years

Infant Mortality Rate

total number of deaths in a year among infants under 1 for every 1,000 live births in a society

Migration 

a form of relocation diffusion involving a permanent move to a new location

Crude Birth Rate 

The total number of live births in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society.

Crude Death Rate 

The total number of deaths in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society.

Life Expectancy 

is the average number of years a newborn infant can be expected to live

Natural Increase Rate

the percentage growth of a population in a year (CBR-CDR)

Doubling Time 

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

Demographic Transition Model 

The process of change in a society’s population from a condition of high crude birth and death rates and low rate of natural increase to a condition of low crude birth and death rates, low rate of natural increase, and higher total population.

Epidemiologic Transition Model 

The process of change in the distinctive causes of death in each stage of the demographic transition.

Thomas Malthus

one of the first to argue that the world’s rate of population increase was far outrunning the development of food supplies. claimed that the population was growing much more rapidly than Earth’s food supply because population increased geometrically, whereas food supply increased arithmetically

Ravenstein's Laws of Migration

1) Migrants usually travel a short distance

2) The reasons migrants move are usually economic

3) Most migrants are young adult males

Dependency Ratio

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

Push Factors

A factor that induces people to leave old locations.

Pull Factors

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

Intervening Opportunities

a feature (usually economic) that causes a migrant to choose a destination other than his original one.

Intervening Obstacles

factors that cause migrants challenges or prevent them from reaching their goal

Internal Migration

a type of voluntary migration where people move within their own countries.

External Migration

a type of voluntary migration where people moving to a different state, country, or continent

Immigration 

moving into a new country

Refugees

People who are forced to migrate from their home country and cannot return for fear of persecution

Internally Displaced Persons  

Someone who has been forced to migrate but has not migrated across an international border.

Asylum Seekers 

Someone who has migrated to another country in the hope of being recognized as a refugee.

Chain Migration

the social process by which immigrants from a particular area follow others from that area to a particular destination

Emigration

leaving one country to move to another

cultural relativism

is the practice of judging a culture by its own standards.

ethnocentrism

when you use your own culture as the center and evaluate other cultures based on it.

example: when you call eating bats strange

centripetal forces

cultural value that tends to unify people

ex: Nationalism

centrifugal force

A cultural value that tends to pull people apart

colonialism

the expansion of an empire

economic imperialism

when a country or company has significant economic power over another country.

cultural convergence

when different cultures interact with each other

Cultural divergence

the restriction of a culture from outside cultural influences.

expansion diffusion

The spread of an idea through a population in a way that the number of those influenced becomes continuously larger. Includes contagious, hierarchical, and stimulus diffusion.

syncretism

The combining of elements of two groups into a new cultural feature.

ex:  Jazz music is a union of African and European music

multiculturalism

the presence of several distinct cultural or ethnic groups within a society.

Cultural Landscape 

An approach to geography that emphasizes the relationships among social and physical phenomena in a particular study area.

Sequent Occupance 

The interaction of cultures over time within a single, shared space

Indigenous People 

distinct social and cultural groups that share collective ancestral ties to the lands where they live or from which they have been displaced.

Contagious diffusion

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

Hierarchical diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of authority or power to other persons or places.

Stimulus diffusion

The spread of an underlying principle.

Creolization

the process by which elements of different cultures are blended together to create a new culture

Lingua Franca 

A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages.

Indo-European Language Family

the language family that includes all European languages (which are widely spoken in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Australasia) and Indian and Iranian, is spoken by slightly over fifty percent of the world's population.

language family

A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before recorded history.

Ethnicity

Identity with a group of people who share the cultural traditions of a particular homeland or hearth.

Dialect 

A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.

Universalizing Religions

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

Ethnic Religions

A religion with a relatively concentrated spatial distribution whose principles are likely to be based on the physical characteristics of the particular location in which its adherents are concentrated.

neocolonialism

the use of economic, political, cultural, or other pressures to control or influence other countries, especially former dependencies.

shatterbelt

a distinct type of world region from which local turmoil escalates to serious conflict among outside major powers.

*ex: Kashmir. It is a region that is fought over between India, Pakistan, and China.*

choke point

geographic locations where the flow of people and goods can be constricted and choked off in the event of a conflict

relic boundary

A boundary that has ceased to function but can still be detected on the cultural landscape. *Ex: Great Wall of China was a way to protect the kingdom but now it is a cultual aspect of China.*

superimposed boundary

drawn after a population has been settled in an area and do not pay much attention to the social, cultural, and ethnic compositions of the populations they divide (Ex: many boundaries made by european colonists on the African continent are like this)

subsequent boundary

boundaries drawn after a population has established itself and respects existing spatial patterns of certain social, cultural, and ethnic groups (Ex: Ireland and Northern Ireland)

antecedent boundary

When a boundary is given to a region before it is populated

*(ex: The western boundary between the US and Canada was designated by treaty in 1846, when very few people occupied that region)*

consequent boundary

A boundary line that coincides with some cultural divide, such as religion or language

*(ex: Southern Belgians (Walloons) speak French, but northern Belgians (Flemings) speak Flemish)*

delimited

 a boundary that is agreed to