Rubenstein AP Human Geography Vocab CH 1-13

Agricultural Density

The ratio of the number of farmers to the total amount of land suitable for agriculture

Arithmetic Density

The total number of people divided by the total land area

Concentration

The spread of something over a given area

Contagious Diffusion

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

Density

The frequency in which something exists within a given unit of area.

Diffusion

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

Distance Decay

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

Distribution

The arrangement of something across Earth's surface.

Expansion Diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend among people from one area to another in a snowballing process.

Globalization

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

Hearth

The region from which innovative ideas originate.

Hierarchical Diffusion

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

Pattern

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

Physiological Density

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

Relocation Diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another.

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.

Stimulus Diffusion

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

Transnational Corporation

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

Uneven Development

The increasing gap in economic conditions between core and peripheral regions as a result of the globalization of the economy.

Cultural Ecology

Geographic approach that emphasizes human-environment relationships.

Cultural Landscape

Fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group.

Culture

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

Environmental Determinism

A nineteenth- and early twentieth-century approach to the study of geography that argued that the general laws sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. Geography was therefore the study of how the physical environment caused human activities.

Formal Region

(or uniform or homogeneous region) An area in which everyone shares in one or more distinctive characteristics.

Functional Region

(or Nodal Region) An area organized around a node or focal point.

Greenwich Mean Time

The time in that time zone encompassing the prime meridian or 0 degrees longitude

International Date Line

An arc that for the most part follows 180° longitude, although it deviates in several places to avoid dividing land areas. When you cross the International Date Line heading east (toward America), the clock moves back 24 hours, or one entire day. When you go west (toward Asia), the calendar moves ahead one day.

Latitude

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

Location

The position of anything on Earth's surface.

Longitude

The numbering system used to indicate the locations of meridians drawn on a globe and measuring distance east west of the prime meridian (0 degrees).

Mental Map

An internal representation of a portion of Earth's surface based on what an individual knows about a place, containing personal impressions of what is in a place and where places are located.

Meridian

An arc drawn on a map between the North and South poles.

Parallel

A circle drawn around the globe parallel to the equator and at right angles to the meridians.

Polder

Land created by the Dutch by draining water from an area.

Possibilism

The theory that the physical environment may set limits on human actions, but people have to ability to adjust to the physical environment and choose a course of action from many alternatives.

Prime Meridian

The meridian, designated at 0 degrees longitude, which passes through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England.

Regional Studies

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

Resource

A substance in the environment that is useful to people, is economically and technologically feasible to access, and is socially acceptable to use.

Site

The physical character of a place.

Situation

The locations of a place relative to other places.

Toponym

The name given to a portion of the Earth's surface.

Vernacular Region

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

Base Line

An east west line designated under the Land Ordinance of 1785 to facilitate the surveying and numbering of townships in the United States

Cartography

The science of making maps

Connections

Relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space

Geographic Information System (GIS)

A computer system that stores, organizes, analyzes and displays geographic information

Global Positioning System (GPS)

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

Land Ordinance of 1785

A law that divided much of the United States into a system of townships to facilitate the sale of land to settlers.

Map

A two dimensional, or flat, representation of Earth's surface or a portion of it.

Place

A specific point on Earth distinguished by a particular character

Principal Meridian

A north south line designated in the Land Ordinance of 1785 to facilitate the surveying and numbering of townships in the United States

Projection

The system used to transfer locations from Earth's surace to a flat map.

Region

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

Remote Sensing

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

Scale

Generally, the relationship between the portion of Earth being studied and Earth as a whole, specifically the relationship between the size of an object on a map and the size of the actual feature on Earth's surface.

Section

A square normally 1 mile on the side. The Land Ordinance of 1785 divided the townships in the Unites States into 36 sections

Space

The physical gap or interval between to objects.

Township

A square normally 6 miles on a side. The Land Ordinance of 1785 divided much of the US into a series of townships.

Agricultural Revolution

The time when human beings first domesticated plants and animals and no longer relied entirely on hunting and gathering.

Census

A complete enumeration of a population

Crude Birth Rate (CBR)

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

Crude Death Rate (CDR)

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

Demographic Transition

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

Demography

The scientific study of population characteristics.

Dependency Ratio

The number of people under the age of 15 and over the age of 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.

Epidemiological Transition

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

Epidemiology

Branch of medical science concerned with the incidence, distribution, and the control of diseases that are prevalent among a population at a special time and are produced by some special causes not generally present in the affected locality.

Industrial Revolution

A series of improvements in industrial technology that transformed the process of manufacturing goods

Infant Mortality Rate (IMR)

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

Life Expectancy

The average number of years an individual can be expected to live, given current social, economic, and medical conditions. Life expectancy at birth is the average number of years a newborn infant can expect to live.

Medical Revolution

Medical technology invented in Europe and North America that is diffused to the poorer countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Improved medical practices have eliminated many of the traditional causes of death in poorer countries and enabled more people to live longer and healthier lives.

Natural Increase Rate (NIR)

The percentage growth of a population in a year, computed as the crude birth rate minus the crude death rate

Overpopulation

The number of people in an area exceeds the capacity of the environment to support life at a decent standard of living.

Pandemic

Disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects a very high proportion of the population

Population Pyramid

A bar graph representing the distribution of population by age and sex

Sex Ratio

The number of males per 100 females in a population

Total Fertility Rate (TFR)

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

Zero Population Growth (ZPG)

A decline in the total fertility rate to the point where the natural increase rate equals zero.

Brain Drain

Large scale emigration by talented people

Branch (of a religion)

A large and fundamental division within a religion

Chain Migration

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

Circulation

Short term, repetitive cyclical movements that recur on a regular basis

Counterurbanization

Net migration from urban to rural areas in more developed countries

Emigration

Migration from a location

Floodplain

The area subject to flooding during a given number of years according to historical trends

Forced Migration

Permanent movement compelled usually by cultural factors

Guest Workers

Workers who migrate to the more developed countries of Northern and Western Europe, usually from Southern and Eastern Europe or from North Africa, in search of higher paying jobs.

Immigration

Migration to a new location

Internal Migration

Permanent movement within a particular country

International Migration

Permanent movement from one country to another

Interregional Migration

Permanent movement from one region of a country to another

Intervening Obstacle

An environmental or cultural feature of the landscape that hinders migration

Intraregional Migration

Permanent movement within one region of a country

Migration

Form of relocation diffusion involving permanent move to a new location

Migration Transition

Change in the migration pattern in a society that results from industrialization, population growth, and other social and economic changes that also produce the demographic transition.

Mobility

All types of movement from one location to another

Net Migration

The difference between the level of immigration and the level of emigration

Pull Factors

Factors that induce people to move to a new location