Human Geography | Week 1 Key Concepts

places

specific geographic settings with distinctive physical, social, and cultural attributes

regions

territories that encompass many places

human geography (general)

the study of the spatial organization of human activity and of people's relationships to their environments

physical geography

deals with earth's natural processes and outcomes

human geography

deals with spatial organization of human activites and with people's relationships to their environments

regional geography

concerned with the way that unique combinations of environmental and human factors produce territories with distinctive landscapes and cultural attributes

remote sensing

collection of information about parts of earth's surface by means of aerial photography or satellite imagery

cartogram

used in small-scale thematic maps

geographic information systems (GIS)

uses data from several different sources, on different topics, and different scales to be merged

spatial analysis

location, distance, space, accessibility, spatial interaction

site

refers to the physical attributes of a location

situation

refers to the location of a place relative to other places

cognitive images

mental maps

distance-decay function

the rate at which an activity diminishes with increasing distance

absolute space

space described through points, lines, planes, and configurations through mathematical reasoning

topological space

measured by the nature and degree of connectivity between locations

socioeconomic space

described in terms of sites and situations, routes, regions, and distribution patterns

cultural space

space of people with common ties

cognitive space

people's values, feelings, beliefs, perceptions about locations/districts/regions

spatial interaction

complimentarity, transferability, intervening opportunities, diffusion

functional regions

regions that share an overall coherence in structure, economic, social, political

regionalism

distinctive identities coexist with a collective identity

sectionalism

extreme devotion to regional interests & customs

irredentism

assertion by government

life-world

the taken for granted pattern in everyday living

intersubjectivity

shared meanings that are derived from everyday practice