AP Human Geography Comprehensive Review

Human Geography

The study of people and places, including how we make places, organize space and society, and interact across spaces.

Reference Maps

Maps used to show landforms and/or places, such as physical and political maps.

Thematic Maps

Maps used to display specific types of information or themes pertaining to an area, such as cartograms and choropleth maps.

Absolute Distance

Measurement of distance using a standard unit of length like miles or kilometers.

Relative Distance

Measurement of the social, cultural, and/or economic connectivity between places.

Spatial Pattern

The way things are laid out and organized on the surface of the Earth, including clustering and dispersal.

Spatial Scale

The hierarchy of spaces ranging from global and regional to national and local.

Map Projection

A way to transfer the 3D earth onto a 2D map, which inevitably results in distortion.

GIS (Geographic Information System)

A computer system that combines layers of spatial data to be displayed and analyzed for geographical patterns.

Remote Sensing

Collecting data with instruments that are distant from the area of study, such as satellites or aircraft.

Absolute Location

Describes the precise location of a place using latitude and longitude.

Relative Location

Describes the location of a place relative to other human and physical features.

Distance Decay

The idea that the likelihood of interaction diminishes with increasing distance.

Time-Space Compression

The increasing sense of connectivity that brings people closer together despite set distances due to technology.

Globalization

The process of increased interconnectedness among countries in economics, politics, and culture.

Environmental Determinism

The theory that a society's development is controlled and determined by the physical environment.

Possibilism

The theory that the environment sets constraints, but people use their creativity to respond to conditions.

Formal Region

An area marked by a shared cultural or physical trait.

Functional Region

An area organized around a node or centered on a particular set of activities.

Perceptual/Vernacular Region

A region that exists as part of an identity or idea, such as 'the South'.

Arithmetic Population Density

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

Physiologic Population Density

The number of people per unit of arable, or farmable, land.

Agricultural Population Density

The number of farmers per unit of arable land.

Carrying Capacity

The maximum number of people an area can sustain without critically straining its resources.

Population Pyramid

A visual representation of a population's age and sex composition used to assess growth and decline.

Total Fertility Rate (TFR)

The average number of children a woman will have during her childbearing years (15-49).

Replacement Fertility Level

The TFR of roughly 2.1 needed to keep a population stable without relying on immigration.

Demographic Transition Model (DTM)

A model describing the relationship between population growth and economic development across five stages.

Epidemiologic Transition

The shift from high death rates to low death rates driven by medical innovations and public health.

Pro-Natalist Policy

Government policies that provide incentives for women to have children to combat declining populations.

Anti-Natalist Policy

Government policies that encourage couples to limit the number of children they have, such as China's former One-Child Policy.

Ravenstein's Laws of Migration

A set of guidelines describing migration patterns, noting that most migrants move short distances and for economic reasons.

Dependency Ratio

A measure of the economic impact of younger (0-14) and older (65+) cohorts on the working-age population.

Refugee

An individual protected by law who crosses national boundaries to seek safety from armed conflict or persecution.

Internally Displaced Person (IDP)

Someone who flees their home due to conflict or disaster but does not cross an international border.

Culture Trait

A single attribute of a culture, such as food preferences, architecture, or language.

Ethnocentrism

Judging another culture based solely on the values and standards of one's own culture.

Cultural Relativism

The practice of assessing a culture by its own standards rather than viewing it through the lens of one's own culture.

Sequent Occupance

The combined cultural imprint on an area when inhabited by a succession of different societies over time.

Centripetal Forces

Forces and factors that unite a country and promote national stability.

Centrifugal Forces

Forces and factors that divide, destabilize, or weaken a country.

Relocation Diffusion

The spread of an idea or trait through the actual physical movement of people who carry it to a new location.

Expansion Diffusion

The spread of an innovation outward from a source area while remaining strong at the source, including contagious, hierarchical, and stimulus types.

Lingua Franca

A language mutually understood by people who speak different native tongues, commonly used for trade.

Creolization

The blending of different cultures, such as European, African, and Indigenous, to create a new cultural form.

Universalizing Religion

A religion that attempts to appeal to all people worldwide and actively seeks converts, such as Christianity and Islam.

Ethnic Religion

A religion concentrated in a specific cultural group that does not actively seek out new converts, such as Hinduism and Judaism.

Acculturation

The process where members of one cultural group adopt the beliefs and behaviors of another while retaining some original uniqueness.

Assimilation

The process by which a group's culture is fully absorbed into another, losing its distinct characteristics.

State

An independent political unit with a permanent population and internationally recognized boundaries exercising sovereignty.

Nation-State

A sovereign state whose citizens are relatively homogenous in terms of shared language or common descent (e.g., Japan).

Stateless Nation

A cultural group or nation that does not possess its own sovereign state, such as the Kurds or Palestinians.

Sovereignty

A state's independent final authority over its territory and domestic/foreign affairs.

Gerrymandering

The malicious redrawing of voting district boundaries to give one political party an unfair electoral advantage.

Devolution

The transfer of decision-making power from a central government to lower regional or local levels.

Supranationalism

An alliance of three or more states working together for mutual economic, political, or military benefits, which can limit state sovereignty.

UNCLOS (Law of the Sea)

International agreement establishing states' rights and responsibilities over maritime zones like territorial waters and EEZs.

Shatterbelt

A region caught between stronger external conflicting cultural-political forces, often prone to fragmentation.

Irredentism

A policy advocating the restoration to a country of any territory formerly belonging to it, often based on ethnic ties.

Intensive Agriculture

Agricultural production system involving high inputs of labor, capital, and machinery relative to land area.

Extensive Agriculture

Agricultural system characterized by low inputs of labor and capital relative to a large expanse of land.

Von Thünen Model

An economic model showing how agricultural land use is distributed in concentric rings around a market based on transportation costs.

Green Revolution

The rapid diffusion of high-yield seed varieties, chemical fertilizers, and irrigation in the mid-20th century that vastly increased global food supply.

Agribusiness

Commercial agriculture characterized by the integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, typically controlled by large corporations.

Bid-Rent Theory

A geographical theory stating that the price and demand for real estate change as the distance from the central business district (CBD) decreases.

Desertification

The process by which fertile land transforms into arid desert typically as a result of drought, deforestation, or inappropriate agriculture.

Slang / Shift Cultivation (Slash and Burn)

Clearing tropical forest plots by cutting and burning vegetation to use the ash for short-term soil fertility.

Urbanization

The historical shift of populations from rural areas to towns and cities, resulting in urban expansion.

Megacity

A very large urban settlement with a total population in excess of 10 million residents.

Primate City

A country's leading city, disproportionately larger and more influential than any other city in the urban hierarchy (e.g., Paris).

Rank-Size Rule

The rule stating that the population of the nth-largest city in a country will be 1/n the size of the largest city.

Burgess Concentric Zone Model

An urban model depicting a city as a series of concentric rings expanding outward from a central business district (CBD).

Hoyt Sector Model

An urban model proposing that a city develops in wedge-shaped sectors radiating out from the center along transportation lines.

Harris-Ullman Multiple Nuclei Model

An urban model describing a city structured around several distinct nodes of activity rather than a single CBD.

Gentrification

The rehabilitation of deteriorated inner-city neighborhoods by wealthier newcomers, often displacing poorer original residents.

Redlining

A discriminatory real estate practice where minority-dominated or poor neighborhoods are denied loans, mortgages, or insurance services.

New Urbanism

An urban design movement promoting walkable neighborhoods with a diverse mix of housing and commercial land uses.

Primary Economic Sector

Economic activities involving the extraction or harvesting of raw materials from the earth, such as agriculture, mining, and fishing.

Secondary Economic Sector

Economic activities that process raw materials and manufacture finished goods in factories.

Tertiary Economic Sector

The sector of the economy providing services to businesses and consumers, such as retail, hospitality, and healthcare.

Quaternary Economic Sector

Knowledge-based economic activities involving information processing, research, finance, and IT services.

Quinary Economic Sector

The highest levels of decision-making in a society, including government officials, top executives, and university researchers.

World Systems Theory (Core-Periphery)

Immanuel Wallerstein's theory dividing the world into core countries exercising economic power, semi-peripheries, and dependent peripheries.