AP Human Geography Vocabulary

Flashcards of key vocabulary terms and definitions from lecture notes on Geography, Population, Culture, Political Organization, Agriculture, Industrialization, and Urban Land Use.

Sequent Occupance

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

Cultural Landscape

Fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group, showing human interaction 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

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 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

The idea that the physical environment causes human activities. (19th and early 20th century approach)

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, due to improved communications and transportation.

Friction of Distance

The concept that distance requires effort, money, and energy to overcome, thus affecting spatial interactions.

Distance Decay

The diminishing 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 a certain location from other locations.

Space

The physical gap or interval between two objects.

Spatial Distribution

The physical location of geographic phenomena across space.

Scale

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

Formal Region

An area within which everyone shares in common one or more 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

The idea that the physical environment may limit some human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to their environment.

Natural Landscape

The natural features of the earth's surface.

Pattern

The 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

Distribution of ages in a population; visually represented as a population pyramid.

Carrying 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 pyramid.

Demographic Equation

The formula that calculates population change: births minus deaths plus/minus net migration.

Demographic Momentum

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

Dependency Ratio

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

Disease Diffusion

Spread of disease; can be contagious (through density) or hierarchical (from urban to rural).

Doubling Time

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

Ecumene

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

Infant Mortality Rate (IMR)

The annual number of deaths of infants under one year of age, compared with total live births per 1000 births.

Maladaptation

An adaptation that has become less helpful than harmful.

Mortality

Death rate, measured by infant mortality rate and life expectancy.

Natality

Crude Birth Rate; the ratio of live births in an area to the population of that area.

Neo-Malthusian

Theory that builds upon Malthus’ thoughts on overpopulation, considering population growth in LDCs and outstripping of resources other than food.

Overpopulation

When the number of people exceeds the capacity of the environment to support them at an acceptable standard of living.

Population Density

The frequency with which something occurs in space. Types include arithmetic, physiological, and agricultural.

Population Distribution

The arrangement of a feature in space, described by density, concentration, and pattern.

Population Projection

Predicts the future population of an area or the world.

Rate of Natural Increase

The percentage by which a population grows in a year, excluding migration.

Sex Ratio

The number of males per hundred females in the population.

Sustainability

Providing the best outcomes for human and natural environments both in the present and for the future.

Underpopulation

A sharp drop or decrease in a region’s population, affecting the local economic system due to insufficient taxpayers.

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.

Cyclic Movement

Trends migration and other processes that have a clear cycle

Force Migration

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

Gravity Model

Predicts that the optimal location of a service is directly related to the number of people in the area and inversely related to the distance people must travel to access it.

Internal Migration

Permanent movement within a particular country.

Intervening Opportunity

An environmental or cultural feature of the landscape that helps migration.

Push-Pull Factors

Factors that induce people to leave old residence and move to new locations.

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

Cultural Landscape

The visible imprint of human activity on the landscape.

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.

Enclave/Exclave

A enclave is a country or part of a country mostly surrounded by the territory of another country; an exclave is one which is geographically separated from the main part by surrounding alien territory.

Fundamentalism

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

Hajj

The pilgrimage to Mecca for Islam followers.

Monotheism/Polytheism

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

Proselytic Religion

Referred to as a Universalizing Religion, which is an attempt to be global, to appeal to all people, wherever they may live in the world, not just to those of one culture or location.

Religious Conflict

Conflicts between religions.

Sacred Space

Sacred space is the place where religious figures and congregations meet to perform religious ceremonies.

Secularism

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

Sharia Law

Legal framework based on Muslim principles regulating public and private life.

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

The political term used when referring to the fragmentation or breakup of a region or country into smaller regions or countries.

Buffer State

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

Capital

Principle city in a state or country.

Centrifugal

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

Centripetal

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

Colonialism

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

Confederation

Association of sovereign states by a treaty or agreement.

Decolonization

the movement of American/European colonies gaining independence. Some were peaceful struggles while others became violent.

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.

Exclusive Economic Zone

A sea zone over which a state has special rights over the exploration and use of marine resources.

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. An exclave is a country which is geographically separated from the main part by surrounding alien territory

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 forward capital is a symbolically relocated capital city usually because of either economic or strategic reasons.