Unit 1 AP Human Geography Vocab

Human Geography - One of the two major divisions of geography: the spatial analysis of human population, its cultures, activities, and landscapes.  

Physical Geography – One of the two major divisions of systematic geography; the spatial analysis of the structure, processes, and location of the Earth’s natural phenomena such as climate, soil, plants, animals and topography.

Spatial Distribution – physical location of geographic phenomena across space.  

Scale of Analysis – representation of a real-world phenomenon at a certain level of reduction.  Can be at different levels, e.g. global, state, regional, local, subnational, county etc.

Cartographic Scale– a ratio between a distance on a map and its corresponding distance in the real world.

Sense of Place – State of mind derived through the infusion of a place with meaning and emotion by remembering important events that occurred in that place or by labeling a place with a certain character.

Spatial Interaction – the degree of flow of people, ideas, and goods among places.

Cartography – The art and science of making maps, including data compilation, layout, and design.  

Reference Maps – Maps that show the absolute location of places and geographic features determined by a frame of reference, typically latitude and longitude.

Thematic Maps – Maps that tell stories, typically showing the degree of some attribute or the movement of a geographic phenomenon.

Absolute Location – The position or place of a certain item on the surface of the Earth as expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude and longitude.

Global Positioning System (GPS) – Satellite-based system for determining the absolute location of places or geographic features.

Relative Location – The regional position or situation of a place relative to the position of other places.  

Remote Sensing – A method of collecting data or information through the use of instruments such as satellites that are physically distant from the area or object of study.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) – A collection of computer hardware and software that permits spatial data to be collected, recorded, stored, retrieved, manipulated, analyzed, and displayed to the user.

Mental Map/Activity Space – Picture of the way space is organized as determined by an individual’s perception, impression and knowledge of that space; places where daily activity occurs.  

Formal Region – A type of region marked by a certain degree of homogeneity (sameness) in one or more areas.

Functional Region – A region defined by the particular set of activities or interactions that occur within it. (Job of an area)

Perceptual Region – A region that only exists as a conceptualization or an idea and not as a physically demarcated entity.  (Opinion of an area)

Distance Decay – The declining degree of acceptance of an idea or innovation with increasing time and distance from its point of origin of the source.

Time-Space Convergence – refers to the greatly accelerated movement of goods, information, and ideas during the twentieth century made possible by technological innovations in transportation and communications

Environmental Determinism – The view that the natural environment has a controlling influence over various aspects of human life.

Possibilism – A response to determinism that holds that human decision making, not the environment is the crucial factor in cultural development.  Possibilists view the environment as providing a set of broad constraints that limits the possibilities of human choice.