ap human geo

Space: The areas we occupy as humans; it has no value until the people who occupy it make it their own.

Place: How we modify space based on who we are as a group of people.

Cultural landscape: The built forms that cultural groups create in inhabiting Earth — farm fields, cities, houses, and so on — and the meaning, values, representations, and experiences associated with those forms.

Absolute location: A precise position on Earth’s surface.

Relative location: The position of one place (or person) in relation to the position of another place (or person).

Time–distance decay: Also known as the “first law of geography”; the idea that near things are more related than distant things, and interaction between two places decreases the farther apart they are.

Time-space compression: The decreasing distance between places, as measured by travel time or cost; often summarized by the phrase “the world is shrinking.”

Friction of distance: The inhibiting effect of distance on the intensity and volume of most forms of human interaction; time-space compression diminishes friction of distance.

Interdependence: The ties established between regions and countries that over time collectively create a global economic system that is not necessarily based on equality.

Diffusion: The pattern by which a phenomenon such as the movement of people, or their ideas, technologies, or preferences, spreads from a particular location through space and time.

Environmental determinism: The belief that the physical environment is the dominant force shaping cultures and that humanity is a passive product of its physical surroundings.

Possibilism: The belief that any physical environment offers a number of possible ways for a society to develop and that humans can find ways to overcome environmental challenges.

Glocal perspective: Geographic perspective that acknowledges the two-way relationship between local communities and global patterns, emphasizing that the forces of globalization need to take into account local- scale cultural, economic, and environmental conditions.

Population distribution: The pattern in which humans are spread out on Earth’s surface.

Population density: The average number of people per unit of land area.

Arithmetic (crude) density: The average number of people per unit of land area (usually per square mile or kilometer).

Physiological density: The average number of people per unit area (a square mile or kilometer) of arable land — that is, land suitable for cultivation.

Agricultural density: The number of farmers per unit of arable land.

Dependency ratio: The number of dependents in a population, that each 100 working-age people (ages 15 to 64 years) must support.

Youth dependency ratio: The number of young dependents in a population (usually people younger than 15 years of age) that every 100 working-age people must support

Elderly dependency ratio: The number of elderly dependents in a population (usually people older than 64 years of age) that every 100 working-age people must support.

Population pyramid: A very useful graphic device for comparing age and sex structure.

Demographic equation: The method for calculating total population of a country or place based on natural increase and migration over a period of time (usually a year).

Rate of natural increase (RNI): The difference between the number of births and deaths in a given year, when expressed as a percentage of total population.

Zero population growth (ZPG): When a country has the same number of births and deaths in a given year, its RNI is zero.

Doubling time: The number of years it takes for a population to double in size.

Rule of 70: A tool for calculating the doubling time of a population by dividing 70 by a country’s rate of natural increase (RNI).

Malthusian: A term derived from the name Thomas Robert Malthus, an English economist and cleric, to mean either “of or relating to Malthus’s theory” or
“a follower of Malthus.”

Cornucopians or anti-Malthusians: People who disagree with the Malthusian view of population and resources.

Boserup effect: Increase in food production resulting from the use of new farming methods.

Antinatalist policies: Designed to curtail population growth by reducing fertility rates.

Pronatalist policies: Designed to boost fertility rates and ultimately population growth.

Brain drain: A phenomenon where a country or a place loses young, more educated, and skilled people through migration.

Brain gain: A phenomenon where a country or a place gains young, more educated, and skilled people through migration.

Push-pull theory of migration: Theory asserting that two contrasting sets of factors are at work in migration decisions.

Migration age profile: The relatively stable relationship between the odds of migration and age across different countries.

Material culture (visible): The physical, visible objects made and used by members of a cultural group; includes buildings, furniture, clothing, food, artwork, and musical instruments.

Nonmaterial culture (invisible): Intangible elements of culture including a wide range of beliefs, values, myths, and symbolic meanings passed from generation to generation within a given society.

Sense of place: The distinctive feeling of a place, or a person’s perception of place.

Placelessness: The feeling resulting from the standardization of the built environment; occurs where local distinctiveness is erased and many places end up with similar cultural landscapes.

Sacred spaces: Natural or human-made sites that possess religious meaning and are recognized as worthy of devotion, loyalty, fear, or esteem.

Secularization: The process whereby religion become a less dominant force in everyday life than it was in the past.

Centripetal force: A force that brings people together and unifies a neighborhood, society, or country.

Centrifugal force: A force that threatens the cohesion of a neighborhood, society, or country.

Diffusion: The pattern by which a phenomenon such as the movement of people, or their ideas, technologies, or preferences, spreads from a particular location through space and time.

Relocation diffusion: Occurs when individuals or groups with a particular idea or practice migrate from one location to another, thereby bringing the idea or practice to their new homeland.

Expansion diffusion: Occurs when ideas or practices spread throughout a population, from area to area, in a snowballing process, so that the total number of knowers or users and the areas of occurrence increase.

Relocation diffusion: Occurs when individuals or groups with a particular idea or practice migrate from one location to another, thereby bringing the idea or practice to their new homeland.

Hierarchical diffusion: Occurs when ideas leapfrog from one important person, community, or city to another, bypassing other persons, communities, or rural areas

Contagious diffusion: The wavelike spread of ideas in the manner of a contagious disease or forest fire, moving throughout space (equally) without regard for hierarchy.

Stimulus diffusion: Occurs when a specific trait is rejected, but the underlying idea is accepted.

Acculturation: Occurs when an ethnic or immigrant group adopts enough of the ways of the host society to be able to function economically and socially.

Assimilation: Occurs when an ethnic or immigrant group blends in with the host culture and loses many culturally distinctive traits.

Transculturation: The notion that people adopt elements of other cultures as well as contribute elements of their own culture, thereby transforming both cultures.

Failed state: A state whose political or economic system has become so weak that the government is no longer in control.

Irredentism: The political claim to territory in another country based on ethnic affiliations and historic borders.

Neocolonialism: The set of economic and political strategies by which wealthy and powerful countries indirectly maintain or extend their influence over less wealthy areas.

Shatterbelt: Region of continuing and persistent fragmentation due to devolution and centrifugal forces.

Domestication: The long-term process through which humans selectively breed, protect, and care for individuals taken from populations of wild plant and animal species to create genetically distinct species, known as domesticates.

First Agricultural Revolution: Period during which the early domestication and diffusion of plants and animals and the cultivation of seed crops led to the development of agriculture.

Hearth: A center where innovations or new practices develop and from which the innovations or new practices spread or diffuse.

Green Revolution: The U.S.-supported development of high-yield seed varieties that increased the productivity of cereal crops and accompanying agricultural technologies for transfer to less developed countries.

Agricultural landscape: The visible imprint of agricultural practices.

Intensive agriculture: Crop cultivation and livestock rearing systems that use high levels of labor and capital relative to the size of the landholding.

Extensive agriculture: Crop cultivation and livestock rearing systems that require little hired labor or monetary investment to successfully raise crops and animals.

Agribusiness: Large corporation that provides a vast array of goods and services to support the agricultural industry.

Commodity: In agriculture, a primary product that can be bought and sold, such as coffee, rice, or milk.

Commodity chain: A series of links connecting a commodity’s many places of production, distribution, and consumption.

Cool chain: The system that uses refrigeration and food-freezing technologies to keep farm produce fresh in climate-controlled environments at every stage of transport from field to retail grocers and restaurants.

Sustainable agriculture: A commitment to satisfying human food and textile needs and to enhancing the quality of life for farmers and society as whole, now and in the future; it requires a balance among feeding the growing population, minimizing environmental impacts, and ensuring social justice.

Fair trade: A certification program that supports good crop prices for farmers and environmentally sound farming

Food security: According to the United Nations, the situation in which all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to enough safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

Food insecurity: Occurs when large numbers of people experience long periods of inadequate diets.

Food desert: Area with limited access to fresh, nutritious foods.

World city: A city that is a control center of the global economy, in which major decisions are made about the world’s commercial networks and financial markets (also called a global city).

Suburbanization: The movement of people from urban core areas to the surrounding outskirts of a city.

Sprawl: The tendency of cities to grow outward in an unchecked manner.

Automobile cities: Cities whose size and shape are dictated by and almost require individual automobile ownership.

Decentralize: In an urban context, to move business operations from core city areas into outlying areas such as suburbs.

Urban renewal: Large-scale redevelopment of the built environment in downtown and older inner-city neighborhoods.

Urban risk divide: The idea that disasters and disaster risk become urban phenomena as the world’s population becomes increasingly concentrated in large cities.