Geography Vocabulary

Introduction to Maps

  • Reference maps: General information about places.
  • Political maps.
  • Physical maps.
  • Thematic maps: Show how human activities are distributed.
    • Cartogram.
    • Choropleth.
    • Dot Density.
    • Isoline.
    • Proportional Symbol
  • Spatial Patterns.
    • Absolute and relative distance and direction.
    • Clustering: Grouped/bunched together.
    • Dispersal: Distributed over a wide area.
    • Elevation: Levels of how high/low something is.
  • Map Projections (distortion in shape, size, distance, and direction).
    • Mercator Map
      • Shape and directions are fairly accurate.
      • Greatly distorted toward poles.
    • Robinson Map
      • Everything is distorted in small amounts.
    • Goode
      • Continent sizes are accurately portrayed.
      • Directions and distant aren’t accurate.
    • Gall Peters
      • Shape of countries especially near the equator are distorted

Geographic Data

  • Geospatial Data: All information including physical features and human activities.
  • Geographic information system (GIS): Computer system for capturing, storing, checking, and displaying data related to positions on Earth's surface.
  • GPS (Geographic Positioning System): Uses data from satellites to pinpoint a location on earth.
  • Remote sensing: Taking pictures of the Earth's surface from satellites to understand geography over large distances
  • Spatial information: Written accounts such as field observations, media reports, travel narratives, policy documents, personal interviews, landscape analysis, and photographic interpretation.

The Power of Geographic Data

  • Geospatial Data: All information including physical features and human activities
  • Census data: Official count of individuals in a population (in the USA, it happens every 10 years)

Spatial Concepts

  • Absolute location: The precise spot where something is located.
  • Relative Location: Location in relation to other things.
  • Space: Extent of an area in a relative and absolute sense.
  • Place: Specific human and physical characteristics of a location.
  • Distance Decay: the effect of distance on cultural or spatial interactions
  • Time-Space Compression: Increasing sense of connectivity bringing people closer together even though their distances are the same.
  • Pattern: Geometric or regular arrangement of something in an area.

Human-Environmental Interaction

  • Sustainability: Reaching equilibrium with the environment; meeting the needs of the present without compromising future resources.
  • Natural Resources: Physical materials constituting part of Earth that people need and value.
  • Environmental Determinism: How the physical environment caused social development.
  • Possibilism: The physical environment may limit some human actions, but people can adjust to their environment.

Scales of Analysis

  • Scale: Relationship between distance on the ground and on a map; how "zoomed in" you are while studying a geographic trait.
    • Global (Globalization).
    • Regional.
    • National.
    • State.
    • Local.
  • Scale of Analysis: How zoomed in or out you are when looking at geographic data

Regional Analysis

  • Region: Grouped together because of a measurable or perceived common feature.
  • Formal Region: Based on quantitative data (documented or measured).
    • Government areas (e.g., Wisconsin).
  • Functional Region: Based around a node or focal point.
    • Terrestrial radio broadcasts.
    • Radio station broadcast area, DC metro
  • Vernacular (Perceptual) Region: Common qualitative characteristic; exists because people believe it's a region.
    • Midwest

Population Distribution

  • Ecumene: Where people are settled on the earth (along rivers, fertile land, coast, etc.).
  • Physical Factors: People avoid areas too dry, too wet, too cold, too high.
  • Cultural Factors: Populations concentrate in areas with access to education, health care, and entertainment.
  • Historical Factors: Areas where life could be sustained and lived

Population Density

  • Arithmetic Density: Total number of objects in an area.
  • Physiological Density: Number of people supported by a unit area of arable land.
  • Agricultural Density: Ratio of the number of farmers to amount of arable land.
  • Agricultural density reflects how developed a country is.
  • Physiological density reveals whether a country is overpopulated.
  • Arithmetic density is a calculation and not terribly meaningful on its own.

Consequences of Population Distribution

  • Larger populations and greater density have greater political, economic, and social power.
    • Political – greater control over laws and larger influence
    • Economic – concentration of jobs, areas make more revenue
    • Social – greater access to health care, better educational opportunities, greater cultural diversity
  • Population growth alters the environment and landscape.
  • Carrying Capacity: The maximum population size of a species that the environment can sustain.
  • Overpopulation: Not enough resources in an area to support a population.

Population Composition

  • Age/sex ratio: Comparison of the numbers of males and females of different ages
  • Population structure is unique to each area due to their own unique history and current condition
  • Population Pyramid: A graph of the population of an area by age and sex; growing populations take a pyramid shape.

Population Dynamics

  • Demography: The study of population.
  • Crude Birth Rate (CBR): Number of live births per one thousand people.
  • Crude Death Rate (CDR): Number of deaths per one thousand people.
  • Doubling time: Time period it takes for a population to double in size.
  • Fertility: Number of live births occurring in a population
  • Infant mortality rate (IMR): The number of children who don't survive their first year of life per 1000 live births in a country
  • Mortality: Number of deaths occurring in a population
  • Infant Mortality Rate – number of babies that die during the first year per 1,000 live births
  • Rate of Natural Increase (RNI) (also known as NIR): birth rate−death rate10\frac{birth \ rate - death \ rate}{10}; positive NIR means growth, negative means shrinking.
  • Total fertility rate (TFR): Average number of children a woman is predicted to have.
  • Social factors: Impact fertility, mortality, and migration
  • Cultural factors: Impact fertility, mortality, and migration
  • Governments can play a role.
  • Economic factors: Impact fertility, mortality, and migration

The Demographic Transition Model

  • Demographic Transition Model
  • Epidemiological Model
    • Explains society development and changes in causes of death as we have progressed
    • Stage 1: Pestilence and Famine (High CDR)
      • Infectious diseases are a principal causes of human deaths
    • Stage 2: Receding Pandemics.
      • A pandemic is an epidemic that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects a very high proportion of the population – whole country or world wide
      • Improved sanitation, medicine and better nutrition
    • Stage 3: Degenerative and Human-created diseases
      • Decrease in infectious diseases (polio, measles) but increase in Chronic disorders associated with aging
      • Two especially important chronic disorders are heart disease and cancer
    • Stage 4: Delayed Degenerative
      • The major degenerative causes of death - cardiovascular diseases and cancers, but with extended life expectancy
      • Medicine helps make cancer spread more slowly or stop.
      • Better life choices, diet, exercise, reduce use of tobacco and alcohol
      • Recent consumption of non-nutritious foods and less exercise has resulted in obesity in many areas

Malthusian Theory

  • Malthus Theory: Population increases geometrically, food supply increases arithmetically.
  • Neo-Malthusian theory: Earth's resources can only support a finite population.
  • Pressure on scarce natural resources leads to famine and war.
  • Advocate for contraceptive and family planning in order to keep population low and protect resources and prevent famine and war.

Population Policies

  • Antinatalist policies: Incentives to have fewer children.
  • Pronatalist policies: Incentives to have more children.
  • Immigration policies: Policies that make it easier or harder for people to immigrate

Women and Demographic Change

  • Contraception: Methods of preventing pregnancy.
  • Ravenstein’s Laws of Migration
    1. The majority of migrants go only a short distance.
    2. Migration proceeds step by step (Step Migration).
    3. Migrants going long distances generally go to large economic centers.
    4. Each migration stream produces a compensating counter- stream.
    5. Natives of towns are less migratory than those of rural areas - people who live in urban areas are less likely to migrate.
    6. Females are more migratory within their area of birth, but males migrate more frequently internationally.
    7. Most migrants are young adults, families rarely migrate out of their country.
    8. Large towns (Urban areas) grow more as a result of migration than natural increases (Births).
    9. As infrastructure improves (business, roads, industries) migration increases with it.
    10. The major directions of migration is from the rural (agricultural) to urban (centers of industry and commerce).
    11. The major causes of migration are economic (seeking jobs and opportunity

Aging Populations

  • Dependency ratio: The ratio of the number of people not in the workforce (dependents) and those who are in the workforce (producers).
  • Life expectancy: The average number of years a person born in a country might expect to live.

Causes of Migration

  • Push Factors: Forces that drive people away from a place (no jobs, slavery, political instability, no water).
  • Pull Factors: Forces that draw people to immigrate to a place (jobs, to be near family).
  • Intervening opportunity: A nearer opportunity diminishes the attractiveness of sites farther away.
  • Intervening obstacle: A force that may limit human migration

Forced and Voluntary Migration

  • Asylum seeker: Person seeking residence in a country outside of their own because they fleeing persecution
  • Chain migration: Series of migrations within a group that begins with one person who through contact with the group, pulls people to migrate to the same area.
  • Step-migration: Migration to a far away place that takes place in stages
  • Forced migration: People migrate because they have no other choice.
  • Guest worker: Legal immigrant allowed into the country to work for a short time.
  • Internally displaced persons: Person forced to flee their home who remains in their home country.
  • Refugee: Person who flees their home country and is not able to return.
  • Transhumance: Moving herds of animals to highlands in summer and lowlands in winter.
  • Transnational migration: Moving across a border into another country.
  • Voluntary migration: People choosing to migrate

Effects of Migration

  • Political Impact
    • Brain drain: when the majority of educated or skilled workers leave an area to pursue better opportunities elsewhere
  • Cultural Impact
    • Loss of culture or migrants bring in new langua
  • Economic Impact
    • Loss or gain of income dependent on the migrant flow

Introduction to Culture

  • Culture: Body of materials, customary beliefs, and social forms that together constitute the distinct tradition of a group or people.
  • Material Culture: The material manifestation of culture, including tools, housing, systems of land use, clothing, etc.
  • Nonmaterial Culture: Beliefs, traditions, celebration, thoughts, values and ideas of a group (religion, morals, attitudes, etc)
  • Cultural Relativism: Culture should be judged based on its own standards, not based on another culture.
  • Ethnocentrism: Judging other cultures based on the rules of your culture
  • Taboo: Something forbidden by a culture or religion.

Cultural Landscapes

  • Cultural landscapes: Forms superimposed on the physical environment by the activities of humans.
  • Street lights, rice fields, churches, cemeteries, etc.
  • Ethnic Neighborhoods: Neighborhood, district or suburb which retains some cultural distinction from a larger surrounding area.
  • Indigenous people: Culture group that constitutes the original inhabitants of a territory
  • Indigenous community: Community of indigenous people living together working to keep their culture alive

Cultural Patterns

  • Sense of place: Strong feeling of identity felt by inhabitants and visitors of a location.
  • Language: Mutually intelligible sounds and symbols used for communication (Soda vs Pop).
  • Religion: Belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power (Church and Mosque).
  • Ethnicity: Belonging to a social group with a common national or cultural tradition. (China Town)
  • Gender: Cultural differences in how men are treated differently than women

Types of Diffusion

  • Relocation Diffusion: Ideas diffused by carriers as they migrate to new areas.
  • Expansion Diffusion: Spread of an idea through a population, increasing the number of those influenced.
    • Contagious: Transmission through close contact, like diseases.
    • Hierarchical: Idea spreads among most connected individuals, then to others.
      • (large connected cities to other large connected cities, then to smaller connected cities)
    • Reverse Hierarchical: Diffusion up a hierarchy, such as from a little city to a big one.
    • Stimulus: Cultural adaptation created as a result of the introduction of a cultural trait from another place.

Historical Causes of Diffusion

  • Creole or creolized language: Language that began as a combination of two other languages and is spoken as the primary language of a group of people
  • Lingua Franca: Mutually understood & commonly used by people who have different native languages
  • Colonialism: Effort by one country to establish settlement in a territory and to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles on that territory.
  • Imperialism: The policy of extending a country’s influence through political or military force to areas already developed by an indigenous people.

Contemporary Causes of Diffusion

  • Globalization: World interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments, driven by international trade and aided by information technology
    • Media – exposure to western television and movies to the world
    • Technological changes – exposure to cell phones, YouTube, twitter, and the internet
    • Politics – Democracies and democratic ideals being spread
    • Economics– through trade and globalization economics has played a key role in changing culture
    • Social Relationships – through globalization there has been tremendous push for equal rights for women and the role women play in traditional societies has been altered
  • Time-Space Convergence: Decline in travel time between geographical locations due to innovations.
  • Cultural Convergence: Cultures acquire common ideas, products, and traits, becoming more similar.
  • Cultural Divergence: Different parts of a cultural region are exposed to different influences and become dissimilar.

Diffusion of Religion and Language

  • Indigenous language: A language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous people
  • Language extinction: A language that is no longer spoken by anyone as their native language
  • Dialect: Different forms of the same language used by groups that have some different vocabulary and pronunciations
  • Language family: A collection of languages that are all descended from an original, proto-language
    • Indo-European Family
    • Nomadic Warrior Theory: language diffused through nomadic movement/conquest (hierarchical diffusion)
    • Sedentary Farmer Theory: language diffused through farmers relocating (relocation diffusion)
  • Ethnic religion: Focused on a single ethnic group; doesn't attempt to appeal to all people.
    • Hinduism and Judaism -- (diffused through relocation diffusion)
  • Universalizing religion: Attempts to appeal to all people and has a worldwide focus.
    • Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism -- (diffused through hierarchical and relocation diffusion)
  • Pilgrimage: A journey for religious purposes to a place considered sacred

Effects of Diffusion

  • Acculturation: Adoption of cultural traits by one group under the influence of another.
  • Assimilation: A person or group losing the cultural traits that made them distinct from the people around them
  • Multiculturalism: Various ethnic groups coexist without sacrificing their identities.
  • Syncretism: Blending traits from two different cultures to form a new trait.

Introduction to Political Geography

  • State: Political unit with a permanent population and boundaries recognized by other states.
    • United States, Ghana, Australia.
  • Nation: People who think of themselves as one based on a shared sense of culture and history and who desire political autonomy.
    • French, German, Indian.
  • Nation-states: State with a single nation.
    • Japan, Iceland, Armenia.
  • Stateless nations: Nation without their own independent state.
    • Palestinians, Kurds, Hmong.
  • Multinational states: State with two or more nations.
    • France, USA, Mexico, China, Russia.
  • Multistate nations: A nation living across states.
    • Can either have a state (Russia), a state divided in two (Korea), or be stateless (Kurds)
  • Autonomous region: Area that governs itself but is not an independent country.
    • Greenland, Hong Kong
  • Semi-autonomous region: Area that governs itself in certain areas.
    • Nunavut in Canada, Indian Reservations in US

Political Processes

  • Sovereignty: Final authority over a territory and the right to defend territorial integrity against incursion.
  • Self-Determination: The process by which a country determines its own statehood and forms its own allegiances and government.
  • Independence movements: An area that believes it should be its own country
  • Devolution: The transfer of decision-making power from a central government to a lower level.

Political Power and Territoriality

  • Choke point: Strategic narrow route providing passage through or to another region.
    • Panama Canal, Strait of Gibraltar.
  • Neocolonialism: Gaining indirect control of another country through economic or cultural pressures.
  • Shatterbelt: Region caught between stronger colliding external forces.
    • Israel/Palestine.
  • Territoriality: Perceived connection of people, their culture, and their economic systems to the land

Defining Political Boundaries

  • Boundary: Line that determines the limit of state jurisdiction
  • Relic: Boundary that no longer exists as an international border but remnants of its existence remain.
  • Superimposed: Boundary drawn by powerful outsiders that ignores existing cultural groups.
    • Africa.
  • Subsequent: Boundary that evolves as the cultural landscape takes shape and changes.
    • Ireland and Northern Ireland, Sudan and South Sudan.
  • Antecedent: Boundary in the natural landscape that existed before the cultural landscape emerged.
    • Mountains between Spain and France and Lakes between US and Canada.
  • Geometric: Boundary that follows a straight line or arc.
    • US and Canada - 49th parallel, North and South Korea 38th parallel.
  • Consequent: Boundaries that coincide with cultural groups
    • India (Hinduism) and Pakistan (Islam)

The Function of Political Boundaries

  • Four phases before a border is official:
    1. Definition: Boundary is negotiated and legally described.
    2. Delimitation: Boundary is drawn on a map.
    3. Demarcation: Markers are placed on the ground.
    4. Administration: Boundary is maintained.
  • Demilitarized zone: Area previously in conflict from which weapons and military forces have been removed
  • The Berlin conference was a meeting held in Berlin in 1884 and 1885 with the purpose of the European nations dividing Africa among them for colonization purposes with the intent of preventing conflict over the process.
  • Maritime boundary: Extensions of a country's territory that extend into the oceans around them
  • UNCLOS: Established rights and responsibilities of states concerning ownership/usage of the seas and their resources.
    • Territorial Sea: zone of water adjacent to a state’s coast (12 miles) in which a state has sovereignty.
    • Median-Line Principle: an approach to dividing and creating boundaries at the midpoint between two place
    • Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ): zone of water adjacent to the Contiguous Zone (200 miles) in which the state has a right to explore, exploit, conserve, and manage resources.
  • South China Seas - China has built military installations on some disputed islands in the SCS. The SCS accounts for 10 percent of the world’s fisheries, making it a key source of food for hundreds of millions of people. The region is also home to major oil and natural gas reserves. There are so many countries in close proximity to one another, resulting in high competition for maritime resources and tension over sovereignty.

Internal Boundaries

  • Voting District: Subdivision for electing members to a legislative body.
  • Redistricting: When voting districts are redrawn due to changes in population.
  • Gerrymandering: Redrawing voting district boundaries to give

Forms of Governance

  • Democracy: Government where power rests with the people through elected representatives.
  • Unitary state: Strong national government, weak regional governments.
    • U.K., North Korea, France.
  • Federal state: Strong national and regional governments that share power.
    • United States, Canada, Russia.

Defining Devolutionary Factors

  • Devolution: The transfer of decision-making power from a central government to a lower level.
  • Physical Geography: Physical boundaries can cause devolution.
    • Belgium and Basque.
  • Ethnic Separatism: Mainly religion, language, or ethnicity related differences.
    • Quebec.
  • Ethnic Cleansing: Mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society
  • Terrorism: Violence against civilians for political reasons
  • Economic and Social Problems: Economic or social strife can lead to the devolution and altering of states.
  • Irredentism: When a state wants to annex a territory whose population is ethnically similar
    • Russia with Crimea

Challenges to Sovereignty

  • Devolution occurs when states fragment into autonomous regions.
  • Eritrea: Broke from Ethiopia in 1991
  • South Sudan: Broke from Sudan in 2011
  • East Timor: Broke from Indonesia in 2002
  • Soviet Union: dissolved in 1991
  • Democratization: Introducing democratic systems or principles.
  • Supranationalism: Political and/or economic alliance of three or more states for mutual benefit.
    • United Nations.
  • Economies of scale: Cost advantages gained by an increased level of production.
  • Trade agreements: Treaty between two or more states who agree on trade, tariffs, taxes, and often include investment guarantees.
    • NAFTA.
  • Military alliance: Alliance between two or more states who agree on mutual protection and support in case of a crisis.
    • NATO.

Consequences of Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces

  • Centripetal Force: Force or attitude that tends to unify people and enhance support for the state.
    • Political - majority/minority relationships, armed conflicts
    • Economic - uneven development
    • Cultural - stateless nations, ethnic movements
  • Centrifugal Force: Force or attitude that divides the state.
    • Political - national identity, 4th of July
    • Economic - equitable infrastructure development
    • Cultural - linguistic, religious, and ethnic similarities

Introduction to Agriculture

  • Agriculture: Modifying the environment to raise plants or animals for food or other uses’
  • Mediterranean climate: Hot/dry-summer climate, mild winter and a defined rainy season.
  • Tropical climate: Hot, humid climate that produces certain plants
  • Extensive agriculture: Agriculture that uses small amounts of labor on a large area of land
  • Intensive agriculture: Agriculture that uses a lot of labor on a small area of land
    • Market Gardening (Intensive)
      • Location: Southeastern US, California, Southeastern Australia, Warm Mid-Latitude
      • Crops: Fresh fruits and vegetables, lettuce, broccoli, apples, oranges, tomatoes
    • Plantation Agriculture (Intensive)
      • Location: Tropical climate
      • Crops: Commodity & speciality crops such as cacao, coffee, rubber, sugarcane, bananas, tobacco, tea, coconuts & cotton.
    • Mixed Crop/Livestock (Intensive)
      • Location: Cold & Warm Mid-Latitude
      • Crops: Corn, grains, & soybeans grown to feed to cattle & pigs.
    • Shifting Cultivation (Extensive)
      • Crops: rice, maize (corn), millet and sorghum
    • Nomadic Herding (Extensive)
      • Location: Drylands/Desert
      • Livestock: Cattle, Camels, Reindeer, Goats, Yaks, Sheep, Horses
    • Ranching
      • Location: Drylands/Desert
      • Livestock: Cattle, Goats, Sheep
    • Commercial Grain Farming (Extensive)
      • Location: Mid-Latitudes, too dry for mixed crop & livestock
      • Crops: Wheat

Settlement Patterns and Survey Methods

  • Clustered: Houses and farm buildings are close to each other's fields.
  • Dispersed: People living relatively far from each other on their farms.
  • Linear settlement: Long, narrow settlement around a river, coast, or road.
  • Surveying: Examining and measuring the surface of the Earth for planning, preparing to build, or mapping.
  • Metes and bounds: Describing parcels of land where the metes are the lines and bound describes features such as a river or public road
  • Long Lot: Rural land use pattern dividing land into long, narrow lines along a waterway or road.
  • Township and range: System of dividing large parcels of where the townships describe how far north or south from the center point

Agricultural Origins and Diffusions

  • Fertile Crescent: Area in Southwest Asia where settled farming began.
  • Columbian Exchange: Exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations, communicable diseases, and ideas between the American and Afro-Eurasian hemispheres launched by Columbus's voyages
  • First Agricultural Revolution: Time when people first domesticate plants and animals
  • Domestication: Taming plants or animals for human use
  • Agricultural Hearths: Locations people began to domesticate plants and animals
  • Commonalities Among Agricultural Hearths: Fertile soil in river valleys, availability of water, moderate climates, and collective societal structures

The Second Agricultural Revolution

  • Second Agricultural Revolution: Increasing yield and access through machines and transportation.
  • Caused by the industrial revolution and the enclosure movement
  • Effects of the Second Agricultural Revolution:
    • New technology
    • Led to increased food production
    • Better diet, longer life, and more people available for work in factories
    • Shifting demographics (moving to cities, less farmers)
  • Enclosure Movement: Series of laws that enabled landowners to purchase and enclose land for their own use which had previously been communal land used by peasant farmers
    • Emergence of commercial agriculture
    • Fewer and larger farms -> decrease in farm owners -> improvements in farming techniques -> decrease in agricultural laborers
    • Urbanization: Mass migration of people into the cities to work in newly emerging factories.

The Green Revolution

  • Green Revolution: Spread of new technologies like high yield seeds and chemical fertilizers to the developing world in the 1960s and 1970s
    • Positive
      • Able to grow more crops on same amount of land which decreases food prices
      • More crops grown on same size land
      • Improvement in variety
    • Negative ⊳
      • Destroying local land and traditional modes of agricultural production
      • Decreasing biodiversity (hybrid seeds diminish local plant diversity)
  • Biotechnology: Application of scientific techniques to modify and improve plants, animals, and microorganisms to enhance their value

Agricultural Production Regions

  • Subsistence Agriculture: Only enough food is cultivated to survive (no surplus).
  • Commercial Agriculture: Production of crops for sale and profit
  • Monoculture: Growing one crop in a farm system at a given time
  • Mono-Cropping: Growing one crop in a farm system year after year.
  • Bid-rent theory: States that price and demand for real estate change as distance from the CBD increases

Spatial Organization of Agriculture

  • Commodity Chain: Activities involved in the creation of a product: design, production of raw materials, manufacturing and assembly, distribution
  • Agribusiness: System of commercial agriculture linking various industries to the farm
  • Economies of scale: Cost advantages that come producing a large amount of an item

Von Thünen Model

  • Von Thünen’s model: Explains rural land use by emphasizing transportation costs associated with distance from the market
    • Dairy and gardening is close to the center because it is a perishable good, where the farmer can maximize the profit, intensive agriculture
    • Forests are close to the market, because people need it for fuel and This needed to be close and is expensive to transport
    • Extensive agriculture (grains, field crops) do not perish as quickly as vegetables and milk and need plenty space to grow
    • Livestock and ranching further from the market for cheap land (need more of it and transportation is cheap)

The Global System of Agriculture

  • Global Supply Chain: A worldwide network to maximize profits in production
  • Export commodity: Goods sent from one country to another for sale

Consequences of Agricultural Practices

  • Pollution: Soil contamination by chemicals
  • Land cover change: Agricultural areas lost to development
  • Conservation: Protection of wildlife and natural resources
  • Deforestation: Human-driven and natural loss of trees
  • Desertification: Dry area becoming drier and losing vegetation
  • Irrigation: Moving water to where you need it
  • Draining Wetlands: Drainage for agricultural practices
  • Pastoral nomadism: Herding animals and migrating to find pasture areas
  • Soil salinization: Slow build up of salt in soil, particularly in irrigated areas
  • Terrace farming: Growing crops on the sides of hills or mountains by planting on man-made steps (terraces)
  • Changing Diets: MDCs continue their demand for meat, LDCs see an increase in their demand for meat, as well as convenient, processed food

Challenges of Contemporary Agriculture

  • Agricultural Biotechnology: Use of scientific tools and techniques to modify plants and animals (Pesticide resistant crops, Antibiotics, Biofuels)
  • GMO: Plants or animals whose DNA has been genetically modified
  • Aquaculture: Raising of fish and shellfish in ponds and controlled saltwater hatcheries
  • Value Added Foods: Foods that have increased in value due to alterations.
  • Organic Farming: Crops produced without the use synthetic or industrially produced pesticides and fertilizers or genetically engineered seeds
  • Fair Trade: Trade between MDC and LDC in which fair prices are paid to the producers
  • Community-supported agriculture (CSA): Individuals who pledge support to a farm operation
  • Urban farming: Integrating growing crops or raising animals into an urban ecosystem
  • Dietary Shifts: Movement from processed foods, meat, and sugars towards one more based in fruits and vegetables
  • Food Insecurity: State of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food
  • Food Desert: Geographic area where large grocery stores are scarce or missing
  • Weather: Agricultural production is affected by high temperatures, drought, flooding, storms, freezes

Women in Agriculture

  • Women are frequently denied loans or financial support, cannot afford tuition or fees; or rural communities lack funding to provide schools
  • Women may be unable to obtain or access inputs to improve productivity (e.g., land, animals, equipment, seeds, fertilizer, or infrastructure)
  • Women practicing subsistence agriculture may not be able to generate a surplus
  • Impacts of exposure to environmental hazards (agricultural pollution, chemicals, groundwater pollution) that cause health problems for women and children which have an economic impact (household, local, or national scale)
  • In many societies women hold agricultural knowledge and skills passed down to daughters.
  • In many societies women represent a spiritual ideal of fertility that is tied to beliefs regarding agricultural productivity.
  • Laws and government policies preventing women from acquiring land tenure, owning, or inheriting land
  • Women may lack access to political processes (voting), and institutions (representative government); or females lack political power to improve law and policy affecting women’s issues
  • Empowering and investing in rural women has been shown to significantly:
    • Increase productivity
    • Reduce hunger and malnutrition
    • Improve rural livelihoods

The Origin and Influences of Urbanization

  • Site: The place where the settlement is located. Absolute location of a city
  • Situation: Describes where the settlement is in relation to other settlements and features of the surrounding area. Relative location of a city
  • Urbanization: The movement of people from rural areas to cities.
    1. Early humans were nomadic, meaning no permanent home
    2. Some decided to stop and stay put in certain areas (settlements originated in Mesopotamia: part of the Fertile Crescent in SW Asia)
    3. These areas began to grow in size and became cities as we know them today
    4. Early settlements were agricultural villages that formed after humans began growing food and crops
    5. Typically located in fertile river valleys
    6. Farmers were able to produce surplus crops which could feed larger populations
    7. Led to people being able to pursue other occupations and trades
  • Socioeconomic Stratification: Differentiation of society into classes based on wealth, power, production or prestige.
  • First Urban Revolution: Agricultural and socioeconomic innovations that led to the rise of early cities.
  • Factors that influence Urbanization:
    • Transportation: Innovations in transportation.
    • Communication: Innovations in communication systems.
    • Rural to Urban Migration: Movement of people from rural settlements to urban centers in search of jobs.
    • Redevelopment: Set of activities intended to revitalize an area that has fallen on hard times.

Cities Across the World

  • Megacities: 10 million inhabitants or more (Cairo, Mumbai, Beijing, Dhaka, Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto)
  • Metacities: 20 million inhabitants or more (Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, São Paulo, Mexico City)
  • Micropolitan Area: Population between 10,000 - 50,000 people. Smaller City and Surrounding Towns/Counties
  • Megalopolis: A region in which several large cities and surrounding areas grow together
  • Metropolitan statistical area: A central city of at least 50,000 people and urban areas linked to it
  • Suburbanization is a population shift from central urban areas into suburbs
  • Sprawl (or urban sprawl): Tendency of cities to grow outward in an unchecked manner