AP Human Geography Notes

UNIT ONE: THINKING GEOGRAPHICALLY

1. Introduction to Maps

Learning Target: Identify types of maps, the types of information presented in maps, and different kinds of spatial patterns and relationships portrayed in maps.

• Reference maps: Designed for general information about places. The two main types are political and physical.
• Thematic Maps: Used as a communications tool to show how human activities are distributed.
  • Types: Cartogram, Choropleth, Dot Density, Isoline, Proportional Symbol
• Spatial Patterns Represented on a Map:
  • Absolute and relative distance and direction
  • Clustering: Grouped/bunched together
  • Dispersal: Distributed over a wide area
  • Elevation: Levels of how high/low something is located on the land
• Map Projections: Distortion in shape, size, distance, and direction.
  • Mercator Map: Shape and directions are fairly accurate, but greatly distorted toward the poles.
  • Robinson Map: Everything is distorted in small amounts.
  • Goode: Continent sizes are accurately portrayed, but directions and distances aren’t accurate.
  • Gall Peters: Shape of countries, especially near the equator, are distorted.

2. Geographic Data

Learning Target: Identify different methods of geographic data collection.

• Geospatial Data: All information, including physical features and human activities.
• Geographic Information System (GIS): A 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 or airplanes.
• Spatial information can come from written accounts: Field observations, media reports, travel narratives, policy documents, personal interviews, landscape analysis, and photographic interpretation.

3. The Power of Geographic Data

Learning Target: Explain the geographical effects of decisions made using geographical information.

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

4. Spatial Concepts

Learning Target: Define major geographic concepts that illustrate spatial relationships.

• Absolute location: The precise spot where something is located.
• Relative Location: Where something is in relation to other things.
• Space: The 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 that brings people closer together even though their distances are the same.
• Pattern: The geometric or regular arrangement of something in an area.

5. Human-Environmental Interaction

Learning Target: Explain how major geographic concepts illustrate spatial relationships.

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

6. Scales of Analysis

Learning Target: Define scales of analysis used by geographers and explain what scales of analysis reveal.

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

7. Regional Analysis

Learning Target: Describe different ways that geographers define regions.

• Region: A place larger than a point and smaller than a planet grouped together because of a measurable or perceived common feature.
• Formal Region: Based on quantitative data (documented or measured). All government areas are formal regions.
  • Example: Wisconsin
• Functional Region: Based around a node or focal point.
  • Example: Radio station broadcast area, DC metro
• Vernacular (Perceptual) Region: Shares a common qualitative characteristic based on people's beliefs.
  • Example: Midwest

UNIT TWO: POPULATION & MIGRATION

1. Population Distribution

Learning Target: Identify the factors that influence the distribution of human populations at different scales.

• Ecumene: Term used by geographers to mean 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 opportunities.
• Historical factors: Areas where life could be sustained and lived; areas where humans flourished and survived.

Learning Target: Define methods geographers use to calculate population density.

• Arithmetic Density: Total number of objects in an area.
• Physiological Density: Number of people supported by a unit area of arable land (land suited for agriculture).
• Agricultural Density: Ratio of the number of farmers to the amount of arable land.

Learning Target: Explain the differences between and the impact of methods used to calculate population density.

1. Agricultural density reflects how developed a country is.
2. Physiological density reveals whether the country is considered overpopulated.
3. Arithmetic density is a calculation and not terribly meaningful on its own.

2. Consequences of Population Distribution

Learning Target: Explain how population distribution and density affect society and the environment.

• Areas with larger populations and greater population 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
• As population grows and communities expand, we alter the environment and landscape.
• Carrying Capacity: The maximum population size of a species that the environment can sustain.
• Overpopulation: When there are not enough resources in an area to support a population.

3. Population Composition

Learning Target: Describe elements of population composition used by geographers.

• 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.

Learning Target: Explain ways that geographers depict and analyze population composition.

• Population Pyramid: A graph of the population of an area by age and sex. When a population is growing, it takes a pyramid shape.

4. Population Dynamics

Learning Target: Explain factors that account for contemporary and historical trends in population growth and decline.

• Demography: The study of population.
• Crude Birth Rate (CBR): The number of live births per one thousand people in the population.
• Crude Death Rate (CDR): The number of deaths per one thousand people in the population.
• Doubling time: The time period it takes for a population to double in size.
• Fertility: The 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: The 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 rate)/10 - a positive NIR means a population is growing and a negative NIR means a population is shrinking.
• Total fertility rate (TFR): The average number of children a woman is predicted to have in her child-bearing (fecund) years.
• Social factors can affect fertility, mortality, and migration.
• Cultural factors can affect fertility, mortality, and migration.
• Governments can play a role.
• Economic factors that affect fertility, mortality, and migration.

5. The Demographic Transition Model

Learning Target: Explain theories of population growth and decline.

• Demographic Transition Model
• Epidemiological Model: Explains how society has developed and the change in how/why people are dying 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: Characterized by a 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
    • However, there has been recent consumption of non-nutritious foods and less exercise which has resulted in obesity in many areas

6. Malthusian Theory

Learning Target: Explain theories of population growth and decline.

• Malthus Theory: Population increases geometrically, while 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 to keep population low and protect resources and prevent famine and war.

7. Population Policies

Learning Target: Explain the intent and effects of various population and immigration policies on population size and composition.

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

8. Women and Demographic Change

Learning Target: Explain how the changing role of females has demographic consequences in different parts of the world.

• 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

9. Aging Populations

Learning Target: Explain the causes and consequences of an aging population.

• 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.

10. Causes of Migration

Learning Target: Explain how different causal factors encourage migration.

• Push Factors: Force that drives people away from a place (no jobs, slavery, political instability, no water)
• Pull Factors: Force that draws people to immigrate to a place. (jobs, to be near family)
• Intervening opportunity: The presence of a nearer opportunity that greatly diminishes the attractiveness of sites farther away (Example: Finding a good-paying job when migrating looking for economic options)
• Intervening obstacle: And force of factor that may limit human migration (example: Coming into contact with a border, laws, language, natural feature that does not allow the migrant to continue their migration)

11. Forced and Voluntary Migration

Learning Target: Describe types of forced and voluntary migration.

• Asylum seeker: A person seeking residence in a country outside of their own because they are fleeing persecution.
• Chain migration: A 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: When people migrate not because they want to but because they have no other choice.
• Guest worker: A legal immigrant who is allowed into the country to work, usually for a relatively short time period.
• Internally displaced persons: A person forced to flee their home who remains in their home country.
• Refugee: A person who flees their home country and is not able to return.
• Transhumance: Moving herds of animals to the highlands in the summer and into the lowlands in the winter.
• Transnational migration: Moving across a border into another country.
• Voluntary migration: People choosing to migrate (not being forced).

12. Effects of Migration

Learning Target: Explain historical and contemporary geographic 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 language.
• Economic Impact - Loss or gain of income dependent on the migrant flow.

UNIT THREE: CULTURAL PATTERNS & PROCESSES

1. Introduction to Culture

Learning Target: Define the characteristics, attitudes, and traits that influence geographers when they study 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 – The 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 that is forbidden by a culture or a religion, sometimes so forbidden that it is often not even discussed.

2. Cultural Landscapes

Learning Target: Describe the characteristics of cultural landscapes.

• Cultural landscapes: The forms superimposed on the physical environment by the activities of humans.
  • Example: Street lights, rice fields, churches, cemeteries, etc.

Learning Target: Explain how landscape features and land and resource use reflect cultural beliefs and identities.

• Ethnic Neighborhoods - Neighborhood, district, or suburb that retains some cultural distinction from a larger surrounding area.
• Indigenous people - A culture group that constitutes the original inhabitants of a territory, distinct from the dominant national culture, which is often derived from colonial occupation.
• Indigenous community – Is the community of indigenous people living together working to keep their culture alive.

3. Cultural Patterns

Learning Target: Explain patterns and landscapes of language, religion, ethnicity, and gender.

• Sense of place: A strong feeling of identity that is deeply felt by inhabitants and visitors of a location.
• Language: Is a set of mutually intelligible sounds and symbols that are used for communication.
• Religion: The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
• Ethnicity: The fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition.
• Gender: For our purposes in class, it refers to the cultural differences in how men are treated differently than women.

4. Types of Diffusion

Learning Target: Define the types of diffusion.

• Relocation Diffusion: A form of diffusion where the ideas being diffused are transmitted by their carriers as they migrate to new areas.
• Expansion Diffusion: The spread of an idea through a population in a way that the number of those influenced becomes continuously larger. Includes contagious, hierarchical, and stimulus diffusion.
  • Contagious: Transmission of a phenomenon through close contact with nearby places, like diseases.
  • Hierarchical: An idea spreads by passing first among the most connected individuals, then spreading to other individuals (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: A form of diffusion in which a cultural adaptation is created as a result of the introduction of a cultural trait from another place. In other words, it is the spreading of an underlying principle of an idea when the idea as a whole cannot spread to a particular culture.

5. Historical Causes of Diffusion

Learning Target: Explain how historical processes impact current cultural patterns.

• Creole or creolized language: A 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: An effort by one country to establish a 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.

6. Contemporary Causes of Diffusion

Learning Target: Explain how historical processes impact current cultural patterns.

• Globalization: World interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments, a process driven by international trade and investment 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 and exposed to places around the world has encouraged and driven places to pursue more political equality (Arab Spring).
  • Economics– through trade and globalization economics has played a key role in changing culture. As places are exposed to international trade and the ability to specialize in certain industries it has brought outside companies in willing to invest (these western countries bring different culture with them).
  • 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: The decline in travel time between geographical locations as a result of transportation, communication, and related technological and social innovations.
• Cultural Convergence: Different 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.

7. Diffusion of Religion and Language

Learning Target: Explain what factors lead to the diffusion of universalizing and ethnic religions.

• 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: A religion that is focused on a single ethnic group (often in a centralized area) that doesn't attempt to appeal to all people.
  • Example: Hinduism and Judaism -- (diffused through relocation diffusion).
• Universalizing religion: A religion that attempts to appeal to all people and has a worldwide focus as opposed to a regional focus.
  • Example: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism --- (diffused through hierarchical and relocation diffusion).
• Pilgrimage: A journey for religious purposes to a place considered sacred.

8. Effects of Diffusion

Learning Target: Explain how the process of diffusion results in changes to the cultural landscape.

• Acculturation: Adoption of cultural traits, such as language, by one group under the influence of another.
• Assimilation: The process of a person or group losing the cultural traits that made them distinct from the people around them.
• Multiculturalism: When various ethnic groups coexist with one another without having to sacrifice their particular identities.
• Syncretism: The blending of traits from two different cultures to form a new trait.

UNIT FOUR: POLITICAL PATTERNS & PROCESSES

1. Introduction to Political Geography

Learning Target: For world political maps:
a. Define the different types of political entities.
b. Identify a contemporary example of political entities.

• State: Political unit with a permanent population and boundaries that are recognized by other states that allows for the administration of laws, collection of taxes, and provision of defense.
  • Example: United States, Ghana, Australia, etc.
• Nation: People who think of themselves as one based on a shared sense of culture and history and who desire political autonomy.
  • Example: French, German, Indian
• Nation-states: A state with a single nation (very few of these exist).
  • Example: Japan, Iceland, Armenia
• Stateless nations: A nation who do not have their own independent state.
  • Example: Palestinians, Kurds, Hmong
• Multinational states: A state with two or more nations (most states).
  • Example: 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: An area which governs itself but is not an independent country.
  • Examples: Greenland, Hong Kong
• Semi-autonomous region: An area which can govern itself in certain areas but does not have complete power to govern.
  • Examples: Nunavut in Canada, Indian Reservations in the US

2. Political Processes

Learning Target: Explain the processes that have shaped contemporary political geography.

• 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.

3. Political Power and Territoriality

Learning Target: Describe the concepts of political power and territoriality as used by geographers.

• Choke point: A strategic narrow route providing passage through or to another region.
  • Example: Panama Canal, Strait of Gibraltar
• Neocolonialism: Gaining indirect control of another country through economic or cultural pressures.
  • Example: After colonization - Africa continued to export raw materials - resulted in underdevelopment of economies
• Shatterbelt: A region caught between stronger colliding external forces, under persistent stress, often fragmented by aggressive rivals.
  • Example: Israel/Palestine
• Territoriality: The perceived connection of people, their culture, and their economic systems to the land.

4. Defining Political Boundaries

Learning Target: Define types of political boundaries used by geographers.

• Boundary: Line that determines the limit of state jurisdiction (the official power to make legal decisions and judgment) that is a vertical plane that cuts through the subsoil and extends into the airspace above and often coincides with cultural, national, or economic divisions.
• Relic: Boundary that no longer exists as an international border but remnants of its existence remain.
  • Examples: Berlin Wall
• Superimposed: Boundary that is drawn by powerful outsiders (colonizers) and ignores existing cultural groups.
  • Example: Africa
• Subsequent: Boundary that evolves as the cultural landscape of an area takes shape and changes as the cultural landscape changes.
  • Examples: Ireland and Northern Ireland, Sudan and South Sudan
• Antecedent: Boundary in the natural landscape that existed before the cultural landscape emerged and stayed in place as people moved in.
  • Example: Mountains between Spain and France and Lakes between US and Canada
• Geometric: Boundary that follows a straight line or arc.
  • Example: US and Canada - 49th parallel, North and South Korea 38th parallel
• Consequent: Boundaries that coincide with cultural groups.
  • Example: India (Hinduism) and Pakistan (Islam)

5. The Function of Political Boundaries

Learning Target: Explain the nature and function of international and internal boundaries.

• There are 4 phases that must occur before a border is official:
  1. Definition: The boundary is negotiated and legally described.
  2. Delimitation: The boundary is drawn on a map.
  3. Demarcation: Markers are placed on the ground (signs, walls, fences, etc.).
  4. Administration: The boundary is maintained.
• Demilitarized zone: An area previously in conflict from which weapons and military forces have been removed (N&S Korea border).
• 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.
  • The superimposed boundaries of Africa remained in place after independence, which has led to much of the current conflict and lack of ability to establish effective leadership
• Maritime boundary: The 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 places.
  • 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.

6. Internal Boundaries

Learning Target: Explain the nature and function of international and 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 an advantage to a particular political party.

7. Forms of Governance

Learning Target: Define federal and unitary states and explain how federal and unitary states affect spatial organization.

• Democracy: A form of government in which the ultimate power rests with the people through their elected representatives.
• Unitary state: A country where the national government is strong and the regional governments are weak (U.K., North Korea, France).
• Federal state: A country where the national government is strong and the regional governments are also strong so they share power (United States, Canada, Russia).

8. Defining Devolutionary Factors

Learning Target: Define factors that lead to the devolution of states.

• Devolution: The transfer of decision-making power from a central government to a lower level.
  • Physical Geography: Physical boundaries can cause devolution as it was historically hard for resources for states to maintain autonomy over difficult physical regions (Belgium and Basque).
  • Ethnic Separatism: Mainly religion, language, or ethnicity-related differences (Quebec).
  • Ethnic Cleansing: The mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society.
  • Terrorism: Violence against (typically) 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).

9. Challenges to Sovereignty

Learning Target: Explain how political, economic, cultural, and technological changes challenge state sovereignty.

• Devolution occurs when states fragment into autonomous regions; sub-national territorial units such as those within Spain, Belgium, Canada, and Nigeria.
• 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 that is formed for mutual benefit to promote shared goals or resolve disputes, but can limit the economic or political actions of member states creating a challenge to state sovereignty.
  • Example: United Nations
• Economies of scale: Cost advantages gained by an increased level of production. As countries agree to produce more of a good, the revenue received from selling that good is bound to increase.
• Trade agreements: Treaty between two or more states who agree on trade, tariffs, taxes, and often include investment guarantees.
  • Example: NAFTA formed to eliminate tariffs between US, Canada, and Mexico
• Military alliance: Alliance between two or more states who agree on mutual protection and support in case of a crisis.
  • Example: NATO formed to defend against threats by communist countries after WWII.

10. Consequences of Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces

Learning Target: Explain how the concepts of centrifugal and centripetal forces apply at the state scale.

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

UNIT FIVE: AGRICULTURE & RURAL LAND-USE PATTERNS & PROCESSES

1. Introduction to Agriculture

Learning Target: Explain the connection between physical geography and agricultural practices.

• 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 that produces certain fruits, vegetables, and grains such as grapes, olives, figs, dates, tomatoes, zucchini, wheat and barley. It prevails along the shores of the Mediterranean, in parts of California and Oregon, in central Chile, South Africa’s Cape, and in parts of Australia
• Tropical climate: Hot, humid climate that produces certain plants, such as cassava, banana, sugar cane, sweet potato, papaya, rice, maize
• 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

2. Settlement Patterns and Survey Methods

Learning Target: Identify different rural settlement patterns and methods of surveying rural settlements.

• Clustered: A pattern of rural settlement in which the houses and farm buildings of each family are situated close to each others' fields and surround the settlement.
• Dispersed: Settlement pattern with people living relatively far from each other on their farms.
• Linear settlement: A rural land-use pattern that creates a long, narrow settlement around a river, coast, or road that looks like a line.
• Surveying: Examining and measuring the surface of the Earth for planning, preparing to build, or mapping.
• Metes and bounds: A system of describing parcels of land where the metes are the lines (including angle and distance that surround the property) and bound describes features such as a river or public road.
• Long Lot: A rural land-use pattern that divides land into long, narrow lines up along a waterway or road.
• Township and range: A system of dividing large parcels of where the townships describe how far north or south from the center point.

3. Agricultural Origins and Diffusions

Learning Target: Identify major centers of domestication of plants and animals and explain how plants and animals diffused globally.

• Fertile Crescent: A crescent-shaped area in Southwest Asia where settled farming first began to emerge leading to the rise of cities.
• Columbian Exchange: A widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations, communicable diseases, and ideas between the American and Afro-Eurasian hemispheres that was launched by Columbus's voyages.
• First Agricultural Revolution