Untitled Flashcards Set

Geography – the study of the spaces and places people create on the ground and in their minds, and the ways in which people use and shape the environment.

Human geography focuses on the following:

-            How we organize ourselves and our activities in space

-            How we are connected to one another and the environment

-            How we make places and how those places in turn shape our lives

-            How we think about and organize ourselves locally and globally

Geography Basics

-            Site and Situation – refers to the geographic features of a location and its potential for successful human settlement.

o   Site – the physical attributes of a location, including its terrain, soil, vegetation, water resources, and climate.

o   Situation – the location of a place relative to other places and human activities, including its accessibility to transportation routes and proximity to population centers.

o   Fall Line Cities

§  “Fall line,” the site of a water fall at a physiographic divide of an upland region and a coastal plain that restricted further upstream navigation.

§  Montreal, QC

§  Lowell, MA

§  Hartford, CT

§  Albany, NY

§  Trenton, NJ

§  Philadelphia, PA

§  Georgetown, D.C.

§  Richmond, VA

§  Columbia, SC

§  Augusta, GA

§  Columbus, GA

§  Montgomery, AL

§  Tuscaloosa, AL

o   St. Anthony Falls, MN

§  Site – the only major natural waterfall along the Upper Mississippi River.

§  Situation – major obstruction to riverboat transportation, but excellent place to harness water power and to mill grain.

-            Scale – the geographic extent that phenomena exist or relate to other phenomena, from local to global

o   Geographers typically describe differences from local, (within country) regional, national, world regional, and global perspectives.

o   Map scale – the ratio of the distance between two places on a map and the actual distance between those places on the Earth’s surface.

o   Map scale is often expressed in terms of a representative fraction (i.e. 1/24,000) or ratio (i.e. 1:24,000).

-            Distance

o   Absolute distance – the measured distance between places (miles, kilometers, feet, etc.)

§  Example – “I live 1.3 miles from campus.”

o   Relative distance – the distance between places in terms of the time, effort, or cost it takes to travel between them.

§  Example – “It takes me 8 minutes to walk from campus to my apartment.”

o   Cognitive distance – the distance that people perceive to be between places.

§  “It takes 12 hours to drive across Nebraska on Interstate 80.”

o   Friction of Distance – the consideration of time and cost of travel between places (similar to relative distance).

§  “I'm less likely to shop for groceries in Chippewa Falls because I live in Eau Claire.”

o   Distance Decay – the greater the distance between places, the less interaction they are likely to have with each other.

§  “My (Eau Claire-based) screen printing business is less likely to have clients from Madison than from Chippewa Falls.”

-            Tobler’s Laws

o   First Law – Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.

o   Second law – The phenomenon external to the geographic area of interest affects what goes on inside.

Five Themes in Geography

-            1. Location

o   Absolute Location – the precise location of a place (most commonly uses Lat/Long coordinates)

o   Latitude – distance from the equator in degrees

o   Longitude – distance from the prime meridian in degrees

o   Relative location – the location of a place in relation to another place (Albert Lea is south of the Twin Cities; Campbellsport is between Milwaukee and Fond du Lac, etc.)

§  Proximity to or location between water bodies (rivers, lakes, bays, etc.), landforms (peninsulas, a hill or mountain, etc.)/ highways, cities, cardinal directions, left/right turns, etc.

-            2. Human-Environment Interaction

o   How societies adapt, modify, and depend on their environment

-            3. Movement

o   How places are linked to one another and to the world. Involves the mobility of people, goods, ideas, and even animals, who can transport seeds and diseases hundreds of miles.

-            4. Place (Physical & Human Characteristics)

o   Landforms (mountain ranges, plains, valleys, plateaus, etc.). climate, and bodies of water.

o   People, culture, language, religion, buildings and landmarks, cities, etc.

o   Place – points of presence that exhibit a degree of distinctiveness by their physical or cultural landscape characteristics. Places exist in space.

o   Space – the area between places, when considered as a whole, are not as distinct as the places within it.

o   Sense of place – the meanings that humans associate with a place. Places with a strong sense of place have a strong identity and character that is deeply felt by locals and visitors.

-            5. Regions

o   Places that share certain characteristics and can be defined in many ways – political, landform, agricultural, cultural, climatic, etc.

o   Formal region – is characterized by a common human trait (language, religion, nationality, political identity, or culture) or characteristic involving the physical world (climate, landform, or vegetation).

o   Functional region – organized around a node or focal point with the surrounding areas linked to that node by transportation systems, communication systems, or other economic association involving such activities as manufacturing and retail trading.

§  Examples – zip codes, area codes, school districts, airline hubs, etc.

o   Perceptual or vernacular Region – reflects human feelings and attitudes about areas and is therefore defined by people’s shared subjective images of those areas

Chapter 14: Globalization & Networks

-            Globalization – the increasing interconnectedness of our world through economic, environmental, political, and cultural change.

o   Connections occur at a faster pace, at a grander scale, in more dimensions, and in more complex ways than ever before.

-            Geographic network – a framework of routes within a system of locations. The locations are referred to as nodes.

-            Node – a connection point in a network where goods and ideas flow in, out, and through.

-            Point-to-Point

o   High access and mobility between nodes

o   Example – the US interstate highway system

-            Hub-and-Spoke

o   Limited access and mobility between nodes

o   Example – commercial airlines, public transit, train

-            Time-Space Compression – the set of processes that causes relative distances between places (time or cost of travel) to decline. These processes make such places grow “closer” to one another.

o   Transportation and communication technologies have made the world “smaller” over the last 500 years

o   In our globalized world, access to these technologies play a critical role in the quality of life (income, health, education, etc.)

-            Digital Divide – describe those who have access to technology (mobile phones, high-speed internet) and those who do not.

o   Exists between urban/suburban and rural regions in the United States.

o   Access to high-speed broadband internet is critical for 21^st century economic development, but providing it is expensive and takes time.

o   Utility companies in Wisconsin are making steady progress on updating the state’s broadband internet infrastructure.

-            Commodity chain – the steps in the production of a good from its design and raw materials to its production, marketing, distribution, and consumption.

Mapping a New World Geography

-            The “Era of Discovery” (European exploration in the 1600s) marks the beginning of the modern world.

-            New construction techniques and navigation technologies facilitated faster travel to known and unknown lands.

-            Why did Europeans explore?

o   Increasing population demanded more land for agriculture

o   Competition among monarchies for land and natural resources (wealth)

-            British explorers in Australia and elsewhere considered lands new to them as terra nullius (Latin for “nobody's land”) to justify colonization.

-            Colonialism and Imperialism

o   European monarchies exerted power over foreign lands in different guises.

o   Colonialism – the establishment and maintenance of political and legal domination by a state over a separate and alien society. Usually involves physical settlement and always includes economic exploitation.

o   Imperialism – the deliberate exercise of sustained military power and economic influence by powerful states in order to advance and secure their national interests.

-            Colonialism Extractive Nature

o   European colonization was economically driven and resulted in a global division of labor (raw materials from colonies and value-added processes in Europe).

o   Colonies that extracted valuable natural resources and agricultural products had a comparative advantage over suppliers in Europe

§  Minerals (gold, silver, etc.)

§  Lumber

§  Agricultural products (tobacco, sugarcane, potatoes, corn, spices, fruits, tea)

-            In North America, Europeans introduced horses, mice, cattle, plants, birds, pigs

-            In North America, Europeans were introduced to Bison, tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes, cocoa beans

-            Ecological Imperialism

o   The introduction of plants, animals, and diseases by Europeans to settler colonies was an unintentional but underlying factor in the success of the European colonization of the Western Hemisphere, Australia, New Zealand, and India.

-            Imperialism: Imposing New Geographies on the World

o   Case Study – Africa

§  Africa is a culturally diverse continent. The number of sovereign nations in Africa in the 19^th century is reflected by the continent’s current linguistic diversity.

§  In 1880, three European nations-maintained colonies on the continent of Africa. A European “land rush” of Africa was impending.

§  The Berlin Conference in 1884 was convened among imperial European powers with the purpose of carving the continent of Africa into colonies. This was done without the consent of continent’s inhabitants

§  After 1884, European nations sprinted for control lands unclaimed by other imperial powers.

-            Core and Periphery in a Globalizing World

o   Core – regions that dominate trade control the most advanced technologies and have high levels of productivity within diversified economies.

o   Periphery – regions with undeveloped or narrowly specialized economies with low levels of productivity.

-            The American Manufacturing Belt

o   The US became a part of the core of the world system because of:

§  Access to international capital (especially British capital)

§  Abundant natural resources

§  An abundant labor force

§  A large domestic market

Ch 13: The Humanized Environment

-            Geographers also use the terms “Nature-Society” and “Environmental Geography” to describe the study of the spatial interactions between humans and the natural world.

-            Nature – anything non-human (plants, animals, the landscape” but what is “natural” as much a social invention/creation as much as it is the physical world in which we live.

o   Nature is not only an object (a forest or a coral reef). It is a reflection of a society’s philosophies, belief systems, and ideologies impacts on that object.

-            Natural Hazards: Earthquakes and Related Hazards

o   The Earth’s lithosphere is comprised of ~15 tectonic plates that are in constant motion. Their boundaries, where they diverge, converge, or transform, are dynamic places that can be dangerous for humans.

-            The Pacific Ocean’s “Ring of Fire” is comprised of tectonic plate boundaries that are particularly active (earthquake, volcano, and tsunami activity).

-            Tsunamis – seismic sea waves that result from underwater earthquakes or volcanoes.

o   Their size is dependent on

§  The location of the earthquake or volcano

§  The magnitude of the tectonic activity

§  Proximity to inhabited areas

-            Nature as a Concept – The Nature-Society Model

o   Investigates how people interact with their natural environment

o   Humans impact nature

o   Nature impacts society by enabling or constraining economic activity, demographic mobility, and cultural exchange.

o   The relationship between nature and society is reciprocal – society shapes people’s understandings and uses of nature while nature shapes society.

-            Environmental Philosophies

o   In western society, views on nature have been heavily shaped by one of many Judeo-Christian interpretations of biblical scripture.

-            Environmental Impacts of European Colonization

o   The history of European expansion provides a powerful example of how society with particular environmental attitudes was able to transform nature in radical new ways.

o   These attitudes stemmed from:

§  1. Judeo-Christian Beliefs – Europeans believed that material wealth earned from the Earth was granted by God’s accord.

§  2. A capitalist political and economic system – Europeans had the mindset of making the most money by the most efficient means.

§  3. Technological Innovations – Europeans had the technology to make money in an efficient manner but were always seeking improvement.

o   Scientists and novelists began questioning the status quo in the 19^th century.

§  “Everything is interaction and reciprocal.” Alezander von Humboldt, Kosmos (1845).

-            Land Reclamation in the Netherlands

o   One-quarter of the Netherlands lies below sea level

o   Beginning in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, the Dutch constructed dikes and windmills around lakes to drain them.

o   These freshly-drained parcels of land, called polders, were transformed into farmland.

o   Steam-driven pumps were introduced in the 19^th century and were used to create large polders in a short time.

o   Electric and diesel-powered pumps introduced in the 20^th century facilitated faster creation of large polders.

o   Many environmental problems:

§  Draining wetlands has made inland flooding a major concern.

§  Rivers flowing through the country, most notably the Rhine, carry industrial and agricultural pollution.

§  Climate change threatens the coastline.

Contemporary Environmental Philosophies

-            Environmental Justice

o   Requires the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, to develop, implement, and enforce environmental laws, regulations, and policies.

o   Examines these issues through the lenses of sexism, racism, capitalism, and other critical approaches to understanding inequalities in society.

§  Environmental Justice in Gary, Indiana – In the early to mid-20^th century, racial discrimination and affordable housing located downwind from Gary’s steel mills steered people of color to those neighborhoods. As a result, they were exposed to a plethora of hazardous toxins that have reduced life expectancies.

-            Ecofeminism

o   The understanding that both women and nature share a history of subjugation and exploitation by patriarchal societies and their institutions

o   Promote perspectives that value social, cultural, and biological diversity.

§  Wangari Maathai organized the Greenbelt movement, a grassroots effort among women in Kenya to plant trees in order to combat deforestation and its associated environmental consequences.

-            Cultural Ecology – examines the ways that societies have adapted to the natural environment to survive.

o   Examples – irrigation systems, terraced field systems, biotechnology, and fertilizer.

-            Political ecology – a way of examining the political and economic relationships that influence human-environmental relationships

o   The back-breaking process of shipbreaking occurs in peripheral countries like Bangladesh and India

o   The costs and benefits associated with environmental change are distributed unequally.

o   Unequal distribution of environmental change reinforces existing social and economic inequalities.

o   Where does the water required to grow the corn come from?

§  Underground. Water from the Ogallala Aquifer is pumped to the surface and used to irrigate crops.

o   California Water – Not always Local

§  Over the last century, state, and local governments in California have constructed an intricate series of dams and aqueducts designed to collect and transport water from areas that receive high precipitation to cities and fields that do not.

§  Many projects cross major tectonic faults prone to earthquakes.

§  Increasing variances in seasonal precipitation due to climate change, have made the management of water in the state’s system of reservoirs increasingly challenging to manage.

o   Dairy Farming in Wisconsin

§  Once diffused among 1000s of small farms, WI’s dairy cattle now live in high density confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

§  As a result, effluent management has become an increasing factor in managing farm runoff in rural WI.

-            Fragile Farming Environment on the Southern Door Peninsula

o   CAFOS on the southern Door Peninsula are among the largest in Wisconsin (5-8,000 cows). The environmental impact of these cows is immense.

o   The natural landscape of the southern Door Peninsula is very prone to farm runoff because the porous limestone bedrock and little topsoil make access to groundwater very easy.

-            Drinking Water Concerns

o   For more than a decade, many residents of this area have not been able to drink their well water because it has been contaminated by effluent.

-            Farm Runoff in the Great Lakes

o   Runoff from phosphorus-rich fertilizer (including manure), pesticides, and herbicides has played a huge role in the formation of oxygen-deprived areas of the Great Lakes.

Countries ranked by population

-            1. India (1.428 billion)

-            2. China (1.425 billion)

-            3. United States (340 million)

-            4. Indonesia (277.5 million)

-            5. Pakistan (240.5 million)

World Population

-            Steady increase from 1650-1930 due to:

o   Improved health conditions

o   Reliable food supply

-            Rapid increase after 1940 due to:

o   Advancements in medicine and healthcare

o   Advancements in agriculture

o   Social safety net programs (childcare, eldercare, etc.)

-            Factors that shape population distribution today, including

o   Topography

o   Access to natural resources (clean water, productive soil)

o   Climate and weather

o   Connections to the rest of the world

-            The Netherlands has one of the highest population densities in Europe at 1,316/sq mi.

-            Crude or Arithmetic Density – the total number of people divided by the total land area of geographic area (country, state, etc.)

o   Example – Egypt

o   Population – 81.5 million

o   Area – 386,662 square miles

o   81,500,000/386,662 = 210.78 – The crude density of Egypt is 211 people per square mile.

-            Physiographic Density – the total number of people divided by the total livable area. Uninhabitable areas or areas that are difficult to live in (lakes, rivers, steep slopes, swamps, deserts, polar lands, etc) are subtracted from the total livable area.

o   Egypt – Population: 81.5 million, Livable Area: 13,513 sq miles

§  81,500,000/13,513 = 6,031

Demography

-            The study of the characteristics of human populations.

-            A census is a straightforward count of demographic attributes of a population.

o   No census is entirely comprehensive

o   All censuses under-count marginalized people and households

o   The US constitution requires a decennial census for reapportionment of seats in Congress. Gov’t uses info to learn how to serve citizens.

o   Federal funding can have a real impact on people’s lives.

-            Age-Sex Pyramids

o   Visualize age and sex data on a vertical graph by age cohorts.

o   A cohort is a group of individuals sharing a common temporal demographic experience.

o   Age-sex pyramids can vary within different census tracts of the same city.

o   The dependency ratio is one aspect that is examined

§  The DR is the ratio of those not in the labor force (children and elders) to those in the labor force (ages 18-64)

§  The higher the ratio, the higher the number of non-working citizens.

o   Increasing DRs in Europe reflect the “greying” of its population characterized by declining populations (due to decreasing fertility rates and higher life expectancies).

§  This is placing a higher burden on members of the middle-aged cohort to pay taxes for social services (health care, pensions, etc.).

The Demographic Transition Model

-            Stage One

o   Pre-industrial society

o   High, fluctuating birth rates

o   High, fluctuating death rates due to natural events (droughts, disease) and human induced events (war)

o   Cost of raising children is cheap (no school or entertainment expenses)

o   Stage one societies abide to Malthusian Theory; their growth is determined by the food supply.

-            Stage Two

o   Society experiencing 2^nd agricultural revolution (mechanization, selective breeding, crop rotation, etc.).

o   High but slowly decreasing birth rates

o   Decline in death rates due to higher crop yields and public health improvements (sewers, water supply, hygiene).

o   Stage two is home of a “population explosion” driven by the decline in death rates.

-            Stage Three

o   Society experiencing early stages of the Industrial Revolution (higher % of workforce in urban factories and offices)

o   Plummeting birth rates due to cost of urban living, families with two working incomes, increasing expense to raise a child, etc.

o   Death rates remain low.

o   As a result of declining birth rate (and steady, low death rate) the population stabilizes.

-            Stage Four

o   Society experiencing late stages of the Industrial Revolution and a Post-industrial economy (white collar service sector jobs)

o   Birth rates remain low due to cost of urban living, families with two working incomes, increasing expense to raise a child, etc.

o   Death rates remain low.

o   A result is a stable population size.

-            Stage Five

o   Countries with sub-replacement fertility rates (below 2.1 children per woman) like Italy and Japan represent a new fifth stage.

o   These countries are experiencing a natural population decline.

-            Birth rate – the ratio of total live births to total population in a specified place over a specified period of time.

o   The birth rate is often expressed as the number of live births per 1,000 of the population per year. It is also called the natality rate.

-            Death rate – the ratio of total deaths to total population in a specified place over a specified period of time.

o   The death rate is often expressed as the number of deaths per 1,000 of the population per year. It is also called the fatality rate.

-            Rates of Natural Increase – The difference between the Crude Birth rate and Crude Death rate is the rate of natural increase, the surplus of births over deaths.

-            Life Expectancy – the average number of years a person in a geographically-defined area is expected to live

-            The Mothers’ Index – the status of mothers at the national level and is based on access to health care, family planning, literacy, and other factors.

-            Population Struggles in Denmark

o   Until recently, Denmark had been experiencing a two-decade long declining birth rate due to partners choosing not to have children or to have fewer children than previous generations. The Danish government partnered with private companies to develop programs that encourage procreation.

-            Geography and Health: Cholera in London

o   A physician by trade, John Snow’s, cartographic study of the 1854 Broad Street, London cholera outbreak rendered the dominant belief that “bad air” caused cholera obsolete.

o   Snow’s research suggested that cholera was a waterborne virus; people who got their water from the Broad Street well were much more likely to contract cholera.

-            Geography and Health: Informing the Public through Maps

o   Many county and state governments collect health data to conduct geographic analyses of disease and environmentally related topics that impact quality of life of its citizens.

Chapter 3 Migration

-            Movement and Migration – Geographers study movement because of the impacts it has on the places and environments that are

o   Departed

o   Destinations

o   Spaces in between

-            Types of Movement

o   1. Cyclic Movement – Leaving home and then returning home after a defined period of time (Daily commute to school or work).

o   2. Migration – movement form a home location to a new place with the intent to stay in the new place for an extended period. (Moving to a dorm)

-            Pastoralism – the breeding and herding of animals to satisfy human needs for food, shelter, and clothing.

o   Pastoralists practice transhumance (the movement of herds according to seasonal climatic changes).

o   More common in the peripheral countries or lesser economically developed countries, but it is still practiced in core countries or more economically developed countries.

o   Basque-American pastoralists still herd sheep in the Intermontane West (Idaho and Nevada)

o   Dairy farmers in the mountains of Bernese Oberland, Switzerland migrate their Brown Swiss cows from lower elevations in the winter to higher elevations in the summer.

-            Transhumance in the Mediterranean Region

o   Typically practice in:

§  Savannas (grasslands)

§  Deserts and Steppes (lightly wooded, grassy plains)

§  Mountainous regions

-            Push and Pull Factors

o   Push Factors – encourage migration out of an area

o   Pull Factors – encourage migration into an area

Diasporas – the geographic dispersion of any people from their homeland. They can be voluntary or forced. Past and present diasporas play an integral role in our modern interconnected world.

-            The Irish Diaspora

o   Approximately 10 million Irish have emigrated since 1700. The majority immigrated to the United States.

o   Americans with Irish ancestry reside in higher numbers and concentrations in the northeastern US

-            The Hmong Diaspora

o   The Hmong Diaspora is a result of internal and external migration.

o   The Hmong are a nation without a nation-state

o   Homeland is in contemporary China, but Han persecution forced many Hmong to migrate south in early 19^th century into northern regions of contemporary Laos and Vietnam.

o   During the Vietnam War, Americans trained many Hmong in guerrilla warfare.

o   Hmong militias fought on behalf of the US in Laos

o   This “Secret War” was unknown to the American public at the time.

o   After the US withdrew from SE Asia in 1975, Hmong were persecuted by Laotian government.

o   Tens of thousands of Hmong fled to Thailand seeking political asylum to escape persecution.

o   In 1976, the US government began accepting Hmong into the country as political asylum seekers.

o   Today, Hmong reside in countries throughout the world, including Laos, Thailand, Australia, France, Canada, and the United States.

o   Within the US, California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Carolina are home to the highest percentages of Hmong Americans.

Forced Migration: Atlantic Slave Trade

-            12.5 million enslaved Africans were forced to the Americas to work in the sugar, cotton, and other agricultural industries.

Forced Migration: Indian Removal Act (1830)

-            Forced internal migration promoted by President Andrew Jackson in the 1830s

-            Designed to force Indigenous Peoples living in the eastern US west of the Mississippi River.

-            The Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee (who were tricked into signing an illegitimate treaty)

-            The Seminole and Creek defended their territory through war but ultimately were forced to give up lands.

Forced Migration – Hocak (Ho-Chunk) Removals

-            The federal government forced the Ho-Chunk Nation to migrate more than five times

Asylum – The United Nations (UN) defines asylum as a form of legal protection that allows an individual to remain in a foreign country instead of being removed (deported) to a country where they fear persecution or harm to themselves or their family.

-            Refugees – The United Nations (UN) defines refugees as “people who have fled war, violence, conflict, or persecution, and have crossed an international border to find safety in another country.”

o   A core-periphery/ more developed-less developed nation pattern exists between countries that send many refugees and those who send few.

-            Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) – persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular because of (or to avoid):

o   Armed conflict

o   Situations of generalized violence

o   Violations of human rights

o   Natural or human made disasters

o   And who have not crossed an internationally recognized border

o   The UN estimates that there are 64 million IDPs in the world today.

-            Forced Migration: Hurricane Katrina (2005)

o   The number of homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 incited a diaspora of 1.5 million Americans that forever changed the central Gulf Coast.

-            Forced Migration: Hurricane Helene (2024)

o   Western NC has been considered a “climate haven” less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Helene changed that mindset.

-            Environmental Migrant – a person forced to migrate or flee from their home region due to sudden or long-term changes in the local environment

Tuvalu – Home of the First Climate Refugees

-            Tuvalu

o   Located about halfway between Australia and Hawai’i

o   Population – 12,000

o   Highest elevation is 15 feet above sea level

o   Average sea level rise is 4 mm/year

-            Unless drastic change occurs, the islands of Tuvalu will be underwater within 100 years. As the pacific ocean submerges Tuvalu, residents are moving to Aotearoa/New Zealand

-            As the Tuvaluan diaspora accelerates, leaders are developing a virtual Tuvalu in the Metaverse

Chapter 2 – Population and Health

Reliability of Population Data

-            Megalopolis – a huge urban agglomeration.

-            When the United States plans and conducts is census every 10 years, the government runs a marketing campaign encouraging every person in the country to be counted. Because much federal government funding depends population data, state, and city governments also recognize the importance of having their citizens counted in order to gain more federal dollars per capita. If the population is undercounted, that translates into a loss of dollars for city governments.

o   For recent censuses, advocacy groups have urged the Census Bureau to sample the population and derive population statistics for the samples. They argue that this approach would more accurately reflect the number of people in the United States.

Malthus

-            Malthus reasoned that food supplies grow linearly, adding acreage and crops incrementally by year, but population grow exponentially, compounding on the year before. We now know his assumption that countries depend completely on what is grown inside their borders does not hold true. Countries are not closed systems. Malthus did not forsee how agricultural goods would be exchanged across the world through globalization. Mercantilism, colonialism, and capitalism brought global interaction among the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Through global interaction, new agricultural methods developed, and commodities and livestock diffused across oceans. Crops well suited for certain climates and soils arrived in new locations.

-            In recent decades, food production has grown rapidly because the amount of cultivated land has expanded. Improved seed strains, pesticides, fertilizers, irrigation systems, and constant innovation have remarkably increased yields per acre.

-            Natural Increase Rate

o   Two statistics are used to calculate the natural increase rate of a population: the crude birth rate and the crude death rate. The crude birth rate is the number of live births per year per thousand people. The crude death rate is the number of deaths per year per thousand people. Subtracting the crude death rate from the crude birth rate gives us the rate of natural increase. The natural increase rate shows how a country’s population is changing without migration, because immigration and emigration are not included in the natural increase rate. Europe and Russia have negative natural increase rates, meaning that without immigration, their populations are declining.

-            The contraceptive prevalence rate is the percentage of women ages 15 to 49 who are currently using or whose partner is currently using at least one contraceptive methods.

-            Doubling Time

One way to explain the growth rate in world population is to compare the populations rate of growth to its doubling time. Every rate of growth has a doubling time. For demographers and population geographers who study global population growth today, the concept of doubling time is losing much of its punch. With populations falling in many places, fears of global population doubling quickly subsiding. Many indicators, such as the slowing of the doubling time, suggest that the explosive population growth of the twentieth century will be followed by slowdown during the 21st century.

Chapter 1 – Intro to Human Geography

Geography – the study of the spaces and places people create on the ground and in their minds, and the ways in which people use and shape the environment.

Human geography – how we organize ourselves and our activities in spaces; how we are connected to one another and the environment; how we make places and how those places, in turn, shape our lives; and how we think about and organize ourselves locally and globally.

-            Includes the subdisciplines of political, economic, population, and urban geography.

Globalization is a set of processes that increase interactions, deepen relationships, and accelerate connectedness across country borders.

-            Includes the movement of money, the migration of people, the flow of ideas, and the making and trading of goods.

Geographers often use on-the-ground fieldwork to gain insight into such questions. They go out in the field and see what people are doing, we talk to people and observe how their actions and reactions vary across space, and we develop maps and other visualizations that help us situate and analyze what we learn.

The Spatial Perspective

-            Study of spatial and material characteristics of human-made places and people.

-            Physical geography – study of the spatial and material characteristics of the physical environment.

-            Mapping the spatial distribution of a phenomenon can be an important first step to understanding it. Maps raise questions about how arrangements come about,  what processes create and sustain them, and what relationships exist among different places and things. Mapping the distribution of a disease, is often the first step to finding its cause.

The Value of Thinking Geographically

-            Place locations are to geography what dates are to history. Understanding change across space is equally important to understanding change over time.

-            Spatial perspective – Human geographers bring to studying the world offers a particular way of looking at a multitude of phenomena, ranging from political elections and urban slums to race and migration.

Location

-            Location – geographical position of people and things on Earth’s surface.

o   Absolute location – precise location of a place, usually defined by locational coordinates (latitude and longitude).

o   Relative location – location of place or attribute relative to another place or attribute.

o   Location theory – to answer theoretical and practical questions about where something should be located or why it is located where it is.

-            Human-Environment Interactions

o   Human-Environment Interactions – Relationship between humans and the physical world. People change environments and changing environments place pressure on people to react.

-            Huntington and Cushing claim that climate is the critical factor in how people behave. Yet what constitutes an “ideal” climate lies in the eyes of the beholder.

o   Environmental determinism – the idea that individual and collective human behavior is fundamentally affected by, or even controlled by the physical environment.

o   Possibilism – The choices that a society makes depend on what its members need and on what technology is available to them.

o   Carrying capacity – an area of land can support a certain number of people and species.

o   Cultural ecology – concerned with culture as a system of adaptation to and alteration of the environment.

o   Political ecology – concerned with the environmental consequences of dominant political-economic arrangements and assumptions.

o   Hearths – the area or place where an idea, innovation, or technology originates

Region

-            Region – an area of Earth with a degree of similarity that differentiates it from surrounding areas. Human phenomena and physical phenomena are not evenly distributed across Earth. Instead, they tend to be concentrated in regions. A region can be an area dominated by an individual feature. Geographers use fieldwork and both quantitative and qualitative methods to develop descriptions od different regions of the world.

-            Formal Regions

o   Formal region – shared trait, either physical or cultural.

o   Formal physical region – shares a certain geographic feature.

o   Formal cultural region – people might share one or more cultural traits.

-            Functional regions

o   An area that shares a common purpose. Functional regions have nodes, places that function as central connecting points for a functional region. They have a shared political, social, or economic purpose.

§  Functional regions are often culturally diverse. Is not defined by similar cultural traits, but rather by the fact that the people within the region function together politically, socially, or economically. Connections to the node help define the boundaries of a functional region.

-            Perceptual regions

o   Are images people carry in their minds based on accumulated knowledge of peoples, places, and things. Perceptual regions can include people and their cultural traits (dress, food, language, and religion), places and their physical traits (mountains, plains, or coasts), and built environments (windmills, barns, skyscrapers, or beach houses).

o   Vernacular region – a perceptual region that has such a strong significance to the people in the perceptual region that it becomes the lens through which they see their world and a way people identify themselves.

Place

-            The uniqueness of a location. All places have unique human and physical characteristics, and one of the purposes of geography is to study the special character and meaning of places. Geographers pay attention to the attributes in a place shapes what happens and why.

o   One of geography’s core ideas is that what happens is often influenced by where it happens. Place matters.

-            People develop a sense of place by infusing a place with meaning and emotion, by remembering important events that occurred in a place, or by labeling a place with a certain character.

-            Perceptions of places – where we have never been through reading books, watching movies, hearing stories and seeing pictures. Experiences we have had in places, lack of experience in other places, and images we get from books, movies, and even video games shape our perceptions of places.

Movement

-            Refers to the mobility of people, goods, and ideas. Is an expression of the interconnectedness of places.

o   Diffusion – the spread of an idea, innovation, or technology from its hearth to other people and places. Whether and how something diffuses depends on the amount of interaction between and among places. Spatial interaction between places depends on the distances between places, the accessibility of places, and the transportation and communication connectivity among places.

-            Expansion Diffusion

o   Describes an innovation or idea that develops in a hearth and remains strong there while also spreading outward.

o   Contagious diffusion – When expansion diffusion occurs primarily as result of person-to-person contact.

o   Hierarchical diffusion – a type of expansion diffusion that starts with the knowers, those who have already adopted the idea or innovation and then diffuses through a hierarchy of most linked people or most linked places.

o   Stimulus diffusion – the process of diffusion where two cultural traits blend to create a distinct trait. Cultural traits or practice that are already held by a people in a place can encourage stimulus diffusion. Not all ideas can be readily and directly adopted by a receiving population; some are simply too vague, unattainable, different, or impractical for immediate adoption.

o   Relocation diffusion – occurs when an idea or innovation spreads from its hearth by the action of people moving and taking the idea or innovation with them Relocation diffusion primarily happens through migration. When migrants move from one place to another, they take their culture traits with them. Relocation diffusion can even help maintain cultural traits and customs.

Cultural Landscape

-            The visible imprint of human activity on the land. Reading cultural landscapes provides insights into the practices and priorities of those who shaped the landscape of time. Cultural landscapes can reflect long periods of human activity. As each group of people arrives and occupies a place, they carry their own technological and cultural traditions and transform the landscape in their own way.

-            Sequent occupance – describe the imprint made by a series of people living on a landscape – each creating a layer on top of the one that came before.

o   A cultural landscape offers clues to the cultural practices, values, and priorities of its layers of occupants.

-            Scale – Two meanings to scale in Geography. First one refers to the distance on a map compared to the distance on Earth. The second is the spatial extent of something – the scale of an individual, a family, city, a state, a watershed, a continent, a region, or the world. When we refer to scale, we are typically using the second definition because this way of thinking about scale impacts how we interpret patterns and factors of both human and physical phenomena.

o   Explaining a geographic pattern or process requires looking across scales. The scale of research or analysis matters because we can make different observations at different scales.

Context – the bigger picture in which a human or physical geography phenomenon takes place. It is the physical and human geographies that give meaning to the place, environment, and space in which events occur and people act.

Why Thinking Geographically Matters

-            To think Geographically, start by asking a geographic question, one with a spatial or landscape component (how patterns of inequality or the types of housing found in different neighborhoods in Houston have changed). After natively, ask a question that focuses attention on how the character or geographic situation of a place affects what happens (how the physical and cultural character of Shanghai influences the growth of the city.)

-            Learning and applying geographic concepts and making links among concepts in your mind is the next step to thinking geographically.

Identify types of maps and examine the role maps play in understanding the world.

-            Cartography – the art and science of making maps – is as old as geography itself.

-            Reference maps – show locations of places and geographic features.

o   Accurately show the absolute location of places, using a coordinate system that precisely plots where on Earth something is found.

-            Thematic maps – tell stories, typically showing the spatial distribution (clustering or dispersal) or movement of people and things.

-            Global positioning system (GPS) – enables us to locate features on Earth with extraordinary accuracy. We not only know the absolute locations of places; we also know the absolute distance and absolute direction between them, which means we can use maps for wayfinding.

o   Researchers collect data quickly and easily in the field, and low-priced units make it possible for divers, fishers, hunters, runners, and hikers to use GPS to find absolute direction and absolute distance.

-            Relative Location – the location of a place in relation to other human and physical features

o   Absolute locations do not change, but relative locations change over time.

-            Activity Spaces – the spaces we move through routinely. Our mental maps of places we travel through routinely are much more accurate and detailed than our mental maps of places we have never been.

Generalization in Maps

-            Generalized maps help us see trends because we can not see all cases of a given phenomenon. The map of world precipitation is a generalized map of mean annual precipitation received worldwide.

Remote Sensing and GIS

-            Remote sensing – a method of collecting data or information through instruments that are physically distant from the area of study. Satellites, aircraft, and drones collect remotely sensed data, which are often instantaneously available.

-            Geographic information systems – Geographers integrate remotely sensed images into geographic information systems, which enable us to study change to a specific place or region over time. They combine computer hardware and software to show, analyze, and represent geographic data.

o   Professional geographers use GIS to compare spatial data by creating digitized representations of the environment, combining layers of spatial data, and creating maps that superimpose patterns and processes. Once spatial data are entered, geographers use GIS to analyze data, and these analyses offer new insights into geographic patterns and relationships.

o   The power of GIS continues to evolve with advances in data storage and retrieval technologies. In addition, geographic data are more accessible to consumers, which may help them make better decisions.

Describe how Culture Influences Patterns and Processes in Human Geography

-            Culture – a group of belief systems, norms, and values practiced by a people. Culture is an all-encompassing term that identifies not only people’s tangible lifestyles, but also their prevailing values and beliefs. Culture lies at the heart of human geography.

o   A culture trait is a single attribute of a culture that can be identified and described.

o   Culture hearth - an area where culture traits develop and from which they diffuse.

Chapter 14 Describe how Identities are changing in a Globalized World

-            Identity is how we make sense of our selves. We have identities at different scales: local, national, regional, and global identities.

-            Globalization links us with other people and places, and the flow of information technology is part of that linkage.

-            Imagined community – the idea that people who do not personally know each other are linked by shared reactions to events.

-            The mass of information coming our way each day is often overwhelming. As people filter through or ignore the flow of information, they may personalize the information and either make a connection or differentiate themselves from particular people or places. Many people’s identities reflect developments unfolding at the global scale. Engaging daily with global events was not possible before the age of modern telecommunications. Globalization modifies how we interact with one another and how we make sense of ourselves in our world, our state, our region, and our locality.

-            Globalization – a chaotic set of processes and outcomes created by people. The processes of globalization and the connectedness created through globalization occur across scales and across networks, regardless of country borders.

o   The original backbone of economic globalization was trade. Trade across vast distances has taken place for centuries, and many debates over globalization continue to focus on trade.

o   Washington Consensus – free trade raises the wealth of all countries underpins a set of neoliberal policies.

-            Networks – “interconnected nodes” without a center.

o   A nonhierarchical network is horizontally structured, with power shared among all participants and ideas flowing in all directions.

o   A multitude of networks exist in the world: financial, transportation, communication, kinship, corporate, nongovernment, trade, government, media, education, social and dozens of other networks. These networks create a higher degree of interaction and interdependence among people than ever before.

-            Time-Space Compression – Access (or lack of access) to information technology networks.

-            Digital Divide – The difference between those who have access to technology and those who do not, both reinforces the flows of globalization.

-            Participatory Development – incorporating the ideas and interests of locals in the creation of development plans.

-            Vertical integration – owns all or most of the points along the commodity chain (global production chain) – from the supply of raw materials to consumption.

-            Horizontal integration – acquires ownership of other corporations engaged in similar activities. The incentive for horizontal integration is that a company that is successful in producing one good can replicate its success, share costs (such as websites,) and increase profits selling at different price points or by developing slightly different varieties of the same good.

-            The Agricultural Sector

o   Over the better part of the last century, these networks promoted the industrialization of agriculture, which increased the distance between farmers and consumers.

o   Community-supported agriculture – Through this, a farmer and consumer create a network where both assume risk. Consumers pay for a share of the farmer's harvest, typically fruits or vegetables, before the growing season begins. Farmers use the cash to purchase seeds and then plant, harvest, and deliver goods to consumers over a period of weeks during the growing season.

-            The Service Sector

o   Modern transportation and communication networks are at the heart of the economic globalization. These networks make global production networks possible, and they allow for innovations and ideas to spread rapidly. They play a fundamental role in time-space compression, and they link together the fortunes of distant place.

Chapter 13 – The Humanized Environment

-             Changing winds and weather systems are shaped by the uneven heating of Earth and its atmosphere. The constant motion of these three processes – tectonic, hydrological, and meteorological or climatological – creates natural hazards, naturally occurring physical phenomena.

o   When a volcano erupts on an island that is populated with people and property, it becomes a natural disaster, a naturally occurring physical phenomenon that causes damage and loss of life.

-            A natural disaster map highlights the places in the world most susceptible to natural disasters, whether caused by tectonic activity (earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis), hydrological hazards (floods or landslides).

-            Tectonic Hazards and Disasters

o   Earth’s lithosphere (crust and upper mantle) is broken into approximately 15 major plates and several minor plates. These plates are in constant motion, with most movement happening where plates meet, along plate boundaries. Tectonic plates diverge (spread apart), converge (come together), or transform (slide past one another). Where plates are diverging, as at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, magma moves to the surface from the upper mantle, creating new crust and volcanic activity in a process called seafloor spreading.

o   While new crust is formed where plates diverge, old crust is pushed down into the upper mantle and recycled in what are called subduction zones, areas where an oceanic and a continental plate converge or meet.

o   When the edge of an oceanic plate subducts under a continental plate, it melts under the heat and pressure of subduction and becomes magma. Magma can then rise to the surface and create a volcanic arc, a chain of volcanoes that parallels the subduction zone. Trenches are long, narrow, deep feature that mark the place where an oceanic plate is subducting under a continental plate.

§  The tectonically active region of volcanoes and earthquakes on plate boundaries around the Pacific is called the Ring of Fire.

o   Tsunamis – seismic sea waves that result from underwater earthquakes or volcanoes. The size of a tsunami depends on the location of the earthquake or volcano, the magnitude of the tectonic activity, and its proximity to inhabited areas.

§  In a tsunami, the movement of crust sets the ocean water in motion, creating huge waves. As the tsunami moves to share, the amount of space benaeath it the distance between the ocean surface and the ocean floor, shallows, and the energy in the moving water rises, creating a wall of waves that crash onshore and destroys people and property.

-            Hydrological Hazards and Disasters

o   During periods of glaciation, more water is in the form of ice in glaciers at higher latitudes and elevations. During warming periods, more of Earth's water is in liquid form.

§  About 97.5 percent of Earth's water is saltwater, and the rest is freshwater. In the current era. Almost 69 percent of freshwater is in glaciers and ice caps, another 30.1 percent is in groundwater, and about 1.2 percent is surface or other freshwater found in rivers, lakes and reservoirs.

§  Only 0.006 percent of all water on Earth is in the rivers and lakes that provide freshwater for human and animal consumption and serve as a source of irrigation for crops.

o   However, when they meander from side to side, rivers carve floodplains, flat areas adjacent to river channels that are designed to flood. At the flood stage, river water flows over its banks and into the floodplain, depositing sediment as it slows down. After the river recedes to its channels and water evaporates off the floodplain, this nutrient-rich sediment is left behind. Farmers around the world are drawn to floodplains to grow crops in these nutrient-rich soils, and people concentrate on cities and settlements near freshwater sources.

-            Flash Floods

o   When excessive rain or meltwater from snow overflows rivers, fills dry riverbeds, and causes a rapid rise in water levels. People try to prevent such floods by building dams and levees to control the flow of rivers and to keep river water in stream channels and off floodplains. Impervious surfaces, including concrete and asphalt surfaces and buildings, that prevent rain dumped by large storms from percolating into soil and down in groundwater. When large rainstorms land on impervious surfaces that either purposefully or inadvertently direct floodwaters, flash flooding can result.

§  Floodwater stood on croplands for months, creating a natural disaster for farmers and residents of floodplains.

-            Meteorological Hazards and Climatological Hazards and Disasters

o   Meteorological Hazards are created by uneven heating of the Earth and the Earths atmosphere. This uneven heating generates winds that rebalance energy in the atmosphere, moving heat from the hotter equatorial area to the colder poles.

-            Monsoons – a prevailing wind coming from one direction for a long period of time. The monsoon climate region, which is located on either side of the equator in coastal areas, has a wet monsoon and a dry monsoon. Monsoons are regularly occurring climate phenomena that do no generally pose a natural hazard or create natural disasters. Instead, the rains are welcomed each summer because they regenerate rivers and flood the fields where rice is grown.

-            Anthropocene – the current geologic time when humans are the dominant influence on climate and environment.

Land Use

-            Land use – the ways people use land resources for specific purpose. For example, Agriculture is a land use.

-            Land cover – what is on the ground, such as grass, tress or pavement.

-            What people choose to do with the land – land use – changes over time, and these choices impact land cover. If we choose to deforest a swatch of land to grow crops, we change the land use form forest to agriculture.

-            Extensive agriculture – little fertilizer, pesticides, and machinery to farm the land

-            Intensive agriculture – use significant capital investments, including fertilizer, pesticides, and machinery, relative to the amount of land farmed.

-            Deforestation – impacts the carbon cycle because it removes a major sink of carbon dioxide from Earth. In addition, burning trees to clear a forest releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Water Use

-            Resources that are replenished even as they are being used are renewable resources, and resources that are present in infinite quantities are nonrenewable resources. Water, essential to life, is a renewable resource. The volume of precipitation in the world is enormous; spread out evenly, it would cover Earth’s land area with about 33 inches of water each year.

-            Hydrologic cycle – in which water from oceans, lakes, soil, rivers, and vegetation evaporates, condenses, and then falls as precipitation on land. Precipitation infiltrates and recharges groundwater or runs off into lakes, rivers, and oceans.

-            Great Pacific Garbage Patch – the biggest of the garbage gyres and forms around the high-pressure cell in the northern Pacific Ocean. More plastic swirls through this gyre than through others because plastic is produced, consumed, and dumped at alarming rates around the North Pacific, which is flanked by Asia on the west and North American on the east.

Hurricanes

-            With higher temperatures and more energy in the atmosphere, the rates of evaporation – through which liquid water turns to water vapor – increase. Energy must be added in the form of latent heat to transform liquid water to water vapor. In a storm, this water vapor is condensed into liquid water, and in the process of condensation, latent heat is released. Because of energy fuels evaporation and is released through condensation, higher temperatures and warmer oceans mean tha more energy goes into storms, whether hurricanes or midlatitude cyclones.

Water Scarcity

-            1/5 of the worlds population lives in regions confronting water scarcity, the lack of enough water to meet demand. Remarkably geographers have found that countries facing growing water concerns tend toward cooperation instead of political violence.

Global Patterns of Consumption

-            Human consumption, which is increasing rapidly with growing populations and rising levels of income, and which as both intended and unintended consequences.

-            Global patterns of Consumption

o   Our pattern of consumption has shifted from all of our needs coming from a small, concentrated area, to our needs, being imported from dozens of countries, some of which are halfway around the world. To examine patterns, geographers look at how things are distributed and then analyze whether they are clustered, dispersed, or follow some other pattern.

o   Ecological footprint – the impact a person or country has on the environment. It is measured by how much land is required to sustain the person’s or country’s use of natural resources

Sustainability

-            Sustainable development – “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

-            Political Ecology – the study of human-environment interactions in the context of the political, economic, and historical conditions operating at different scales, and its practitioners are interested in how political, economic, social, and ecological circumstances shape environmental issues like sustainable agriculture in a specific place.

o   Political ecologists work to understand whether the global assumptions we have about environmental issues play out at the local scale and how people in a local place negotiate experiences and understandings at different scales to make environmental decisions.

o   The work of political ecologists is important in solving environmental problems because the factors involved in a human-environmental interaction vary by scale. Solving a global problem like climate change can require millions of individual accomplishments at local, national, and regional scales.

-            Biodiversity – the variety of plants and animals on Earth or in a specific area. Human encroachment on species habitat through logging, agriculture, and expansion of urban areas is dramatically increasing the natural rate of species extinction.