AP Human Geography Summer Preparation Flashcards

AP Human Geography Summer Assignment Instructions and Requirements

• Assignment Overview: The summer preparation for AP Human Geography involves creating a comprehensive set of note cards focused on top geographers, geography models, and vocabulary words.
• Note Card Specifications:     * Format: Use $3 \times 5$ index cards.     * Top Card: Must list the student's name in the upper left-hand corner and ‘Summer Assignment’ centered.     * Numbering: Each card must be numbered.     * Front of Card: The number of the card belongs in the top right corner. The center of the card must feature the geographer’s name, the specific model, or the vocabulary word.     * Back of Card: This must detail the ‘Contributions’ (major ideas or models) or provide a detailed definition of the word.     * Medium: All cards must be handwritten in pen. Color-coding is encouraged but optional.
• Assessment: A summative assessment will occur within the first two weeks of school.     * $50\%$ of the grade depends on the completion of the note cards.     * $50\%$ of the grade is derived from a multiple-choice quiz covering this material.

Geography – Nature & Perspectives

• Cultural Landscape: The fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group. This represents the primary essence of human interaction with nature.
• Arithmetic Density: Defined as the total number of people divided by the total land area. This is the common perception of density, measuring how many people exist per area of land.
• Physiological Density: The number of people per unit of area of arable land (land suitable for agriculture). This relates to the intensity of land use by a population.
• Hearth: The specific region from which innovative ideas originate. This is fundamental to the concept of diffusion.
• Diffusion: The process by which a feature or trend spreads from one place to another over time.
• Distribution: The spatial arrangement of something across the surface of the Earth.
• Environmental Determinism: A geographic approach prominent in the $19^{\text{th}}$ and early $20^{\text{th}}$ centuries. It argued that human geography laws could be found in physical sciences and that the physical environment is the direct cause of human activities.
• Transnational Corporation (Multinational Corporation): A company that conducts research, operates factories, and sells products across many countries, rather than being confined to the location of its headquarters or shareholders.
• Site: The physical character of a place, detailing what is found at a location and the significance of those physical attributes.
• Situation: The location of a specific place relative to other places.
• Space-Time Compression: The reduction in time required to diffuse something to a distant location, resulting from improvements in communication and transportation systems.
• Distance Decay: The phenomenon where the importance or frequency of a phenomenon diminishes as distance from its origin increases. Electronic devices (internet, e-mail) have helped eliminate these barriers to interaction.
• Space: The physical gap or interval existing between two objects.
• Scale: The representation of a real-world phenomenon at a certain level of reduction or generalization. In cartography, it is the ratio of map distance to ground distance, expressed as a bar graph, representative fraction, or verbal statement.
• Formal Region (Uniform/Homogenous Region): An area where everyone shares one or more distinctive characteristics in common, such as a language or climate.
• Functional Region (Nodal Region): An area organized around a node or focal point. Characteristics dominate at the center and diminish in importance outward; the region is tied to the center by transportation, communication, or economic systems.
• Vernacular Region (Perceptual Region): A place that exists as part of a cultural identity, based on informal sense of place rather than scientific models. Often identified via a ‘mental map’ (an internal representation of a portion of Earth’s surface).
• Possibilism: The theory that while the physical environment may limit some human actions, people have the ability to adjust to their environment.

Population – Migration & Dispersion

• Carrying Capacity: The population level that can be supported based on available food, habitat, water, and life infrastructure.
• Demographic Transition Model (DTM): A process of transformation from a less developed country to a more developed country consisting of five steps:     * Stage 1: Low Growth.     * Stage 2: High Growth.     * Stage 3: Moderate Growth.     * Stage 4: Low Growth.     * Stage 5: A possible stage involving zero or negative population growth.
• Dependency Ratio: The ratio of people too young (under $15$) or too old (over $64$) to work compared to the number of people in their productive years. A larger ratio indicates a greater financial burden on workers.
• Doubling Time: The number of years required to double a population, assuming a constant rate of natural increase. Used for population projection.
• Ecumene: The proportion of the Earth's surface occupied by permanent human settlement.
• Brain Drain: The large-scale emigration of talented or highly educated people from a country.
• Epidemiological Transition Model: Identifies distinctive causes of death in each stage of the demographic transition, explaining dramatic changes in population.
• Infant Mortality Rate (IMR): The annual number of deaths of infants under one year of age per $1000$ live births. High IMR identifies a Less Developed Country (LDC), while low IMR identifies a More Developed Country (MDC).
• Thomas Malthus: One of the first thinkers to argue that human population increase (exponential growth) was outrunning the growth of food supplies.
• Crude Birth Rate (Natality): The ratio of live births in an area to the population, expressed as the number of births per year for every $1000$ people alive.
• Neo-Malthusian: A theory building on Malthus, accounting for population growth in LDCs and the outstripping of resources other than just food.
• Population Densities: The frequency with which something occurs in space.
• Agricultural Density: The number of farmers per unit of area of farmland. High density may indicate inefficient agriculture.
• Population Distributions: The arrangement of features in space, described by density, concentration, and pattern.
• Population Pyramid: A bar graph displaying population by age and gender. The shape is primarily determined by the Crude Birth Rate.
• Rate of Natural Increase (NIR): The percentage by which a population grows in a year, calculated as: $\text{CBR} - \text{CDR} = \text{NIR}$. This excludes migration.
• Sex Ratio: The number of males per hundred females in a given population.
• Zero Population Growth (ZPG): Occurs when the Crude Birth Rate equals the Crude Death Rate and the NIR approaches zero (typically in Stage 4 DTM countries).

Cultural Patterns & Processes

• Chain Migration: A migration process where one family member moves to a new country and is followed shortly after by the rest of the family (common among guest workers moving from Mexico to the US).
• Forced Migration: The removal of people from their countries due to war, natural disasters, or government action.
• Gravity Model: Predicts that the optimal location of a service is directly related to the number of people in an area and inversely related to the distance traveled to access it.
• Migration Terminology:     * Migration: Relocation diffusion involving a permanent move.     * Immigration: Migration to a new location.     * Emigration: Migration from a location.
• Push-Pull Factors: Factors that induce people to leave an old residence and move to a new location.
• Cultural Core/Periphery Pattern: The concept that a core region houses the main economic power, while the outlying periphery has lesser economic ties.
• Cultural Ecology: The geographic study of human-environmental relationships.
• Culture: The body of customary beliefs, material traits, and social forms that constitute a group's distinct tradition.
• Popular Culture: Culture found in large, heterogeneous societies sharing habits despite personal differences.
• Folk Culture: Culture practiced by small, homogenous, rural groups living in isolation.
• Dialect: A regional variety of a language defined by unique vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.
• Lingua Franca: A common language mutually understood and used in trade by people with different native languages.
• Religion: Faithfulness to codified beliefs and rituals involving a spiritual nature.
• Animism: The belief that natural objects (stones, plants) or events (thunderstorms) possess a discrete spirit and life.
• Buddhism: The third major universalizing religion, with approximately $365 \text{ million}$ adherents, primarily in China and Southeast Asia.
• Christianity: A monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth; it is the most popular religion in the world.
• Ethnic Religion: A religion with a concentrated distribution based on physical characteristics of a specific location.
• Hinduism: Originating in India, it is the world's third largest religion with about $1 \text{ billion}$ followers. It focuses on Karma rather than just heaven as an ultimate goal.
• Islam: Meaning ‘submission to the will of God,’ it is the second largest religion, founded on the teachings of Muhammad.
• Judaism: One of the first monotheistic faiths, the religion of ancient Hebrews.
• Monotheism/Polytheism: Monotheism is the belief in one god; polytheism is the belief in many gods.
• Universalizing Religion: Religions that attempt to be global and appeal to all people (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism). To proselytize is to attempt to convert others to these religions.
• Religious Conflict: Conflicts resulting from religious differences, such as the Israel-Palestine conflict involving Roman takeovers, Muslim conquests, and the Crusades.

Political Organization of Space

• Apartheid: The Afrikaans term for ‘apartness.’ It was a system of segregation for blacks in South Africa from $1948$ to $1994$, designed to keep the white minority in power.
• Balkanization: The fragmentation or breakup of a region into smaller countries. Named after the Balkan wars where Yugoslavia split into six countries between $1989$ and $1992$.
• Boundary Types:     * Natural: Formed by physical features like rivers and mountains.     * Political: Formed through war, treaties, and compromise.     * Cultural: Based on ethnic homelands; often ignored in Africa and the Middle East by Western colonial powers.
• Development Categories:     * More Developed Country (MDC): A country far along the continuum of development.     * Less Developed Country (LDC): A country in the early stages of economic development.
• Centrifugal Forces: Factors (religious, political, economic) that cause disunity in a state.
• Centripetal Forces: Attitudes that unify people and enhance support for a state.
• City-State: A sovereign region controlled by a single city, common in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
• Colonialism: The attempt by a country to establish settlements and impose political and economic principles, peaking from the $17^{\text{th}}$ to the $20^{\text{th}}$ century.
• Devolution: The decentralization of government from a unitary to a federal system or the fracturing of a government.
• Electoral Regions: Different voting districts making up local, state, and national regions.
• Ethnic Conflict: War between ethnic groups due to nationalism, resource competition, or boundary disputes; often includes genocide.
• European Union (EU): A supranational union of $27$ democratic European states. It is the largest political and economic entity on the continent, with $500 \text{ million}$ people and a GDP of approximately $US\$13.4 \text{ trillion}$.
• Forward Capital: A symbolically relocated capital city (e.g., Brasília) moved for economic or strategic integration of outlying areas.
• Frontier: A zone where no state exercises complete control, usually uninhabited or sparsely inhabited (e.g., between Saudi Arabia and Yemen).
• Geopolitics: The study of geography, history, and social science in relation to international politics and strategic significance of location and resources.
• Gerrymander: Redrawing legislative boundaries to benefit a party in power.
• Heartland/Rimland: Heartland is the central, important region of a country/continent; Rimland is the maritime fringe.

Agricultural & Rural Land Use

• Agribusiness: Commercial agriculture controlled by large corporations integrating various steps of the food-processing industry.
• Agriculture: The deliberate modification of Earth’s surface via crop cultivation and livestock raising for subsistence or economic gain.
• Biotechnology: Use of living organisms to produce products like pest-resistant crops.
• Commercial Agriculture: Farming intended primarily for sale off the farm, fueling the Industrial Revolution.
• Crop Rotation: Shifting different crops from field to field annually to avoid soil exhaustion.
• Economic Activity Levels:     * Primary: Jobs like lumbering and mining.     * Secondary: Manufacturing and assembly.     * Tertiary: Services, transportation, and utilities.     * Quaternary & Quinary: Higher-level service and decision-making sectors.
• Extensive Subsistence Agriculture:     * Shifting Cultivation: Using fields for a few years, then leaving them fallow.     * Nomadic Herding/Pastoralism: Based on herding domesticated animals.
• First Agricultural Revolution: Occurred around $8000 \text{ B.C.}$ with the domestication of plants and animals, ending hunter-gatherer dominance.
• Green Revolution (Third Agricultural Revolution): The rapid diffusion of new technology, high-yield seeds, and fertilizers in the $1970\text{s}$ and $1980\text{s}$. Productivity has increased faster than population growth.
• Intensive Subsistence Agriculture: Farmers must expend high effort on small parcels of land for maximum yield; common in East, South, and Southeast Asia.
• Energy Types:     * Renewable: Solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, fusion, and wind.     * Non-Renewable: Fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas, coal) and nuclear energy.
• Carl O. Sauer: Defined cultural landscape as an area fashioned from nature by a cultural group. He stated, ‘Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, and the cultural landscape is the result.’
• Second Agricultural Revolution: A precursor to the Industrial Revolution ($19^{\text{th}}$ century) starting in the UK, Netherlands, and Denmark. Included the Enclosure Act and the diffusion of potatoes and corn.
• Transhumance: Seasonal migration of livestock between mountains and lowland pastures.
• Johann Heinrich Von Thunen: In $1826$, he proposed that commercial farmers compare land cost versus transportation cost. The distance to market is critical as transportation costs vary by crop.

Industrialization & Development

• Core-Periphery Model: Describes global distribution where MDCs are at the center (North Pole view) and LDCs are on the periphery.
• Dependency Theory: States that LDCs tend to have higher dependency ratios.
• Development: Improvements in material conditions via technology and knowledge diffusion.
• Gender: Developmental factor; LDCs (especially in the Middle East) show large gaps in income and literacy rates between genders.
• Gross Domestic Product (GDP): Total value of goods and services produced in a country annually.
• Gross National Product (GNP): Includes GDP plus income earned by citizens abroad.
• Human Development Index (HDI): An aggregate index measuring GDP, literacy/education, and life expectancy.
• Purchasing Power Parity (PPP): Adjusts GDP to reflect price differences between countries, often making the gap between LDCs and MDCs appear smaller.
• World Systems Theory: Views the capitalist world economy as a total social system where a powerful ‘core’ exploits a weak ‘periphery.’
• Bid Rent Theory: Explains how price and demand for land change as distance from the Central Business District (CBD) increases.
• Fordism (Assembly Line Production): Industrial arrangement for continuous flow and mass production, making manufacturing efficient.
• Least Cost Theory: Alfred Weber’s model determining factory location based on minimizing labor, transportation, and agglomeration costs.
• Agglomeration Economies: Benefits resulting from the spatial clustering of activities/people.
• ‘Stages of Growth’ Model: W.W. Rostow’s linear development theory ($1950\text{s}$):     1. Traditional Society.     2. Transitional Stage.     3. Take Off.     4. Drive to Maturity.     5. High Mass Consumption.

Cities & Urban Land Use

• CBD (Central Business District): The center of urban models, characterized by skyscrapers and companies with high commuting and low resident population.
• Centrality: The strength of dominance of an urban center over its surrounding area (e.g., the Twin Cities extending into ND, SD, and WI).
• Walter Christaller: Created Central Place Theory to explain service distribution based on market area (hinterland) and threshold (minimum customers needed).
• City: Centralized area with a mayor and local government; increasingly where more people live, especially in LDCs.
• Concentric Zone Model: E.W. Burgess; city grows outward from CBD, followed by transition zone, workers’ homes, residences, and commuter zone.
• Counterurbanization: Net migration from urban to rural areas, occurring in highly developed regions (North America, Western Europe).
• Edge City: New concentrations of business in suburban areas.
• Primate City Rule: The largest settlement in a country has more than twice the population of the second-ranking settlement.
• Rank-Size Rule: The $n^{\text{th}}$ largest settlement is $\frac{1}{n}$ the population of the largest settlement.
• Emerging Cities: Cities with currently small populations growing at rapid rates.
• Ethnic Neighborhood: Neighborhoods defined by distinct ethnic compositions.
• Favela: A shantytown or slum, particularly in Brazil.
• Gateway City: A settlement acting as a link between two areas.
• Gentrification: Renovating low-cost neighborhoods by the middle class, increasing property values.
• Ghetto: Poor section of a city inhabited primarily by people of the same race, religion, or background.
• Globalization: The development of worldwide patterns of economic relationships.