AP Human Geography Exam Prep Notes

Multiple Choice Strategies

Step #1: Read and rephrase the question
- Ensure you understand the question and what it's asking.
Step #2: Analyze the question's context
- Identify the historical period, unit (economics, population, culture, etc.), and concepts related to the question.
Step #3: Use Associative Thinking
- Connect the concepts together to activate your knowledge.
- Recall examples, details, regions, and case studies.
Step #4: If you know the topic well
- Consider picking the correct answer immediately, but if unsure, proceed to step #3.
Step #5: Process of Elimination
- Remember that only one response is correct; all others are wrong.
- If you know a response is wrong, eliminate it.
- All answers are wrong until proven right.
- Be cautious of distractors that are plausible and have elements of truth.
- Watch out for "except" questions.
Step #6: Pick the best answer
- Consider step 3 regarding AP questions.
Step #7: Guess and Move On
- In AP, you get 1 point for a correct answer, "zero" for a wrong answer, and "zero" for a blank answer.
- Guess (bubble) and come back later if you have time.
- Do not leave any question unanswered!!!
- You are not penalized for wrong answers!
Changing Answers – Be very careful
- Trust yourself – once you settle or choose an answer be cautious about changing your answer
- Only reasons to change: if you misread the question or have definite (near 100%) information that your response is wrong.

Key Geographic Models

Models are categorized to aid review/recall.

Geographer Population and Migration (Chapters 2 and 3)

Demographic Transition Model
Epidemiologic Transition Model
Malthusian Theory
- Thomas Malthus
Laws of Migration
- E. G. Ravenstein
Migration Transition
- Wilbur Zelinsky
Gravity Model of Migration

Political/Geopolitical (Chapter 8)

Heartland Theory
- Halford Mackinder
Rimland Theory
- Nicholas Spykman
Sea Power Theory
- Alfred Thayer Mahan
Organic Theory of Nations
- Friedrich Ratzel
Domino Theory
- Containment (Communism during Cold War)

Agriculture (Chapter 10)

Boserup Hypothesis
- Esther Boserup
Von Thunen’s Agricultural Location Theory
- Johann Heinrich Von Thunen

Development/Modernization (Chapter 9 and 11)

Modernization/Development Model
- W. W. Rostow
Core-Periphery Model
- World Systems Theory
- Immanuel Wallerstein
Location of Industry (Least Cost Location)
- Alfred Weber
Locational Interdependence
- Harold Hotelling

Urbanization (Chapter 13)

Multiple Nuclei Model
- E. L. Ullman and Chauncy Harris
Sector Model
- Homer Hoyt
Concentric Zone Model
- Ernest Burgess
Rank Size Rule
- Mark Jefferson
Primate City Rule
- Mark Jefferson
Central Place Theory
- Walter Christaller
Evolution of the American Metropolis
- John R. Borchert
Bid Rent Theory

Miscellaneous

Environmental Determinism
- Ellsworth Huntington
Possibilism
- Vidal de la Blache
Cultural Landscape
- Carl Sauer

Demographic Transition Model

4 stages related to the NIR and related to Population Pyramids
- Stage 1
  - BR/DR are high
  - Why high BR?
    - Many children needed for farming
  - Why high DR?
    - Lack of food/meds
    - Diseases, famine
  - NO country is still in Stage 1
- Stage 2
  - BR remains high
  - DR begins to drop
  - Population begins to grow . . .
  - Also . . . improvements in water supply and medicines
  - LDC
- Stage 3
  - BR drops
  - Fewer children needed for farming/jobs
  - LDC
- Stage 4
  - BR/DR are low
  - Stable or slow decline in Population
  - Social causes: family planning, improved status of women, later marriages
  - MDC

Rostow’s Modernization Model

Traditional Society
- Mostly agricultural
- Little development
- LDC
Preconditions to Take off
- Primary Sector
- still farming
- Needs an elite group to start the take off
- Development of water supply & transportation
- LDC
Take off
- Industry
- Rapid growth in a limited # of activities
- food
- textiles due to improving water & transp.
- Others remain at traditional level
- LDC
Maturity
- Modern tech. diffuses to lots of industries
- Skilled workers
- Specialized work.
- MDC
Mass Consumption
- Shift from heavy industry to lighter industry (more consumer)
- Heavy industry is continued in LDCs
- MDC

Gravity Model

Large cities have a greater drawing power . . . universities, stadiums, theaters, diverse restaurants
Quantity of movement between 2 locations increases as their size increases AND decreases with an increase in distance . . .
The greater the size of a location (big city) . . . the greater the interaction . . . you gravitate to the activities in the bigger towns!

Burgess’ Concentric Zone Model

1920s / Chicago / the prairie
- CBD
- Transition – Industry and poor housing (immigrants, apts, rooming houses0
- Independent Workers Homes – stable working class/modest older homes
- Better Residences – aka middle class, newer and more spacious homes
- Commuter Zone – aka suburbs, small villages, dormitory communities

Hoyt Sector Model

Sectors not rings attract various activities
- environmental reasons
- chance
- transportation routes
1939/Chicago
Once a high end district is established . . . the growth of high-end continues out from there
- CBD
- transportation/industry
- low-end residential
- middle-class residential
- high-class residential

Multiple Nuclei Model

Harris and Ullman / 1945/ Cities w/i cities
- Modern cities develop with many nodes
- has more than one center
- clustering of compatible businesses
- Ex: university node
  - attracts well educated
  - attracts pizzerias
  - attracts book stores
- airport node
  - hotels
  - warehouse
  - waterparks (MOA)

Christaller’s Central Place Theory

1930s
ONLY deals with MDCs
Recognizes the economic relationship between cities and the hinterland
- Profitability of location
  - range, threshold, nesting
- Urban hierarchy
  - hexagons overlap
  - larger centers have high-order goods and services
  - smaller centers have convenient goods and services
- Shows location of trade and service activities

Weber Least Cost Theory

Look at
- Situation (transportation)
  - bulk reducing or bulk gaining
  - Bulk reducing must be located near the source (mine)
  - Bulk gaining will be located closer to the market (beverages or commercial airliners)
- Site
  - land, labor, capital
  - land too costly near the city
  - labor wages very low in MDCs so factories move
  - capital not available in some areas so plants can’t locate there (ex: autos in Detroit vs NE)

Von Thunen’s Agricultural Model

1800s
Depends on bulk (transportation)
Depends on perishability (distance)
Bid-Rent factors in . . .
- the price and demand on real estate changes as the distance towards the CBD increases
- The more accessible, the more profitable thus the higher land values
- If the cost (of land) gets too high, you drop out!

Epidemiologic Transition Model

Pestilence and Famine
Receding Pandemics
Degenerative Human Created Diseases
Delayed Degenerative Diseases
Re-emergence of Infectious Diseases and New
- Stage 1 of DTM
  - Infectious and parasitic diseases are the main cause of death
  - Ex: Black Plague
- Stage 2 of DTM
  - Improved sanitation and nutrition and meds during the IR
  - Poor still highly impacted but DR begin to slow
  - Construction of water and sewer systems eradicate cholera for the 1st time
- Stage 2/3
  - Increase in
    - heart disease (cardio-vascular)
    - cancers
  - The good life . . . food easy too get
- Stage 3/4
  - Advanced medical, better diets, reduced tobacco and alcohol use
  - More exercise
- Stage 4
  - Re-emergence
    - evolving microbes
    - drug resistant
    - Malaria (no more use of DDT)
    - tuberculosis due to more poverty in LDCs
    - more air travel to spread diseases (H1N1)
  - New
    - AIDS
    - life expectancy in Lesotho and Swaziland has Declined

Core-Periphery Model

aka World Systems Theory aka Dependency
- Core –
  - MDCs
  - High socio-economic level
  - North America / Europe
- Perphery –
  - LDCs
  - dependent on the core
  - supplies raw materials
  - Latin America, Africa, Asia
- Chile, Brazil, China are on the semi-periphery
- It is believed that eventually the periphery will be absorbed by the core

Domino Theory

Developed by the CIA in response to the communist threat in the 60s and 70s
- Political destabilization in one country can lead to the destabilization in neighboring countries . . .
- Term was coined by Pres. Eisenhower in a speech suggesting that the countries involved would “fall like dominoes”.

Heartland Theory vs Rimland Theory

Heartland
- Makinder
- Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland (Asia)
- Who rules the Heartland (Asia) commands the world island
- Who rules the world island commands the world
- This explains the role of NATO and Warsaw Pact during the Cold War . . .
Rimland
- Spykman
- It is the Eurasian Rim that is/was the key to global power . . .
- 3 wars prove it . . .
  - Afghanistan (Russians 1980s)
  - Vietnam
  - Korea
- This explains the Domino Theory

Neo-Colonialism

The less developed countries are still dependent on the MDCs
- investments
- development
- technology

Malthusian Theory

Thomas Malthus / 1800s
- Relationship of population growth and food supply
  - Food supply grows arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4)
  - Population grows exponentially (1, 2, 4, 8, 16)
- The world population will outgrow the food supply . . . this lack of population will create a check on the population!
- Malthus was wrong . . . Green Revolution, hybrid seeds, GMOs, etc

Dependency Theory

Some countries allow themselves to remain n poverty as a whole to obtain some other type of economic power . . . usually for an elite class.
- The leadership hoards economic resources for themselves . . .
  - Egypt
  - Libya
  - Yemen
  - etc

Sustainable Development

Addresses issues of social welfare and environment Protection within the context of capitalism and economic growth . . .
- People living today should be able to meet their needs without prohibiting the ability of future generations to do the same . . .
  - focus on use of renewable resources
  - promote ecotourism
  - organic farming

Rank Size Rule and Urban Primacy

Rank Size Rule
- 2nd largest city is ½ the size of largest
- 4th largest city is ¼ the size of the largest . . .
- The population is inversely proportionate to its RANK!
- Mostly MDCs
Urban Primacy
- Largest settlement has more than 2x the population of the 2nd largest . . .
  - Ex: Copenhagen, Denmark
  - London, England
  - Bucharest, Romania
- The absence of rank size in many LDCs indicates that there is not enough wealth in the society to pay for a full variety of services
- Creates a hardship for those who must travel long distances to hospitals, etc (bus, walk)

Major Geographic Qualities of Geographic Realms

Major Geographic Qualities of Austral Realm

Australia and New Zealand constitute a geographic realm by virtue of territorial dimension, relative location, and dominant cultural landscape.
Despite their inclusion in a single geographic realm, Australia and New Zealand differ physiographically. Australia has a vast, dry, low-relief interior; New Zealand is mountainous.
Australia and New Zealand are marked by peripheral development- Australia because of its aridity, New Zealand because of its topography.
The populations of Australia and New Zealand are not only peripherally distributed but also highly clustered in urban areas.
The realm’s human geography is changing- in Australia because of Aboriginal activism and Asian immigration, and in New Zealand because of Maori activism and Pacific-islander immigration.
The economic geography of Australia and New Zealand is dominated by the export of livestock products (and in Australia also by wheat production and mining).
Australia and New Zealand are being integrated into the economic framework of the western Pacific Rim, principally as suppliers of raw materials.

Major Geographic Qualities of East Asia

East Asia is encircled by snowcapped mountains, vast deserts, cold climates, and Pacific waters.
East Asia is one of the World’s earliest culture hearths, and China is one of the World’s oldest continuous civilizations.
East Asia is the world’s most populous geographic realm, but its population remains strongly concentrated in its eastern regions
China, the world’s largest nation- state demographically, is the current rendition of an empire that has expanded and contracted, fragmented and unified many times during its long existence.
China today remains a mainly rural society, and its vast eastern river basins feed hundreds of millions in a historic pattern that continues today.
China’s sparsely peopled western regions are strategically important to the state, but they lie exposed to minority pressures and Islamic influences.
Along China’s Pacific frontage an economic transformation is taking place, affecting all the coastal provinces and creating an emerging Pacific Rim region.
Increasing regional disparities and fast-changing cultural landscapes are straining East Asian societies.
Japan, the economic giant of the East Asian realm, has a history of colonial expansion and wartime conduct that still affects international relations here.
East Asia may witness the rise of the World’s next superpower China’s economic and military strength and influence growth- and if China avoids the devolutionary forces that fractured the Soviet Union.
The political geography of East Asia contains a number of flashpoints that can generate conflict, including Taiwan, North Korea, and several island groups in the realm’s seas.

Major Geographic Qualities of Europe

The European Realm lies on the western extremity of the Eurasian landmass, a locale of maximum efficiency for contact with the rest of the world.
Europe’s lingering and resurgent world influence results largely from advantages accrued over centuries of global political and economic domination.
The European natural environment displays a wide range of topographic, climatic, and soil conditions and is endowed with many industrial resources.
Europe is marked by strong internal regional differentiation (cultural as well as physical), exhibits a high degree of functional specialization, and provides multiple exchange opportunities.
European economies are dominated by manufacturing, and the level of productivity has been high; levels of development generally decline from west to east.
Europe’s nation-states emerged from durable power cores that formed that headquarters of world colonial empires. A number of those states are now plagued by internal separatist movements.
Europe’s rapidly aging population is generally well off, highly urbanized, well educated, and enjoys long life expectancies.
A growing number of European countries are experiencing population declines; in many of these countries, the natural decrease is partially offset by immigration.
Europe has made significant progress toward international economic integration and, to a lesser extent, political coordination.

Major Geographic Qualities of Middle America

Middle America is a fragmented realm that consists of all the mainland countries from Mexico to Panama and all the islands of the Caribbean Basin to the east.
Middle America’s mainland constitutes a crucial barrier between Atlantic and Pacific waters. In physiographic terms, this is a land bridge that connects the continental landmasses of North and South America.
Middle America is a realm of intense cultural and political fragmentation. The political geography defies unification efforts, but countries and regions are beginning to work together to solve mutual problems.
Middle America’s cultural geography is complex. African influences dominate the Caribbean, where as Spanish and Amerindian traditions survive on the mainland.
The realm contains the Americas’ least-developed territories. New economic opportunities may help alleviate Middle America’s endemic poverty.
In terms of area, population, and economic potential, Mexico dominates the realm.
Mexico is reforming its economy and had experienced major industrial growth. its hopes for continuing this development are tied to overcoming its remaining economic problems and to expanding trade with the United States and Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Major Geographic Qualities of North Africa/ Southwest Asia

North Africa and Southwest Asia were the scene of several of the world’s great ancient civilizations, based in its river valleys and basins.
From this realm’s culture hearths diffused ideas, innovations, and technologies that changed the world.
The North Africa/Southwest Asia realm is the source of three world religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Islam, the last of the major religions to arise in this realm, transformed, unified, and energized a vast domain extending from Europe to Southeast Asia and from Russia to East Africa.
Drought and unreliable precipitation dominate natural environments in this realm. Population clusters exist where water supply is adequate to marginal.
Certain countries of this realm have enormous reserves of oil and natural gas, creating great wealth for some but doing little to raise the living standards of the majority.
The boundaries of the North Africa/Southwest Asia realm consist of volatile transition zones in several places in Africa and Asia.
Conflict over water sources and supplies is a constant threat in this realm, where population growth rates are high by world standards.
The Middle East, as a region, lies at the heart of this realm; and Israel lies at the center of the Middle East conflict.
Religious, ethnic, and cultural discord frequently cause instability and strife in this realm.

Major Geographic Qualities of Pacific Realm

The Pacific Realm’s total area is the largest of all geographic realms. Its land, however, is the smallest, as is it’s population.
The island of New Guinea, with 8.4 million people, alone contains over 80 percent of the Pacific Realm’s population.
The Pacific Realm, with its wide expanses of water and numerous islands, has been strongly affected by United Nations Law of the Sea provisions regarding states’ rights over economic assets in their adjacent waters.
The highly fragmented Pacific Realm consists of three regions: Melanesia (including New Guinea), Micronesia, and Polynesia.
Melanesia forms the link between Papuan and Melanesian cultures in the Pacific.
The Pacific Realm’s islands and cultures may be divided into volcanic high-island cultures and coral- based low-island cultures.
In Micronesia, U.S. influence has been particularly strong and continues to affect local societies.
In Polynesia, local cultures nearly everywhere are severely strained by external influences. In Hawaii, as in New Zealand, indigenous culture has been largely submerged by Westernization.
Indigenous Polynesian culture continues to exhibit a remarkable consistency and uniformity throughout the Polynesian region, its enormous dimensions and dispersal notwithstanding.

Major Geographic Qualities of Russia

Russia is the largest territorial state in the world. Its area is nearly twice as large as that of the next- ranking country (Canada).
Russia is the northernmost large and populous country in the world; much of it is cold/or dry. Extensive rugged mountain zones separate Russia from warmer subtropical air, and the country lies to artic air masses.
Russia was one of the world’s major colonial powers. Under the czars, the Russians forged the world’s largest contiguous empire; the Soviet rulers who succeeded the czars took over and expanded this empire.
For so large an area, Russia’s population of under 142 million is comparatively small. The population remains heavily concentrated in the westernmost one-fifth of the country.
Development in Russia is concentrated west of the Ural Mountains; here lies the major cities, leading industrial regions, densest transport networks, and most productive farming areas. National integration and economic development east of the Urals extend mainly along a narrow corridor that stretches from the southern Urals region to the southern Far East around Vladivostok.
Russia is a multicultural state with a complex domestic political geography. Twenty-one internal republicans, originally based on ethnic clusters, function as politico-geographical entities.
Its large territorial size notwithstanding, Russia suffers from land encirclement within Eurasia; it has few good and suitably located ports.
Regions along part of the Russian and Soviet empires are realigning themselves in the postcommunist era. Eastern Europe and the heavily Muslim Southwest Asia realm are encroaching on Russia’s imperial borders.
The failure of the Soviet communist system left Russia in economic disarray. Many of the long-term components described in this chapter (food-producing areas, railroad links, pipeline connections) broke down in the transition to the postcommunist order.
Russia long has been a source of raw materials but not a manufacturer of export products, except weaponry. Few Russian (or Soviet) automobiles, televisions, cameras, or other consumer goods reach world markets.

Major Geographic Qualities of South America

South America’s physiography is dominated by the Andes Mountains in the west and the Amazon Basin in the central north. Much of the remainder is plateau country.
Half of the realm’s area and half of its population are concentrated in one country- Brazil.
South America’s population remains concentrated along the continent’s periphery. Most of the interior is sparsely peopled, but sections of it are now undergoing significant development.
Interconnections among the states of the realm are improving rapidly. Economic integration has become a major force, particularly in southern South America.
Regional economic contrasts and disparities, both in the realm as a whole and within individual countries, are strong.
Cultural pluralism exists in almost all of the realm’s countries and is often expressed regionally.
Rapid urban growth continues to mark much of the South American realm, and the urbanization level overall is today on a par with the levels in the United States and Europe.

Major Geographic Qualities of South Asia

South Asia is clearly defined physiographically and is bounded by mountains, deserts, and ocean; the Indian peninsula is Eurasia’s largest.
South Asia is the world’s second most poverty filled realm (ranking just above Subsaharan Africa), with low average incomes, low levels of education, poorly balanced diets, and poor overall health.
With only 3 percent of the world’s land area but 23 percent of it population, more than half of it engaged in subsistence farming, South Asia’s economic prospects are bleak.
Population growth rates in South Asian countries exceed the global average; India’s population surpassed the 1 billion mark in 1999.
The North Indian Plain, the lower basin of the Ganges River, contains the heart of the world’s second largest population cluster.
Despite encircling mountain barriers, invaders from ancient Greeks to later Muslims penetrated south asia and complicated its cultural mosaic.
British colonialism unified South Asia under a single flag, but the empire fragmented into several countries along cultural lines after Britain’s withdrawal in 1947.
Pakistan, South Asia’s western region, lies on the flanks of two realms: largely Muslim North Africa/Southwest Asia and dominantly Hindu South Asia.
India is the world’s largest federation and most populous democracy, but its political achievements have not been matched by enlightened economic policies.
Religion remains a powerful force in South Asia. Hinduism in India, Islam in Pakistan, and Buddhism in Sri Lanka all show tendencies toward fundamentalism and nationalism.
Active and potential boundary problems involve internal areas (notably between India and Pakistan in Kashmir) as well as external locales (between India and China in the northern mountains)

Major Geographic Qualities of Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia extends from the peninsular mainland to the archipelagos offshore. Because Indonesia controls parts of New Guinea, its functional region reaches into the neighboring Pacific geographic realm.
Southeast Asia, like Eastern Europe, has been a shatter belt between powerful adversaries and has a fractured cultural and political geography shaped by foreign intervention.
Southeast Asia’s physiography is dominated by high relief, crustal instability marked b y volcanic activity and earthquakes, and tropical climates.
A majority of Southeast Asia’s more than half-billion people live on the islands of just two countries: Indonesia, with the world’s fourth-largest population, and the Philippines. The rate of population increase in the Insular region of Southeast Asia exceeds that of the mainland region.
Although the overwhelming majority of Southeast Asians have the same ancestry, cultural divisions and local traditions abound, which the realm’s divisive physiography sustains.
The legacies of powerful foreign influences, Asian as well as non- Asian, continue to affect the cultural landscapes of Southeast Asia.
Southeast Asia’s political geography exhibits a variety of boundary types and several categories of state territorial morphology.
The Mekong River, Southeast Asia’s Danube, has its source in China and borders or crosses five Southeast Asian countries, sustaining tens of millions of farmers, fishing people, and boat owners.
The realm’s giant in terms of territory as well as population, Indonesia, has not asserted itself as the dominant state because of mismanagement and corruption; but Indonesia have enormous potential.

Chapter 1: Geography: Its Nature and Perspective Key Issue 1. How Do Geographers Describe Where Things Are?

Cartography is the science of making maps.
Maps are used for reference (where things are located) and for communication of the distribution of some feature or features.
Maps have been created for thousands of years, since at least the 6th century BC. Through the years maps have reflected new discoveries about places and the shape of the Earth.
Scale is the relationship between map units and the actual distance on the Earth.
- Ratio or fraction scale gives the relationship as a ratio, e.g. (1:100,000) is that 1 unit on the map equals 100,000 units on the ground.
- In a written scale units are expressed in a convenient way, e.g. “1 centimeter equals 1 kilometer.”
- A graphic scale is given by a scale bar showing the distance represented on the Earth's surface.
Maps are a planar (flat) representation of the Earth's curved surface. Thus, some distortion must result, especially at small scales (continental or whole-Earth maps).
Cartographers must choose a projection that results in some set of distortions between shape, distance, relative size, and direction.
U.S. Land Ordinance of 1785: The township and range coordinate system is another mathematical means of describing location and is important to the current and historic geography of the United States.
Contemporary Geographic Tools.
- Global Positioning Systems (GPS) use satellites to reference locations on the ground.
- Remote Sensing is any technique for determining characteristics about the Earth’s surface from long distances—especially from airplanes and satellites.
- Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are complex computer systems which store and can be used to analyze and present geographically referenced data.

Key Issue 2: Why is Each Point on Earth Unique?

Place: Unique Location of a Feature.
Place names or toponyms are the most common way of describing a location. Place names sometimes reflect the cultural history of a place, and a change in place name is often culturally motivated. Examining changes in place name geography is a useful insight into the changing cultural context of a place.
Site makes reference to the physical characteristics of a place. Situation describes a place in terms of its location relative to other places. Understanding situation can help locate an unfamiliar place in terms of known places, or it can help explain the significance of a place.
Mathematical location describes a place’s location using a coordinate system such as latitude and longitude.
- Latitude is based upon the Earth’s axis of rotation, with the Equator describing a line of latitude halfway between the poles.
- Longitude is culturally defined as starting at Greenwich, England and measures degrees of arc east and west of that line of longitude, or meridian.
The cultural landscape is a recurrent theme throughout this text. It represents the total sum of cultural, economic, and environmental forces combining to make distinctive landscapes across Earth.
A region is an area differentiated from surrounding areas by at least one characteristic. Formal regions are regions with a predominant or universal characteristic; formal regions commonly have well-defined boundaries.
Functional regions are defined by an area of use or of influence of some feature. Often used in economic geography, functional regions have “fuzzy” boundaries as the influence of the central feature decreases over distance. Vernacular regions are the most ambiguously defined as they rely on a mental conception of a place as belonging to a common region for complex cultural reasons.
Spatial Association. Different levels of regional analysis can demonstrate dramatically different characteristics; geographers attempt to explain regional differences by looking for factors with similar distributions.
Culture is divided into “What people care about,” or beliefs, values, and customs, and “What people take care of,” or material culture.
- The first definition is covered in Chapters 5, 6, and 7, on language, religion, and ethnicity.
- The second is covered in Chapters 4, 10, 11, 12, and 13, especially as it relates to variation in material culture by level of development.
This chapter’s section on culture introduces the concept of more and less developed countries (MDCs and LDCs) as a fundamental partition of world regions.
There are two schools of examining human-environment relationships, or cultural ecology. Environmental determinism, largely dismissed by modern geographers, states that physical factors cause cultures to develop and behave as they do. Possibilism recognizes the constraints of the physical environment while also crediting human cultures with the ability to adapt to the environment in many ways—including by changing it.
Physical processes: Climate, Vegetation, Soil, and Landforms. This section gives a brief outline of physical geography and relates it to the questions that human geographers ask about the surface of the Earth and its cultural ecology.

Key Issue 3: Why are Different Places Similar?

Scale: From Global to Local.
- Globalization of economic activities has come as a result of increasing connections between places and the rapid movement of goods and information around the world.
- Transnational corporations are often seen as emblematic of this globalization and many of its positive and negative effects.
- Economic globalization is matched with an increasing global influence and spread of some cultures, resulting in more uniform cultural landscapes across the world.
- Groups with distinctive local cultures may feel threatened by the globalization of culture, causing conflict or a sense of loss.
Space: Distribution of Features.
- Geographers measure the arrangement of features in space as part of their study of the Earth. Density, concentration and pattern are all measures of distribution.
- Density measures the number of features per area of land. Other measures, such as physiological or agricultural density, are based on a subgroup of people or a subtype of land. Concentration refers to the spatial clustering or dispersion of features. Pattern describes whether features are arranged along geometric or other predictable arrangements.
- Humans often arrange their activities in space