EOC review

Agricultural Density: The ratio of the number of farmers to the total amount of land suitable for agriculture.
Arithmetic Density: The total number of people divided by the total land area.
Base Line: An east-west line designated under the Land Ordinance of 1785 to facilitate the surveying and numbering of townships in the U.S.
Cartography: The science of making maps.
Concentration: The spread of something over a given area.
Connections: Relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space.
Contagious Diffusion: The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population.
Cultural Ecology: A geographic approach that emphasizes human-environment relationships.
Cultural Landscape: Fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group.
Culture: The body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group's distinct tradition.
Density: The frequency with which something exists within a given unit of area.
Diffusion: The process of spread of a feature or trend from one place to another over time.
Distance Decay: The diminishing in importance and eventual disappearance of a phenomenon with increasing distance from its origin.
Distribution: The arrangement of something across Earth's surface.
Environmental Determinism: A 19th- and early 20th-century approach to the study of geography that argued that the physical environment causes human activities.
Expansion Diffusion: The spread of a feature or trend among people from one area to another in a snowballing process.
Formal Region (Uniform Region): An area in which everyone shares in one or more distinctive characteristics.
Functional Region (Nodal Region): An area organized around a node or focal point.
Geographic Information System (GIS): A computer system that stores, organizes, analyzes, and displays geographic data.
Global Positioning System (GPS): A system that determines the precise position of something on Earth through satellites, tracking stations, and receivers.
Globalization: Actions or processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in scope.
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT): The time in the zone encompassing the prime meridian, or 0 degrees longitude.
Hearth: The region from which innovative ideas originate.
Hierarchical Diffusion: The spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of authority or power to other persons or places.
International Date Line: An arc that for the most part follows 180 degrees longitude, deviating in several places to avoid dividing land areas.
Land Ordinance of 1785: A law that divided much of the United States into townships to facilitate the sale of land to settlers.
Latitude: The numbering system used to indicate the location of parallels drawn on a globe and measuring distance north and south of the equator.
Location: The position of anything on Earth's surface.
Longitude: The numbering system used to indicate the location of meridians drawn on a globe and measuring distance east and west of the prime meridian.
Map: A two-dimensional or flat representation of Earth's surface or a portion of it.
Mental Map: A representation of a portion of Earth's surface based on what an individual knows about a place.
Meridian: An arc drawn on a map between the North and South poles.
Parallel: A circle drawn around the globe parallel to the equator and at right angles to the meridians.
Pattern: The geometric or regular arrangement of something in a study area.
Physiological Density: The number of people per unit area of arable land.
Place: A specific point on Earth distinguished by a particular characteristic.
Polder: Land created by the Dutch by draining water from an area.
Possibilism: The theory that the physical environment may set limits on human actions, but people have the ability to adjust and choose a course of action from many alternatives.
Prime Meridian: The meridian, designated as 0 degrees longitude, that passes through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England.
Principal Meridian: A north-south line designated in the Land Ordinance of 1785 to facilitate the surveying and numbering of townships in the U.S.
Projection: The system used to transfer locations from Earth's surface to a flat map.
Region: An area distinguished by a unique combination of trends or features.
Relocation Diffusion: The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another.
Remote Sensing: The acquisition of data about Earth's surface from a satellite orbiting the planet or from other long-distance methods.

Resource: A substance in the environment that is useful to people, economically and technologically feasible to access, and socially acceptable to use.
Scale: Generally, the relationship between the portion of Earth being studied and Earth as a whole.
Site: The physical character of a place.
Situation: The location of a place relative to other places.
Space: The physical gap or interval between two objects.
Space-Time Compression: The reduction in the time it takes to diffuse something to a distant place as a result of improved communications and transportation systems.
Stimulus Diffusion: The spread of an underlying principle, even though a specific characteristic is rejected.
Sustainability: The use of Earth's renewable and nonrenewable natural resources in ways that do not constrain resource use in the future.
Toponym: The name given to a place on Earth.
Transnational Corporation: A company that conducts research, operates factories, and sells products in many countries, not just where its headquarters are located.
Vernacular Region (Perceptual Region): An area that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity.
Urbanization: The increase in the percentage of people who live in cities.
Push Factor: A factor that induces people to leave old residences.
Pull Factor: A factor that induces people to move to a new location.
Refugee: A person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.
Brain Drain: Large-scale emigration by talented people.
Chain Migration: Migration of people to a specific location because relatives or members of the same nationality previously migrated there.
Guest Worker: A worker who migrates to developed countries in search of higher-paying jobs.
Internally Displaced Person (IDP): A person who has been forced to migrate for similar political reasons as a refugee but has not migrated across an international border.
Migration Transition: A change in the migration pattern in a society that results from social and economic changes that also produce the demographic transition.
Circular Migration: The temporary movement of a migrant worker between home and host countries to seek employment.
Ethnic Enclave: A place with a high concentration of an ethnic group distinct from those in the surrounding area.
Acculturation: The process of changes in culture that result from the meeting of two groups, each of which retains distinct cultural features.
Assimilation: The process by which a group's cultural features are altered to resemble those of another more dominant group.
Syncretism: The blending of traits from two different cultures to form a new trait.
Multiculturalism: The coexistence of several cultures in one society, with the ideal of all cultures being valued and accepted.
Lingua Franca: A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages.
Creole Language: A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated.
Dialect: A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.
Isogloss: A boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate.
Language Family: A collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed long before recorded history.
Language Branch: A collection of languages within a family related through a common ancestral language that existed several thousand years ago.
Language Group: A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary.
Universalizing Religion: A religion that attempts to appeal to all people, not just those living in a particular location.
Ethnic Religion: A religion that is identified with a particular ethnic group and that does not seek new converts.
Secularism: A doctrine that rejects religion and religious considerations.
Monotheism: The doctrine or belief in the existence of only one god.
Polytheism: The belief in or worship of more than one god.
Nation-State: A state whose territory corresponds to that occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been transformed into a nationality.
Balkanization: The process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among its ethnicities.
Colonialism: The effort by one country to establish settlements and to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles in another territory.
Imperialism: A policy of extending a country's power and influence through diplomacy or military force.
Devolution: The transfer of power from a central government to regional governments.
Gerrymandering: The process of redrawing legislative boundaries for the purpose of benefiting the party in power.
Territoriality: The defense of a bounded physical space against encroachment by other individuals.
Sovereignty: The ability of a state to govern its territory free from control of its internal affairs by other states.

State: An area organized into a political unit and ruled by an established government with control over its internal and foreign affairs.
Nation: A group of people with a common cultural heritage and a sense of unity.
Multinational State: A state that contains two or more ethnic groups with traditions of self-determination.
Stateless Nation: An ethnic group or nation that does not possess its own state and is not the majority population in any nation-state.
Centripetal Force: An attitude that tends to unify people and enhance support for a state.
Centrifugal Force: An attitude that tends to divide people and decrease support for a state.
Shatterbelt: A region caught between stronger colliding external cultural-political forces, under persistent stress, and often fragmented.
Demarcation: The physical marking of a boundary on the landscape.
Redistricting: The redrawing of electoral district boundaries after census changes.
Agribusiness: Commercial agriculture characterized by the integration of different steps in the food-processing industry.
Subsistence Agriculture: Farming to provide food for direct consumption by the farmer and their family.
Commercial Agriculture: Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off the farm.
Green Revolution: The rapid diffusion of new agricultural technology, especially new high-yield seeds and fertilizers.
Genetically Modified Organism (GMO): A crop whose genetic structure has been altered to make it more useful and efficient.
Von Thünen Model: A model that explains the location of agricultural activities in a commercial, profit-making economy.
Plantation Agriculture: Production of crops in tropical developing countries for sale in more developed countries.
Pastoral Nomadism: A form of subsistence agriculture based on herding domesticated animals.
Terracing: The creation of flat areas on mountain slopes for farming.
Slash-and-Burn Agriculture: A form of shifting cultivation where vegetation is cut down and burned to clear land.
Transhumance: The seasonal migration of livestock between mountains and lowland pastures.
Market Gardening: Small-scale production of fruits, vegetables, and flowers as cash crops.
Desertification: The degradation of land, especially in semi-arid areas, due to human actions.
Urban Sprawl: The unplanned and uncontrolled spreading of cities into surrounding regions.
Edge City: A large node of office and retail activities on the edge of an urban area.
Gentrification: The process of renovating urban neighborhoods, often displacing lower-income residents.
Squatter Settlement: An area within a city in a developing country where people illegally establish residences.
Zoning Ordinance: A law that limits the permitted uses of land and maximum density of development.
Central Place Theory: A theory that explains the distribution of services based on settlements serving as centers of market areas.
Primate City: A city that is at least twice as large as the next largest city in a country and significantly more important.
Rank-Size Rule: A pattern of settlements in a country, such that the nth largest settlement is 1/n the population of the largest settlement.

Demographic Transition Model (DTM): Illustrates the transition of countries from high birth and death rates to lower birth and death rates as they develop economically. NewellLinks to an external site.
Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth: Proposes that countries progress through five stages of economic development, from traditional societies to high mass consumption.
Von Thünen's Agricultural Land-Use Model: Explains the spatial organization of agricultural activities around a central market, emphasizing transportation costs and land value.
Weber's Least Cost Theory: Suggests that the optimal location of a manufacturing plant is determined by minimizing transportation, labor, and agglomeration costs.
Burgess's Concentric Zone Model: Describes urban social structures in a series of concentric rings, with the central business district at the core.
Hoyt's Sector Model: Proposes that urban areas develop in sectors or wedges radiating from the city center, influenced by factors like transportation routes.
Harris and Ullman's Multiple Nuclei Model: Suggests that cities develop with multiple centers or "nuclei," each serving different functions, rather than a single central business district.
Christaller's Central Place Theory: Explains the distribution and size of cities and towns, proposing that settlements serve as "central places" providing services to surrounding areas.
Malthusian Theory: Posits that population growth will outpace agricultural production, leading to resource shortages.
World-Systems Theory (Wallerstein): Divides the world into core, semi-periphery, and periphery countries, explaining economic disparities and dependencies globally.
Bid-Rent Theory: Explains how land value and rent decrease as distance from the central business district (CBD) increases, influencing urban land use patterns.
Griffin-Ford Model (Latin American City Model): Describes the structure of cities in Latin America, featuring a central CBD with a commercial spine and varying residential zones based on wealth.
McGee Model (Southeast Asian City Model): Illustrates urban patterns in Southeast Asia, highlighting the importance of ports and multiple CBDs.
Dependency Theory: Argues that developing countries are economically dependent on wealthier nations, hindering their growth. It critiques the limitations of Rostow’s model.
Gravity Model: Predicts interaction between two places based on their population sizes and distance, often applied to migration and trade flows.