AP Human Geo Cheat Sheet

5 Themes of Geography

  • Location: Absolute (latitude, longitude)
  • Place: Physical and human characteristics
  • Human-environmental interaction: People interact with environment
  • Movement: Mobility of people, goods, ideas
  • Regions: Distinctive areas

Types of Geography

  • Modern (science), Human (culture), Physical (landforms/vegetation)

Map Types

  • Isoline: Line of equal value
  • Choropleth: Color shows info
  • Proportional Symbol: Size correlates to variable’s intensity
  • Dot: Dot shows info

Types of Sensing

  • Remote Sensing, GPS, GIS

Important Models

  • Population Pyramids: % of males and females of an age group
  • Demographic Transition Model: Demographic changes from high to low birth/death rates
  • Epidemiologic Transition Model: Cause of death at each DTM stage
  • Ravenstein’s Laws of Migration: 10 rules about migration
  • Malthusian Theory: Population grows faster than food supply

Key Characteristics

  • Crude birth rate: # births per 1000 ppl
  • Crude death rate: # deaths per 1000 ppl
  • Emigration (out), immigration (in)

Types of Density

  • Arithmetic (# objects), Physiological (# people), Agricultural (# farmers)

Types of Culture

  • Folk, Popular, Local, Material, Non-material

Cultural Terms

  • Cultural Relativism: Understanding cultures based on their own context
  • Ethnocentrism: Judging other cultures based on one's own

Religion

  • Universalizing: Spread through expansion and relocation diffusion (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism)
  • Ethnic: Found near hearth (Hinduism, Judaism)

Culture Interactions

  • Acculturation: Weaker culture adopts dominant traits
  • Assimilation: Weaker culture replaced
  • Syncretism: Blending of cultures
  • Multiculturalism: Multiple cultures in one area

Geopolitics

  • Geopolitics: interplay between international political relations and territories
  • Sovereignty: authority of state to govern itself

State Vs. Nation

  • State: political unit, independent country
  • Nation: cultural unit, common ancestry

Vocabulary

  • Nation-state, State-less nation, Multinational state, Multistate nation

Types of Boundaries

  • Antecedent, Subsequent, Superimposed, Relict

Political Concepts

  • Irredentism, Balkanization, Self-determination

Agriculture

  • Intensive farming: market gardening, plantation agriculture, mixed crop/livestock systems
  • Extensive farming: shifting cultivation, nomadic herding, ranching

Rural Settlement Patterns

  • Clustered, Dispersed, Linear

Rural Survey Methods

  • Metes and bounds, township and range, long lot

Diffusion Patterns

  • 1st Ag. Revolution, 2nd Ag. Revolution, Columbian Exchange

Urbanization

  • Urbanization: population of city grows

Urban Models

  • Concentric Zone, Sector, Multiple Nuclei, Galactic/Periphery

Urban Issues

  • Squatter Settlements: low residential area, developed without legal right to land
  • Site (easy to defend)/Situation (favor city growth)

Economy

  • Economy: producing and consuming goods

Economy Sectors

  • Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, Quaternary, Quinary

Economic Activities

  • Formal / Informal

Rostow Model

  • traditional society, pre-conditions takeoff, takeoff, drive to maturity, high mass consumption

Weber’s Least Cost

  • Transport, Labor, Agglomeration

FRQ Tips

  • Keep it simple! Restate the prompt, and be straightforward.
  • Always label the specific part you are referring to (A-G)!
  • Common Tasks:
    • Identify: state the answer
    • Describe: explain how something works
    • Explain: show patterns btw concepts
    • Compare: sim and diff btw concepts