Unit 1 Vocab Quiz 2
Absolute Distance – The distance that can be measured with a standard unit of length
• Accessibility – The relative ease with which a destination may be reached from some other place
• Cartographic scale- refers to the way the map communicates the ratio of its size to the size of what it
represents.
• Census- an official count or survey of a population, typically recording various details of individuals.
• Clustered- clustered together but not coherent.
• Complementarity – The actual or potential relationship between two places, usually referring to economic
interactions
• Connectivity – The degree of economic, social, cultural or political connection between two places
Unit 1 – Introduction to AP Human Geography
Textbook and Supplemental Vocabulary
6
• Coordinate system – A standard grid, composed of lines of latitude and longitude, used to determine the
absolute location of any object, place or feature on the earth’s surface
• Dispersed- when a phenomenon is relatively far apart
• Elevation- height above a given level, especially sea level.
• Field Observation- is used to refer to the act of physically visiting a location, place, or region and recording,
firsthand, information there.
• Friction of Distance – The measure of how much absolute distance affects the interaction between two places
• Geoid – The actual shape of the earth, which is rough and oblate, or slightly squashed; the earth’s
circumference is longer around the equator than it is along the meridians
• Global Scale- set of digital maps that cover the whole globe to express the status of global environment.
• Intervening Opportunities – the idea that one place has a demand for some good or service and two places
have a supply of equal price and quality, then the closer of the two suppliers to the buyer will represent an
intervening opportunity, thereby blocking the third from being able to share its supply of goods or services.
Intervening opportunities are frequently utilized because transportation costs usually decrease with proximity.
• Landscape Analysis- The process of describing and interpreting the landscape ecology of an area.
• Large-Scale – relatively small ratio between map units and ground units. Large-scale maps usually have higher
resolution and cover much smaller regions than small-scale maps.
• Local Scale- spatial region equivalent to that of a community.
• Media Reports- In general, "media" refers to various means of communication. For example, television, radio,
and the newspaper are different types of media.
• National Scale- spatial region equivalent that that of a country.
• Natural Landscape – The Physical landscape or environment that has not been affected by human activities
• Natural Resources- materials or substances such as minerals, forests, water, and fertile land that occur in
nature and can be used for economic gain.
• Online Visualization- use of sophisticated software to create dynamic computer maps, some of which are
three-dimensional or interactive.
• Photographic Interpretation- acts of examining photographic images for the purpose of identifying objects
and judging for their significance.
• Policy Document- specifies the rules, guidelines and regulations that your organization/country requires
employees/citizens to follow.
• Qualitative Data- data associated with a more humanistic approach to geography, often collected through
interviews, empirical observations, or the interpretation of texts, artwork, old maps, and other archives
• Quantitative Data- the value of data in the form of counts or numbers where each data-set has an unique
numerical value associated with it. ... Quantitative data is usually collected for statistical analysis using
surveys, polls or questionnaires sent across to a specific section of a population.
• Regional Scale- interaction occurring within a region in a regional setting.
• Relative Distance – A measure of distance that includes the costs of overcoming the friction of absolute
distance separating two places. Often, relative distance describes the amount of social, cultural, or economic
connectivity between two places.
• Sense of place – Feelings evoked by people as a result of certain experiences and memories associated with a
particular place
• Small-scale – Map scale ratio in which the ratio of units on the map to units on the earth is quite small. Small-
scale maps usually depict large areas.
• Spatial Perspective – An intellectual framework that looks at the particular locations of specific phenomena,
how and why that phenomena is where it is, and, finally, how it is spatially related to phenomena in other
places
• Sustainability – The concept of using the earth’s resources in such a way that they provide for people’s needs
in the present without diminishing the earth’s ability to provide for future generations
• Transferability – The costs involved in moving goods from one place to another
Unit 1 – Introduction to AP Human Geography
Textbook and Supplemental Vocabulary
7
Supplemental Vocabulary - Map Types and Projections
• Cartograms – Thematic Map; transforms space such that the political unit with the greatest value for some
type of data is represented by the largest relative unit
• Choropleth map – Thematic Map; uses tones or colors to represent spatial data as average values per unit
area
• Cognitive map – An image of a portion of the earth’s surface that an individual creates in his or her mind.
Cognitive maps can include knowledge of actual locations and relationships between locations as well as
personal perceptions and preferences of particular places
• Conic projection- type of map projection where direction is not constant and longitude lines converge at only
one pole.
• Distortion- On a map or image, the misrepresentation of shape, area, distance, or direction of or between
geographic features when compared to their true measurements on the curved surface of the earth
• Dot maps – Thematic Map; shows precise locations of specific observations or occurrences, such as crimes, car
accidents or births
• Isoline – Map line that connects points of equal or very similar values
• Preference map – Map that displays individual preferences for certain places
• Proportional / graduated symbol map – Thematic Map; size of a chosen symbol – such as a circle or triangle –
indicates the relative magnitude of some statistical value for a given geographic region
• Reference Map – A map that shows reference information for a particular place, making it useful for finding
landmarks and for navigating
• Thematic Map – A type of map that displays one or more variables, such as population or income level, within
a particular area
• Thematic Layers – Individual maps of specific features that are overlaid on one another in a GIS to understand
and analyze a spatial relationship
• Topographic map – Maps that use Isolines to represent constant elevations. If you took a topographic map
out into the field and walked exactly along the path of an isoline on your map, you would always stay at the
same elevation.
• Good-Homolosine- is a pseudo cylindrical, equal-area, composite map projection used for world maps.
Normally it is presented with multiple interruptions. Its equal-area property makes it useful for presenting
spatial distribution of phenomena.
• Mercator Projection – A true conformal cylindrical map projection, the Mercator projection is particularly
useful for navigation because it maintains accurate direction. Mercator projections are famous for their
distortion of area that makes landmasses at the poles seem oversized
• Peters Projection- a world map projection in which areas are shown in correct proportion at the expense of
distorted shape, using a rectangular decimal grid to replace latitude and longitude.
• Robinson Projection – Projection that attempts to balance several possible projection errors. It does not
maintain completely accurate area, shape, distance or direction, but it minimizes errors in each.