AP Human Geography Exam Review

Map Distortions

• Distortion can occur in shape, area, distance, or direction.
• The Mercator map preserves direction but distorts other aspects.
• Continents and countries appear with incorrect shapes, sizes, and locations on some maps.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

• GIS layers data on maps to reveal spatial relationships.

Research Methods

• Quantitative Research
  • Often uses census data.
  • Information is numerical and objective.
• Qualitative Research
  • Examines attitudes, beliefs, and feelings.
  • Information is subjective and open to interpretation.

Government & Business Applications

• Governments use both types of research to decide on locations for schools, grocery stores, and zoning laws.
• Businesses use the research to determine median income for profitable store locations.
• Individuals consider crime rates and school availability when choosing neighborhoods.

Spatial Concepts

• Advances in technology and communication have reduced distance decay, increasing connectivity.
• Unique patterns and spaces create a sense of place and cultural landscape.

Environmental Sustainability

• Environmental Determinism: Environment restricts society and culture.
• Environmental Possibilism: Society shapes and modifies the environment to suit its needs.

Scale of Analysis vs. Scale

• Scale of Analysis: How data is organized (e.g., national vs. local).

• Scale: Amount of Earth's surface being viewed.

  • Small Scale Maps: Show a lot of the earth's surface with little detail (e.g., a map of the world).
  • Large Scale Maps: Show a specific place with a lot of detail (e.g., a county map).

Types of Regions

• Functional/Nodal Regions: Organized around a node, often based on economic activities, travel, or communication (e.g., an airport or a pizza delivery range).
• Perceptual/Vernacular Regions: Based on people's beliefs or attitudes (e.g., the Middle East).
• Formal/Uniform Regions: Defined by common attributes (economic, social, political, environmental) (e.g., a state's boundaries).

Population Distribution

• People live where there are opportunities.
• Urban areas offer more social and economic opportunities, attracting migrants.
• Rural settlements offer fewer opportunities but a quieter lifestyle with more land available.

Population Density

• Arithmetic Density: Total population divided by total land area.
  Arithmetic\ Density = \frac{Total\ Population}{Total\ Land}
• Physiological Density: Total population divided by arable land.
  Physiological\ Density = \frac{Total\ Population}{Arable\ Land}
• Agricultural Density: Number of farmers divided by arable land.
  Agricultural\ Density = \frac{Number\ of\ Farmers}{Arable\ Land}

Population Vocabulary

• Crude Birth Rate (CBR), Crude Death Rate (CDR), Natural Increase Rate (NIR), sex ratios, doubling time, dependency ratios.

Population Pyramids

• Large base indicates an early stage in the Demographic Transition Model (DTM).
• Top-heavy pyramid indicates a later stage in the DTM, potentially with dependency ratio issues.

Demographic Transition Model (DTM)

• Stage 1: Low Growth
  • High CBR and CDR cancel each other out.
• Stage 2: Population Boom
  • Industrial Revolution or Medical Revolution leads to falling death rates, while birth rates remain high.
• Stage 3: Moderate Growth
  • Urbanization and social/economic opportunities cause birth rates to fall.
• Stage 4: Zero Population Growth (ZPG)
  • Women gain more opportunities, births and deaths match again at lower levels.
• Stage 5: Population Decrease (Debated)
  • Deaths rise above births.

Epidemiologic Transition Model

• Follows the DTM and looks at causes of death in each stage.
• Stage 5 has some variance from the DTM.

Population Policies

• Pro-Natalism: Policies to increase population growth.
• Anti-Natalism: Policies to restrict population growth.

Malthus and Neo-Malthusians

• Malthus: Believed population would grow exponentially while food production would grow arithmetically, leading to a Malthusian catastrophe.
• Neo-Malthusians: Believe Malthus was correct but limited in scope and that all resources, not just food, will be depleted, leading to a catastrophe.

Migration

• Push Factors: Reasons to leave an area.
• Pull Factors: Reasons to come to an area.
• Reasons for moving: political, economic, social, or environmental.

Types of Migration

• Forced Migration: Migrants life is in danger if they don't migrate.
• Voluntary Migration: Migrant chooses to migrate without fear of persecution or death.

Migration Effects

• Counter migration, diffusion, acculturation, assimilation, cultural resistance.

Cultural Relativism vs. Ethnocentrism

• Cultural Relativism: Viewing a culture through its own perspective without judgment.
• Ethnocentrism: Judging another culture based on your own cultural standards.

Culture

• A group's shared practices, beliefs, attitudes, customs, technologies, and food.
• Cultural Landscape: Observable culture in the actual landscape, including land use patterns, agricultural practices, religious/linguistic characteristics, and architectural styles.

Cultural Forces

• Centripetal Forces: Push a society together.
• Centrifugal Forces: Pull a society apart.

Diffusion

• Relocation Diffusion: Movement of a cultural trait from one place to another without growth.
• Expansion Diffusion: Growth in the amount of people participating in a cultural trait.
  • Hierarchical Diffusion: Spreads through a system of structures, often top-down.
  • Contagious Diffusion: Spreads in all directions, accessible to everyone.
  • Stimulus Diffusion: Adapts the cultural trait to the different cultural traits of the area it is diffusing to.
• Examples:
  • Colonialism & Imperialism: which led to the spread of English which eventually became a lingua franca.
  • Religions: Christianity and Islam diffuse globally as they became universalizing religion.
• Modern Diffusion: Urbanization, globalization, internet, advancements in transportation and communication which led to space time compression which allows us to communicate with people all over the world and reduces the impact of distance decay.

Cultural Changes

• Cultural Resistance: Protest or opposition to new cultural traits.
• Acculturation: Cultures merge and adapt to one another and change.
• Assimilation:
• Syncretism:
• Multiculturalism:
• Cultural Isolation: Folk and indigenous cultures protect their unique identity from a global culture.

Religions

• Universalizing Religions: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism. Want to convert more followers
• Ethnic Religions: Judaism, Hinduism. Protect their identity and are not trying to please everyone.

Language

• Focus on language families, their origins, diffusion, dialects, and impact on the cultural landscape.

Nations vs. States

• Nation: A group of people with shared history, cultural identity, and self-determination.
• State: An entity with a permanent population, sovereign government, and recognition by other states.

Types of States/Nations

• Nation-State: A state made up of one nation (homogenous).
• Multi-National State: A state made up of multiple nations coexisting peacefully.
• Multi-State Nation: A nation existing in multiple states (e.g., Korean nation).
• Stateless Nation: A nation without its own state (e.g., Kurdish nation).

Political Concepts

• Autonomous and semi-autonomous regions.
• Self-determination: A nation's right to govern itself without external influence to protect their cultural identity.

Colonialism and Imperialism Effects

• Political boundaries are created, diffusion happens, military conquest and power are expressed through territoriality.
• Shatterbelt Regions: Regions caught between two external fighting powers.
• Neo-Colonialism: Controlling a country through economic or political influence without direct occupation.

Political Boundaries

• Relic Boundaries: No longer exist but still impact the cultural landscape (e.g., Berlin Wall).
• Antecedent Boundaries: Existed before human settlement.
• Subsequent Boundaries: Based on different ethnic groups and cultures.
• Consequent Boundaries: Used to divide different cultural groups and accommodate their differences.
• Superimposed Boundaries: Created by a foreign state (e.g., many African countries after the Scramble for Africa).
• Geometric Boundaries: Straight lines that go with the parallels of latitude.

Law of the Sea

• Territorial Waters: 12 nautical miles off the coastline.
• Contiguous Zone: Extends 24 miles off coast.
• Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ): Extends 200 nautical miles off the coastline.
• International Waters: Anything past the EEZ.

Gerrymandering

• Redistricting voting districts in order to create a district that is more favorable to your party.

Types of States

• Unitary State: Concentrates power at the federal/national government level.
• Federal State: Concentrates power between the national government and regional governments.

Political Forces

• Centrifugal forces push a state apart (e.g., terrorism, irredentism, isolated cultural groups).
• Centripetal forces unite a country (prevent devolution).
• Devolution is the transfer of power from a national government to a regional government.

State Sovereignty

• A state's right to govern itself, challenged by devolution, technology, foreign interference, and supranational organizations.
• Supranational Organizations (e.g., EU, NATO, UN): States give up some sovereign control to solve global issues, participate in trade agreements, and form military alliances.

Agricultural Practices

• Intensive Agricultural Practices: Located near population centers, maximizing production with a lot of labor and capital.
  • Plantation Farming: Found in less developed countries.
  • Mixed Crop and Livestock: Found in developed countries, crops are fed to livestock.
  • Market Gardening: Located in regions with longer growing seasons, fruits and vegetables are picked and then processed eventually being shipped across the country to the market.
• Extensive Agricultural Practices: Located farther from population centers, needing more land.
  • Shifting Cultivation: Found in developing countries with tropical regions.
  • Nomadic Herding: Found in dry air climates.
  • Ranching: Uses a lot of land for the cattle or sheep to graze.

Subsistence vs. Commercial Agriculture

• Subsistence agriculture focuses on feeding your family or yourself or your community for survival, while commercial agriculture focuses on generating a profit for scale up your business.

Settlement Patterns

• Clustered Settlements: Higher population density, homes are packed together.
• Dispersed Settlements: Lower population density, homes spaced out.
• Linear Settlement Patterns: Along a river, road, or train.

Survey Method

• Meets and bounds are used for short distances and often based on key geographic features in the area.
• Long lots divide land up into narrow parcels that each have connections to a transportation system, whether it be a road or also a river.
• Township and range which uses longitude and latitude to create a grid like system across a geographic area.

Agricultural Hearths

• Fertile Crescent or the Indus Valley River.
• The Columbian Exchange led to the diffusion of the diffusion of different agricultural practices and products around the world.

Agricultural Revolutions

• First Agricultural Revolution (Neolithic Revolution): Sedentary agriculture takes off.
• Second Agricultural Revolution: with the industrial revolution that we really saw a transformation in our food production. New technologies were introduced like the seed drill that allowed us to be able to increase our food output.
• Green Revolution: GMOs, hybrid plants, new chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. All of this again revolutionized our food production and allowed us to have higher yielding crop.

New Farming Practices

• Mono Cropping is when farmers grow the same crop each year to increase the production.
• Mono Culture occur as well, which is when farmers grow one type of crop in a period of time.
  *Farmers can achieve an economy of scale thanks to new technology thanks to advancements in technology.

Value Added Specialty Crops

• Crops that gain in value as production occurs (e.g., wheat to flour, strawberries to jam).

Farming Debates

• Debates are starting on if we should be using genetically modified food and the impact of chemical fertilizers.
• Led to the rise of organic farming which seeks to remove chemical fertilizers and non sustainable practices from the production of food.
• Local food movements which try to counter food deserts, free trade movements, and urban farming and community supported agriculture.All of these movements seek to counter some of the ethical and health and environmental concerns that we see in the modern agricultural system.

Women in Agriculture

• Women in agriculture traditionally in developing countries make up a larger percentage of subsistence farmers.
• They're part of the informal economy and are paid low wages, have less legal protection and also be more victims of discrimination and sexual assault

Bid Rent Theory

• Relationship between land prices and distance from an urban area/market. Land price goes down the farther you go from the city.

Von Theirn's Model

• The market is at the center.

• First ring is dairy and horticulture crops.

• The the next ring is the forest.

• After is grain and field crops.

• Farthest from the center is livestock.

Site and Situation Factors

• Site Factors: Unique characteristics of a place (climate, natural resources, absolute location).
• Situation Factors: Connections between places (rivers, roads, airports, ports).

Settlements and Cities

• Settlements and cities and how they connect with one another are important.
• Cultural trends are diffused through world cities and large urban areas and eventually spread throughout the city into surrounding settlement.

Gravity Model

• Predicts the likelihood of two different places interacting with each other based on population size and distance.

Christaller's Central Place Theory

• Larger settlements/specialized businesses have a larger range, pulling people in from a farther distance.
• Illustrates urban hierarchy (cities, towns, villages, hamlets).
• Analyzes locations of goods and services; more specialized services have a larger range but need a higher threshold population.

City Size Distribution

• Primate City Rule: Largest settlement has double the population of the second-largest.
• Rank Size Rule: The nth-ranked city has 1/n the population of the largest city. More large urban areas, economic development is more evenly dispersed.

Urban Models

• Burgess Concentric Zone Model
  • Cities grow outwards from the CBD in a series of rings.
• Hoyt Sector Model
  • City develops in a series of wedges with the CBD in the center.
• Harris and Ullman's Multiple Nuclei Model
  • City has multiple CBDs.
• Galactic Model (Periphery Model)
  • Expansion of the multiple nuclei model, edge cities form on the outside of the city limit.
• Latin American City Model
  • Spine connects the CBD to a wealthy shopping district and has a Dis amenity Zone.
• Sub-Saharan African City Model
  • Consists of three different CBDs and informal are around the urban area.
• Southeast Asian City Model
  • Based around a port with a government zone overlooking trade.

Income and Density Gradient

• Highly densely populated areas near the CBD often build vertically.
• Medium densely populated areas have single/multi-family homes with limited space.
• Lowly densely populated areas have a large front yard and back yard, plenty of space between different buildings.

Infrastructure

• Areas that invest in it will attract residents back into the urban area and they can create more sustainable cities.

Policy Controversy

• People fear start to start to have more segregation unequal economic development, or we'll lose historical neighborhoods which will reduce the amount of unique cultural landscapes and that sense of place that is for generations in our cities.

Gentrification

• Raising property values and increasing wealth in low income neighborhoods that are traditionally near the CBD.
• Has the unintended consequence of also pushing out the residents that currently live there

Economy

• Formal Economy: Jobs regulated/monitored by the government.
• Informal Economy: Jobs not monitored or regulated by the government.

Economic Sectors

• Primary Sector: Jobs involving natural resources.
• Secondary Sector: Manufacturing and production.
• Tertiary Sector: Service jobs.
• Quaternary Sector: Service jobs dealing with information collection.
• Quinary Sector: Jobs focused on the decision process (government officials, CEOs).

International Division of Labor

• Core countries take advantage of cheap resources and labor in the developing world to make products at a cheaper rate.
• Moving jobs from your home country to another country is known as an offshoring.

Neoliberal Policies

• Seeks to promote free trade agreements around the world.
• At the same time though remember we see countries resist globalization and try to implement isolationist policies.

Trade

• Countries benefit when they trade rather than trying to produce everything themselves.
• Specialize in things with a comparative advantage.

Gross Indicators

• Different ways to measure a formal economy.
  • We know that GDP is like taking the temperature of the economy we're trying to see how things are going.
  • You want to make a general GNP is looking at the production of all the country's citizens.
  • GNI is looking at the standard of living.

Women in the Economy

• Women are more likely to be in subsistence agriculture or the informal economy, paid low wages, have less legal protection, victims of discrimination/assault.

Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth

• Traditional Society: Jobs centered around subsistence agriculture, primary sector.
• Preconditions for Take-Off: Demand from outside states for raw materials, jobs in the secondary sector.
• Take-Off: Urbanization increases, job opportunities in the secondary sector.
• Drive to Maturity: More specialization and global trade occur.
• Age of Mass Consumption: Many jobs in the tertiary sector, society is more developed.

Wallerstein's World System Theory

• Economic imbalance in the world; Core countries take advantage of less developed countries.
• Core countries disproportionately benefit from this trade because periphery and Semi Periphery countries end up producing many of the products and goods and services for them.
• The Dependency Theory we can see disproportionately benefit the majority now of the periphery countries economies are based around exporting their goods to the core countries instead of having those products for them.