AP Human Geography - 2025 Cheatsheet Notes

Location: Absolute (latitude, longitude)
Place: Physical and human characteristics of a place
Human-environmental interaction: How people interact with the environment around them
Movement: Mobility of people, goods, and ideas across places
Regions: Areas that are distinctive from one another
Types of Geography: Modern (science), Human (culture), Physical (landforms/vegetation)

Isoline: Line of equal value represent data such as pressure and temperature
Choropleth: Color shows information
Proportional Symbol: Size correlates to variable's intensity
Dot: Dot shows info
Types of Sensing: Remote Sensing, GPS (Global Positioning System), GIS (Geographical Information Science)

Population Pyramids: $% of males and females of an age group$
Demographic Transition Model: Sequence of demographic changes - country moves from high birth and death rates to low
Epidemiologic Transition Model: Distinct cause of death at each stage of DTM
Ravenstein's Laws of Migration: 10 rules about migration
Malthusian Theory of Population Growth: Human population grows more rapidly than food supply
Key Characteristics: Crude birth rate (# births per 1000 ppl), crude death rate (# deaths per 1000 ppl), emigration (out), endemic, epidemic, feticide (killing a fetus), immigration (in), infanticide (killing an infant)
Types of Density: Arithmetic (# objects), Physiological (# people), Agricultural (# farmers)

Types of Culture: Folk, Popular, Local, Material, Non-material
Cultural Relativism: person's beliefs, values, and practices understood based on their own culture
Ethnocentrism: own culture is the center, other cultures evaluated based on it
Universalizing vs. Ethnic Religions
- Universalizing: spread through expansion and relocation diffusion
- Ethnic: found near the hearth or spread through relocation diffusion
Acculturation: weaker culture adopts dominant traits of stronger one
Assimilation: weaker culture replaced by stronger one
Syncretism: blending of 2 cultures
Multiculturalism: 1+ culture in 1 area

Geopolitics: Interplay between international political relations and territories
Sovereignty: authority of state to govern itself
State Vs. Nation
- State: political unit, independent country, defined boundaries, full control over land and people
- Nation: cultural unit, common ancestry, common religion
Vocabulary: Nation-state, State-less nation, Multinational state, Multistate nation
Types of Boundaries: Antecedent, Subsequent, Superimposed, Relict
Irredentism: ethnic group that aims to reoccupy area
Balkanization: state fragmenting into smaller states
Self-determination: ethnicities have right to govern themselves

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 (Neolithic), 2nd Ag Revolution, Columbian Exchange

Urbanization: population of city grows
Concentric Zone Model: city grows outward in series of rings
Sector Model: Hoyt city develops in sectors
Multiple Nuclei Model: city includes more than one center around which activities revolve
Galactic/Periphery Model: modified multiple nuclei model; accounts for suburbanization; business nodes form on outside
Squatter Settlements: low residential area, developed without legal right to land
Site/Situation

Economy: producing and consuming goods
Economy Sectors: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, Quaternary, Quinary
Formal/Informal Economic Activities
Rostow Model: traditional society, pre conditions takeoff, takeoff, drive to maturity, high mass consumption
Weber's Least Cost: Transport, Labor, Agglomeration