APHuG Test Reviw Pkt - The motherload
Basic Human Geography - Unit I
Longitude:
Angular distance east or west of the Prime (Greenwich) Meridian.
Shown as a vertical line.
Also referred to as meridians.
Latitude:
Angular distance north or south of the Equator.
Shown as a horizontal line.
Also referred to as parallels.
Absolute Location:
The position of a place expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude and longitude.
Does not change.
Determined by a frame of reference, typically longitude and latitude.
Example: Chicago's absolute location is 41° 53' N Latitude and 87° 38' W Longitude.
Relative Location:
The regional position of a place relative to other places.
Constantly modified and can change over time.
Affected by distance, accessibility, and connectivity.
Example: "Chicago is on Lake Michigan, south of Milwaukee."
Site:
The internal physical attributes of a place, including absolute location, spatial character, and physical setting.
Contributes to a country's economic success.
Example: New Orleans has a poor site due to its location below sea level.
Situation:
The external locational attributes of a place; its relative location with reference to other places.
The relationship of a location with another location.
Example: Pittsburgh has an ideal situation for its production of steel due to its location on the confluence of two major rivers.
Types of Maps
Mental Map:
A map in your mind, revived from visual observation, and developed over years.
Cartographer:
The science of map making.
Contemporary cartographers are assisted by computers and satellite imagery.
Projection:
The scientific method of transferring locations on Earth's surface to a flat map.
Maps are visual representations of the Earth’s surface, drawn to scale for a specific purpose.
Each map projection serves a particular purpose.
Types of Maps:
Physical maps: show evaluation, mountains, rivers, etc.
Political maps: show countries, cities, capital countries.
Special purpose maps: designed for a specific purpose (e.g., highway maps, projection maps).
Map Properties:
Scale, direction, area, distribution.
When flattening a round globe, one or more of these properties will be distorted.
Map Classes:
Cylindrical: shows accurate direction.
Planar: shows the earth from one point, like one of the poles.
Conic: as if a cone was put over the earth, keeps distance but loses direction.
Oval: combination of cylindrical and conic.
Thematic Maps:
A map designed to show a particular theme.
Isoline Map: uses continuous lines joining areas of the same value, commonly showing weather.
Dot Map: each dot represents a certain number of something (e.g., population).
Proportional Map: uses the size of shapes or symbols to show how serious a theme is in an area.
Cartogram: shows how much of something by how big the actual area is.
Choropleth Map: uses shading to indicate the strength of a variable.
Sense of Place
Definition:
A state of mind derived through the infusion of a place with meaning and emotion by remembering important events that occurred in that place or by labeling a place with a certain character.
How people identify themselves because of what they call "home" and the places they know because of meanings, experiences, important events, or a certain character.
Identity and Sense of Place:
Identity affects how we define and experience place.
Sense of place becomes part of our identity; the feeling that you belong to that place because of the certain qualities of that place.
Sense of place is fluid and changing.
How we think of the place changes as we change and the place changes.
Examples:
What people consider their "home".
Spatial Perspective
Definition:
Observing variations in geographic phenomena across space.
Where and why certain phenomena are spatially distributed where they are and their relationships between the different phenomena.
How It's Used:
Human geographers use spatial perspective to study various phenomena and their relationships.
Explains why agglomeration and deindustrialization occurs.
Examples:
The distribution of McDonald's corporations and restaurants.
Why they are located and/or successful in various parts of the world.
How they spread to these places.
Scale
Definition:
Representation of a real-world phenomenon at a certain level of reduction or generalization.
How geographers study various places and patterns at different levels to better understand the connections.
Important Info:
Various scales including local, regional, national, and global.
Two meanings of scale in geography:
The distance on a map compared to the distance on the Earth.
The territorial extent of something (use this definition in human geography).
Make different observations at different scales.
Study a single phenomenon across various scales to see how it affects the global scale affects the local and vice versa.
Scales tell us what level of detail we can expect to see.
Different patterns at different scales.
Can be used as a political scale.
Rescale: when a country involves other players at other scales to create a global outcry of support for their position.
Different Kinds:
Map scale: the ratio between the distance on a map and the actual distance on Earth's surface.
Geographic scale: a conceptual hierarchy of spaces, from small to large, that reflects actual levels of organization in the real world.
Neighborhood, urban area, metropolitan area, region, watershed, ecosystem, landscape, biome.
Examples:
Map keys, cartography.
Population Statistics
Demography: The study of population characteristics.
Crude Birth Rate (Natality Rate): Births per 1,000 population.
Crude Death Rate: Deaths per 1,000 population.
Rate of Natural Increase:
Less developed countries (LDCs) usually have a high rate of natural increase, while more developed countries (MDCs) have a low or even negative rate.
Net Migration Rate: Migration per 1,000 population.
Infant Mortality Rate: Deaths of infants within the first year of life.
LDCs will have a high infant mortality rate, while MDCs will have a low infant mortality rate.
Total Fertility Rate: Average number of children a woman would have over her lifetime.
LDCs will have a higher rate, while MDCs will have a lower rate.
Dependency Ratio: Percent of population depending on people who work (they don't have a job). LDCs will have a higher ratio.
Sex Ratio: Breakdown of population by gender. Important for analyzing/reading population pyramids.
Life Expectancy: Number of years a person is expected to live.
LDCs will have a lower life expectancy while MDCs will have a higher life expectancy.
Arithmetic Density:
Physiological Density:
Urbanization: Amount of population living in urban area.
Doubling Time: Amount of time it takes for a country to double its population.
Population Patterns
Many factors influence population patterns, such as natural environment, economic development, and cost of living.
The majority of population distribution across the United States is concentrated on the east coast.
In many cases, the population will be located near areas of significance, such as capitals.
Five main areas of population concentration:
East Asia (China, South and North Korea, and Japan). This area has favorable conditions for agriculture as well.
South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan). This region has a rapidly increasing population.
Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand).
Western and Central Europe includes primate cities such as London, Moscow, and Paris. The majority of Europe is also urbanized.
Northeastern U.S. and Canada, including the megalopolis along the eastern seaboard of the United States.
China has the largest population in the world (1.3 billion people), although India is expected to surpass them within the next 50 years.
Population patterns are how and where people are placed on the landscape.
Population densities are usually visualized or portrayed in maps, graphs, or population pyramids.
Population densities (arithmetic and physiologic) are used to find or calculate the number of people per square unit.
People tend to locate near water.
There are more people in urban areas.
Demographic Transition Model and Population Pyramid Analysis
Demographic Transition Model: Used to represent the transition from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates as a country develops from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economic system.
Population Pyramid: Also called age-sex pyramid and age structure diagram; is a graphical illustration that shows the distribution of various age groups in a human population, which normally forms the shape of a pyramid.
Population Pyramids are graphs that help explain the DT model also.
Stage One: birth and death rates are high but fluctuate depending on natural events.
Birth control was non-existent and women had as many children as they could bear.
Children contributed to the economy by doing jobs
Example: NO COUNTRIES CURRENTLY.
Stage Two: many births and the death rate has went down. The reason they are living is the improvements in sanitation and water etc.
This stage you raise health up and living standards.
Expect to have longer life expectancies.
Example: Kenya (high CBR of 32 per 1000, but CDR of 14 per 1000.)
Stage Three: Has low birth and death rates, so there is a decrease in population.
The lower births are from planned families and birth controls, bigger want for education and work and more of a life.
These countries are in the final stages of becoming like the western countries and states and those in Europe.
Example: South Korea.
Stage Four: Stable population with not much change.
The births and deaths are pretty even. Both low but sometimes the deaths become bigger then leading to possibly stage five.
Example of a country in stage four: Switzerland.
Stage Five: Possibly going into negative growth, there are more deaths that births.
Example of a country in stage five possibly: Sweden.
Malthus and Neo-Malthusians
In 1798 Thomas Malthus published his "Essay on the Principle of Population" which became one of the most famous models to explain changes in population.
It was based off of two claims:
people have natural desire to reproduce
people need food to survive
In his essay he said that food production increases arithmetically while population increases geometrically.
This means that food will only increase one by one but population will multiply saying that population growth will outpace food production.
Negative Checks - war, famine, starvation.
Malthus said that the world would require these in order to keep its population under control.
Although his theory made sense it had many problems:
He thought that famine was related to not having enough food when in reality it was unequal distribution of food.
He didn't think humans had control over reproductive behavior.
He also didn't think women would change roles in the society (get jobs) and slow down population growth.
He didn't foresee humans complete ability to increase food production greatly with technology and new agriculture methods.
This theory has been revised many times, the most recent was Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb". It made similar arguments about the Earth's ability to provide.
Neo-Malthusian -:
Support of population control programs to ensure enough resources for current and future populations.
They believe that world growth is outstripping people of food and resources and it will eventually lead to violence and many problems.
Population Policies
Essentially the stances governments take on population.
These policies determine what is done to influence or control population growth and size.
Actions these policies induce include:
Laws.
Free/subsidized daycare or preschool.
Tax or cash incentives.
Forced sterilization.
Free contraceptives.
Advertising.
Free or increased access to family planning.
Taxation.
Subsidization of abortion.
Eugenic Policies: Population policies that favor one racial or cultural group over the rest of the population.
Example: Nazi Germany: favored the Aryans over other ethnic groups. They sought to make Germany a country populated only by Aryans through the extermination of anyone not an ethnic German.
Expansive Policies: Population policies that encourage large families and raise the rate of natural increase.
Example: Europe: Thanks to falling birth rates and improved healthcare, Europe's population is aging.
Thus, its governments are attempting to boost births through free or subsidized daycare/preschool extended parental leave.
Restrictive Policies: Population policies that attempt to reduce the natural increase rate.
Example: China: most of the Chinese are only allowed to have 1 child.
U.S. Internal Migration
Activity Spaces: Daily routine through a regular sequence of short moves.
Commuting: From home to work to home again.
Seasonal Movement: Winters in Florida & summers in home state.
Cyclic Movement: Moves that start at home & bring us back to it.
Transhumance: Ranchers move livestock based on seasonally available pastures.
Emigrant: Migrates out.
Immigrant: Migrates in.
Migration: Permanent relocation across a large distance.
Internal Migration: Movement within a country.
Voluntary Migration: Migrants that choose to migrate.
Push Factors: Conditions that cause a migrant to move away.
Pull Factors: Conditions or perceptions that cause a migrant to move there.
Distance Decay: Contact with a place decreases as distance increases.
Ravenstein's Laws of Migration:
Every migration flow creates a counter-migration flow.
Majority of migrants move a short distance.
Migrants who move long distance tend to choose big city as new 'home'.
Urban populace less migratory than rural populace.
Families less likely to move globally than young adults.
Internal Migration patterns have had a tremendous impact on the ethnic composition of large urban areas, relative economic dominance of various cities and regions, & balance of political power
Early 20th century: large numbers of African-American moved from the rural South to cities in the Northeast & Midwest like Chicago and New York
When large numbers of the white middle-class moved from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt now the 3 of 4 most populated states (California, Texas, Florida) that also carry a disproportionate number of electoral votes are in the Sun Belt
Modern U.S. Internal Migration is voluntary but in colonial times there were historic forced migrations by the U.S. government (also African slave trade)
Push and Pull Factors, Ravenstein's Laws of Migration
Push Factors:
Conditions and perceptions that help the migrant decide to LEAVE a place.
Reasons for emigrating (leaving a place).
Pull Factors:
Circumstances that effectively ATTRACT the migrant to certain locales of other places.
Reasons for immigrating (moving into a place).
Types of Push & Pull Factors:
Economic Conditions: Poverty and perceived opportunities in destinations.
Political Circumstances: Oppressive regimes.
Armed Conflict and Civil War.
Environmental Conditions: Potato blight in Ireland.
Culture and Traditions: Fear that their culture will not survive a major political transition.
Technological Advances.
RAVENSTEIN'S "LAWS OF MIGRATION"
Every migration flow generates a return or counter migration.
The majority of migrants move a short distance.
Migrants who move longer distances tend to choose big-city destinations.
Urban residents are less migratory than inhabitants of rural areas.
Families are less likely to make international moves than young adults.
Migration Types
Migration: Movement that results in permanent relocation, usually covers significant distances.
International Migration: Movement across the borders of a country (external migration).
Emigrant: Person leaving a home country.
Immigrant: Person entering a foreign country as a migrant.
Internal Migration: Migration that takes place within the borders of a country.
Refugees:
UNHCR: "a person who has a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion."
Internal Refugees (displaced persons): people displaced within their own countries.
International Refugees: refugees who cross one or more country boundaries.
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPS): People who abandon their homes but remain in their home country.
Guest Workers
What is a guest worker?
A person who comes into a country temporarily to work, but not live there. They have a work visa and are documented.
The person must return home after the job & have temporary allowance into a country
Work for a small amount of money and come from LCDs to MCDs in order to work for money to send home to family
Often mistreated by their employers since they don't know their rights given by the government
What are the push factors for a person to become a guest worker?
Poverty & no job available, especially in the industrial field
The population has a high growth
Need to support family
What are the pull factors for a person to become a guest worker?
The person may come from a country that was a colony of a European country
The MCD has jobs and a certain perception that makes it seem like the perfect place or dream land
What changes (socially & economically) occur in the country in which the guest worker comes from & the one receiving the person?
Origin country
With less people seeking jobs, the unemployment rate and burden decreases
The money made in the host country (most of the time) is sent back home, which, in turn, is added into the origin country's economy
Host country
Guest workers take lowly jobs that are frowned upon but needed
The host country's people may ignore the guest workers and semi-bully them, which creates tension and strife between the people
Culture Hearth, Culture Realm, Culture Region
Culture hearths: Places where things and ideas came from/ societies start
7 original hearths: Nile River Valley, Indus River Valley, Wei-huang Valley, Ganges River Valley, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, West Africa
Culture realm
Entire region is influenced by a specific religion, language, diet, costumes, or economic development
Cultural regions: Regions defined by similar culture traits and cultural landscape features
Types of Culture Regions
A region has to:
Have activities
Have people
Have an environment
Defining culture regions
Differ in some way from other regions
Possibly differ from political boundaries
Formal Regions
Aka uniform region, homogenous region
Shared feature(s) such as: climate, political boundaries, key crop
Functional Regions
aka nodal region
Has a CENTRAL POINT which leads to: transportation systems, communication systems, economic associations, functional associations
Vernacular Region
Aka perceptual region
Borders tend to be highly variable
Types of Diffusion
In diffusion, an idea or invention, called an innovation, moves outward from its place of origin (called the "hearth") to other places.
Friction of distance and the distance decay effect affect diffusion.
There are two main types of diffusion: expansion diffusion and relocation diffusion.
Expansion diffusion: the innovation moves outward while the people or technology causing the diffusion to occur remain at the hearth.
In contagious diffusion, the innovation spreads outward from the hearth, coming into contact with everyone in a widening circle.
In hierarchical diffusion, the innovation spreads from authority figures or more-connected people/organizations to less-powerful or less-connected ones.
In stimulus diffusion the innovation is not completely absorbed into the new place. Rather, a trait or idea in the innovation stimulates the new place, causing it to develop an innovation that is related to, but not identical to, the original innovation.
Relocation diffusion: the innovation spreads outward by people at the hearth relocating to other areas. There, the innovation is diffused to the new population.
Time-Distance Decay, Acculturation, Time-Space Compression
Time-Distance Decay: As time and distance increases the cultural or spatial interactions between two areas will decline and as time
Also as distance decreases the cultural or spatial interactions between two areas will increase.
Acculturation:
When a person or a group changes adapts enough to a new culture to survive in a new area or situation.
Usually by changing one's own culture by borrowing from another culture.
Time-Space Compression:
Describes the effects of new technology and transportations making places seem closer than they actually are.
In other words, with faster ways of transportation the space or distance between two areas seem to be shorter because it takes less time.
Ethnicity, Race, Racism
Ethnicity
The identity or relations between a group of people who are connected by a common culture, or ancestry; it is typically based on perspective and traits rather than physical characteristics.
Race
Defined as the physical categorization of humans based on, for example, skin color.
This is different from ethnicity because this includes biological differences, rather than cultural differences.
Racism
Incorporates hostile attitudes toward a race because of their certain physical characteristics, like skin color.
Languages Throughout History
Language - A set of sounds, combination of sounds, & symbols that are used for communication
Isogloss - A geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs
Language Family - Group of languages with a shared, but fairly distant origin
50% of the world's people speak languages belonging to the Indo-European Family
Language Diffusion
Occurs when migration, trade, war or some other event exposes one group of people to the language of another
Major Languages/The Disappearance of Language
In a state with many different ethnicities, it is very important for everyone to learn the major language to keep the state unified.
People that immigrate to the United States should learn English so they obtain more of an opportunity in our country.
The learning of multiple languages is called linguistic diversity and a lot of people have linguistic diversity because of the usefulness of major languages.
Convergence and Diffusion of Language
Language Convergence
Where two or more languages borrow words, grammar, or syntax from each other.
Language Diffusion
The spread of a certain language or language family.
When a language diffuses, it breaks into dialects because the people who speak that language are spread out over a large area.
Lingua Franca, Pidgin, Creole, Standard language, Official language
Lingua franca- a language used among speakers of different languages for the purposes of trade and commerce.
A lingua franca can be a single language, OR it can be a mixture of 2 or more languages.
Pidgin language- When parts of two or more languages are combined in a simplified structure and vocabulary.
Creole language- a pidgin language that has developed a more complex structure and vocabulary and has become the native language of a group of people.
Standard language- the language that is promoted as the norm for use in schools, government, and is recognized by other states.
Official language- the language chosen by the educated and politically powerful elite, to promote internal cohesion.
Toponymy
10 types of place names
Descriptive.
Associative.
Incident Names.
Possessive Names.
Commemorative.
Commendatory.
Manufactured.
Mistaken.
Shift Names.
Folk Etymology.
Ethnic Religions
What defines an Ethnic Religion:
* A person is BORN into their faith
Members do not try to convert others to follow their religion
is spread through relocation diffusion
Examples-
* Hinduism
* Judaism
Universal Religions
What defines a Universal Religion
Intentionally spread through missionaries
Messages are not culturally speific
Examples
Christianity
Islam
Buddhism
Popular Culture and Folk Culture
Popular Culture
In large heterogeneous (varied) populations
Constantly changing
Large percentage of people in this culture
Folk Culture
In small homogeneous (uniform) populations
Stays mostly the same with small changes that help the local population
Small percentage of people in this culture
Housing Types
For a very long time, the houses people built reflected their environments, their availability of resources, their aesthetic values, and the uniqueness of the place
When people migrate, they carry with them the ways that they think homes should be
planned and constructed, but when they get to new environments, those ideas may be
modified
From these sources, the different building styles diffused westward and southward in several parallel streams. By the 19th century, these three streams were called the folk housing regions.
New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Tidewater South.
Nation, State, Nation-State, Stateless Nation
Nation -A large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.
State
Has space or territory which has internationally recognized boundaries
Has people who live there on an ongoing basis.
Has economic activity and an organized economy.
Has the power of social engineering, such as education.
Nation-State
The nation-state refers to a single or multiple nationalities joined together in a formal political union. The nation-state determines an official language(s), a system of law, manages a currency system, uses a bureaucracy to order elements of society, and fosters loyalties to abstract entities.
Stateless Nation
The stateless nations are unwelcome and are a source of conflict.
Geopolitical Theories
Heartland Theory
Created by geographer Halford Mackinder in 1919.
Stated that the heart of the world and that the key to obtaining world power and dominance lays in the Eastern Eurasian landmass.
Rimland Theory
Created by geographer Nicholas Spykman in 1944.
Contradicts Mackinder’s Heartland Theory.
States world control lies within the Inner Crescent/Rimland, around the Eurasian landmass
World System Theory
Created by Geographer Immanuel Wallerstein
Divides countries into groups according to social standing, political power, & economic development:
Core- more developed and dominate the economy.
Periphery-less developed and little technological development
Semi-Periphery- serves as a buffer between core and periphery to keep world economy from drastically polarizing
Human Territoriality- Gerrymandering
Human Territoriality: The efforts of human society to influence events and social goals by controlling specific geographical areas.
Gerrymandering: The practice of dividing (a geographic area) into voting districts so as to give unfair advantage to one party in elections while concentrating the voting strength of the opposing party in as few districts as possible.
State Shapes
State Shapes
Compact- Considered the "ideal" state shape, usually small
Advantages: easier to navigate, capital is centralized
Disadvantages: easier to take over, lack of resources
Fragmented states could be an island, or have another country in-between the parts
Advantages: different resources, different climates, not easily conquered
Disadvantages: easier to succeed, certain parts neglected, difficult to communicate, limited access to outside resources
Elongated- At least as long as it is wide
Advantages: different climates, different resources
Prorupt Has something that sticks out like a peninsula
Advantages: different climate, different resources
Perforated- A state that has another state totally inside itAn enclave is a state totally surrounded by ONE other state
Advantages: the perforating country can be easily taken over, potential economic relationship
Capitals- Capital cities are usually placed strategically, in a populous city, and are associated with the identity of their state.
Balkanization, Centrifugal Forces, Centripetal Forces, Devolution
Balkanization:
The act of dividing a larger state into several smaller regions.
Devolution:
The movement of power from one central government to another or several regional governments.
Centripetal Forces:
Are forces that unite a nation's people.
Centrifugal Forces:
Are forces that disunite a nation's people.
Buffer States, Satellite States
A buffer state is a neutral country that is located between two conflicting countries. Sometimes this country acts to stop the rivalry or conflict and is usually a smaller state.
A satellite state is a country that is independent but still relies on another country politically and economically. It is usually a periphery country being heavily influenced by a core country.
Boundaries and Types of Boundary Disputes
Boundaries
Cultural: The boundary is created by national boundaries such as religion, language, and ethnicity.
Geometric: The boundary is a straight line.
Physical The boundary is created by a physical barrier, often natural such as mountains, bodies of water, and walls
Types of Boundary Disputes
Allocational: A dispute over resources.
Definitional: A dispute over legal language/interpretation.
Operational: A dispute over the administration of the boundary.
Locational: A dispute over the exact boundary.
Internal Political Boundaries and Arrangements
Internal Political Structure
Unitary state: a state with a highly centralized governments; the central authority exerts power equally over its territory (UK, France)
Federal state: the central government represents various entities within a state; allows entities to retain some power (most geographically impressive being- Mexico, Brazil, U.S.)
States, Nations, and Nation-States*State: a politically organized territory that is administered by a sovereign government and is recognized by the international community
Nation: a tightly knit group of people who share a common language, ethnicity, religion, and other cultural attributes; not a country of state
Boundary
Defined: legal document or treaty drawn up to specify actual points in the landscapeDisputes
Definitional: focus on the legal language of a boundary agreement (e.g. median line of a river: water levels may vary
Evolution**
Geometric: straight line, unrelated to physical or cultural landscape, based on a grid system
Current Territorial Disputes
Territory Dispute: It is a disagreement between two states over who has control of the land. It can also be a controlling of land that is close by a new state that has controlled that land from a former state.
In factThe Jammu and Kashmir dispute is between Pakistan and India
The Abyei dispute is between South Sudan and Sudan
The Mayotte dispute is between France and the Comoro Islands
The Cyprus Dispute is between Turkey and Greece, The Turkish Cypriots have the north and the Greek Cypriots have the south, The UN or United Nations has also set up a buffering zone in between the parts to stop violence.
Supranationalism
3 or more states joining together for one common purpose
Purposes include: