APHUG Unit 1 Vocab

Absolute Distance A distance that can be measured with a standard unit of length, such as mile or kilometer.

Absolute Location The exact position of an object or place, measured within the spatial coordinates of a grid system.

Accessibility The relative ease with which a destination may be reached from some other place.

Aggregation To come together into a mass, sum, or whole.

Azimuthal Projection A map projection in which the plane is the most developable surface.

Breaking Point The outer edge of a city's sphere of influence, used in law of retail gravitation to describe the area of a city's hinterlands that depend on that city for its retail sales.

Cartograms A type of thematic map that transforms space such that the political unit with the greatest value for some type of data is represented by the largest relative area.

Cartography The theory and practice of making visual representations of Earth's surface in the form of maps.

Choropleth Map A thematic map that uses tones or colors to represent spatial data as average values per unit area.

Cognitive Map An image of a portion of Earth's surface that an individual creates in his or her mind. Cognitive maps can include knowledge of actual locations and relationships among locations as well as personal perceptions and preferences of particular places.

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.

Contagious Diffusion The spread of a disease, an innovation, or cultural traits through direct contact with another person or place.

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 Earth's surface.

Cultural Ecology Also called nature-society geography. The study of the interactions between societies and the natural environments in which they live.

Cultural Landscape The human-modified natural landscape specifically containing the imprint of a particular culture or society.

Distance Decay Effect The decrease in interaction between two phenomena, places, or people as the distance between them increases.

Dot Maps Thematic maps that use points to show the precise locations of specific observations or occurrences, such as crimes, car accidents, or births.

Environmental Geography The intersection between human and physical geography, which explores the spatial impacts humans have on the physical environment and vice versa.

Expansion Diffusion The spread of ideas, innovations, fashion, or other phenomena to surrounding areas through contact and exchange.

Formal Region Definition of regions based on common themes such as similarities in language, climate, land use, etc.

Friction of Distance A measure of how much absolute distance affects the interaction between two places.

Fuller Projection A type of map projection that maintains the accurate size and shape of landmasses but completely rearranges direction such that the four cardinal directions—north, south, east, and west—no longer have any meaning.

Functional Region Definition of regions based on common interaction (or function)—for example, a boundary line drawn around the circulation of a particular newspaper.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) A set of computer tools used to capture, store, transform, analyze, and display geographic data.

Geographic Scale The scale at which a geographer analyzes a particular phenomenon—for example, global, national, regional, neighborhood, etc. Generally, the finer the scale of analysis, the richer the level of detail in the findings.

Global Positioning System (GPS) A set of satellites used to help determine location anywhere on Earth's surface with a portable electronic device.

Gravity Model A mathematical formula that describes the level of interaction between two places, based on the size of their populations and their distance from each other.

Hierarchical Diffusion A type of diffusion in which something is transmitted between places because of a physical or cultural community between those places.

Human Geography The study of the spatial variation in the patterns and processes related to human activity.

International Date Line The line of longitude that marks where each new day begins, centered on the 180th meridian.

Intervening Opportunity If one place has a demand for some good or service and two places have a supply of equal price and quality, the supplier closest 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 used because transportation costs usually decrease with proximity.

Isoline A map line that connects points of equal or very similar values.

Large Scale A 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.

Latitude The angular distance north or south of the equator, defined by lines of latitude or parallels.

Law of Retail Gravitation A law stating that people will be drawn to larger cities to conduct their business since larger cities have a wider influence in the surrounding hinterlands.

Location Chart On a map, a chart or graph that gives specific statistical information about a particular political unit or jurisdiction.

Longitude The angular distance east or west of the prime meridian, defined by lines of longitude, or meridians.

Map Projection A mathematical method that involves transferring a sphere's surface onto a flat surface. This term can also be used to describe the type of map that results from the process of projecting. All map projections have distortions in area, direction, distance, and shape.

Map Scale The ratio between the size of an area on a map and the actual size of that same area on Earth's surface.

Mercator Projection A true conformal cylindrical map projection, the Mercator projection is particularly useful for navigation since it maintains accurate direction. Mercator projections are famous for their distortion in area that makes landmasses at the poles appear oversized.

Meridian A line of longitude that runs north-south. All lines of longitude are equal in length and intersect at the poles.

Natural Landscape The physical landscape or environment that has not been affected by human activity.

Nature-Society Also called nature-society geography- the study of the interactions between societies and the natural environments in which they live.

Parallel An east-west line of latitude that runs parallel to the equator and that marks distance north or south of the equator.

W. D. Pattison Geographer who claimed that geograpy drew from four distinct traditions: the earth-science tradition, the culture-environment tradition, the locational tradition, and the area-analysis tradition.

Perceptual Region Highly individualized definition of regions based on perceived commonalities in culture and landscape.

Peters Projection An equal-area projection purposely centered on Africa in an attempt to treat all regions of Earth equally.

Physical Geography The realm of geography that studies the structures, processes, distributions, and changes through time of the natural phenomena of Earth's surface.

Preference Map A map that displays individual preferences for certain places.

Prime Meridian An imaginary line passing through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, that marks the 0° line of longitude.

Projection The system used to transfer locations from Earth’s surface to a flat map.

Proportional Symbols Map A thematic map in which the size of a chosen symbol—such as a circle or triangle—indicates the relative magnitude of some statistical value for a given geographic region.

Ptolemy Roman geographer-astronomer, author of Guide to Geography, which included maps containing a grid system of latitude and longitude.

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 Data associated with mathematical models and statistical techniques used to analyze spatial location and association.

Reference Map A map type that shows reference information for a particular place, making it useful for finding landmarks and for navigation.

Region A territory that encompasses many places that share similar physical and/or cultural attributes.

Regional Geography The study of geographic regions.

Relative Distance A measure of distance that includes the costs of overcoming the friction of absolute distance separating two places. Relative distance often describes the amount of social, cultural, or economic connectivity between two places.

Relative Location The position of a place relative to the places around it.

Relocation Diffusion The diffusion of ideas, innovations, behaviors, and so on from one place to another through migration.

Remote Sensing The observation and mathematical measurement of Earth’s surface using aircraft and satellites. The sensors include photographic images, thermal images, multispectral scanners, and radar images.

Resolution A map’s smallest discernable unit. If, for example, one object has to be one kilometer long in order to show up on a map, that map’s resolution is one kilometer.

Robinson Projection A projection that attempts to balance several possible projection errors. It does not maintain area, shape, distance, or direction completely accurately, but it minimizes errors in each.

Carl Sauer Geographer from the University of California at Berkeley who defined the concept of cultural landscape as the fundamental unit of geographical analysis. This landscape results from the interaction between humans and the physical environment. Sauer argued that virtually no landscape has escaped alteration by human activities.

Scale of Analysis This is the geographic unit at which one investigates various patterns or processes; e.g., county vs. state vs. globe.

Sense of Place Feelings evoked by people as a result of certain experiences and memories associated with a particular place.

Site The absolute location of a place, described by local relief, landforms, and other cultural or physical characteristics.

Situation The relative location of a place in relation to the physical and cultural characteristics of the surrounding area and the connections and interdependencies within that system; a place's spatial context.

Small Scale A map scale ratio in which the ratio of units on the map to units on Earth is quite small. Small-scale maps usually depict large areas.

Spatial Diffusion The ways in which phenomena, such as technological innovations, cultural trends, or even outbreaks of disease, travel over space.

Spatial Perspective An intellectual framework that looks at the particular locations of a specific phenomenon, how and why that phenomenon is where it is, and, finally, how it is spatially related to phenomena in other places.

Sustainability The concept of using Earth’s resources in such a way that they provide for people’s needs in the present without diminishing Earth’s ability to provide for future generations.

Thematic Layers Individual maps of specific features that are overlaid on one another in a Geographic Information System to understand and analyze a spatial relationship.

Thematic Map A type of map that displays one or more variables—such as population or income level—within a specific area.

Time-Space Convergence The idea that distance between some places is actually shrinking as technology enables more rapid communication and increased interaction among those places.

Topographic Maps 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.

Transferability The costs involved in moving goods from one place to another.

Visualization Use of sophisticated software to create dynamic computer maps, some of which are three dimensional or interactive.