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Chapter One Vocab
Question | Answer |
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Geography | The spatial study of people, place, space, and environment. |
Human geography | One of the two major divisions of geography; the spatial analysis of human phenomena, including population, cultures, activities, and landscapes. |
Globalization | Processes heightening interactions, increasing interdependence, and deepening relations across country borders. |
Fieldwork | Observations researchers make of physical and cultural landscapes with a focus on seeing similarities and differences. |
Patterns | Description of the spatial distribution of a human or physical phenomenon (e.g., scattered or concentrated). |
Physical geography | One of the two major divisions of geography; the spatial analysis of physical phenomena, including climate, environmental hazards, weather systems, animals, and topography. |
Spatial distribution | Physical locations of geographic phenomena, usually shown on a map. |
Pandemic | An outbreak of a disease that spreads worldwide. |
Epidemic | Widespread, rapid diffusion of disease among a people in a particular location or region at a particular time. |
Spatial perspective | Looking at where things occur, why they occur where they do, and how places are interconnected. |
Geographic concepts | Mental categories used to organize and analyze the world spatially. |
Location | Position on Earth, including both absolute location and relative location (one of the five themes of geography). |
Absolute location | Precise location of a place, usually defined by latitude and longitude. |
Relative location | The location of a place or attribute in reference to another place or attribute, |
Location theory | Understanding the distribution in cities, industries, services, or consumers with the goal of explaining why places are chose as sites of production or consumption. The von Thünen model is an example. |
Human-environment interactions | Reciprocal relationship between humans and environment (one of the five themes of geography). |
Environmental determinism | Set of theories that use environmental differences to explain everything from intelligence to wealth. |
Hearth | Area or place where an idea, innovation, or technology originates. |
Possibilism | Theory in geography that humans, not environment, shape culture. |
Carrying capacity | The idea that land can hold a measurable amount of plant and animal life. |
Cultural Ecology | Study of the historical interaction between humans and environment in a place, including ways humans have modified and adapted to environment. |
Political Ecology | An approach to studying human-environment interactions in the context of political, economic, and historical conditions operating at multiple scales. |
Region | Area of Earth identified as sharing a formal, functional, or perceptual commonality that makes it different from regions around it (one of the five themes of geography). |
Formal Region | Area of land with common cultural or physical traits. |
Cultural trait | A learned belief, norm, or value passed down through generations in a culture. |
Functional Region | Area of land defined as sharing a common purpose in society. |
Node | Connection point in a network, where goods and ideas flow in, out, and through the network. |
Perceptual/Vernacular Region | Area of land that an individual perceives as being similar; A perceptual region that has such strong significance to the people in the perceptual region that it becomes the lens through which they see their world and a way people identify themselves. |
Place | Uniqueness of a location (one of the five themes of geography). |
Sense of Place | Infusing a place with meaning as a result of experiences in a place. |
Perceptions of Place | How a place is envisioned |
Movement | Mobility of people, goods, and services across Earth (one of the five themes of geography). |
Diffusion | Spread of an idea, innovation, or technology from its hearth to other people and places. |
Spatial Interaction | Degrees of connectedness or contact among people or places. |
Distance | The measured physical space between places. |
Accessibility | Ease of flow between two places. |
Connectivity | Position of a place or area relative to others in a network. |
Expansion Diffusion | The spread of an idea or innovation from its hearth across space without the aid of people moving. |
Contagious Diffusion | Spread of an idea or innovation from one person or place to another person or place based on proximity. Specific type of expansion diffusion. |
Hierarchical Diffusion | Spread of an idea or innovation from one person or place to another person or place based on a hierarchy of connectedness. Specific type of expansion diffusion. |
Stimulus Diffusion | A process of diffusion where two cultural traits blend to create a distinct trait. |
Relocation Diffusion | Spread of an idea or innovation from its hearth by the act of people moving and taking the idea or innovation with them. |
Cultural landscape | The visible human imprint on the landscape. |
Sequent occupance | Imprints left on the cultural landscape by a series of successive societies. Each society contributed to the cumulative cultural landscape. |
Scale | Geographical scope (local, national, or global) in which we analyze and understand a phenomenon. |
Rescale | Changing the geographical scope at which a problem is addressed by engaging decision makers and gatekeepers at another scale. |
Context | The physical and human geographies creating the place, environment, and space in which events occur and people act. |
Cartography | The art and science of making maps. |
Reference maps | Maps showing absolute location of places and geographic features. |
Thematic maps | A map that tells a story, typically showing the degree of some attribute or the movement of a geographic phenomenon using map symbols. |
Global Positioning System (GPS) | Satellite-based system for determining the absolute location of places or geographic features. |
Mental maps | Maps of an area made from memory or experience by individuals or groups (also known as cognitive maps). |
Activity spaces | Places within the rounds of daily activity. |
Terra Incognita | Areas on maps that are not well defined because they are off limits or unknown to the map maker. |
Remote sensing | A method of collecting data or information through the use of instruments (e.g., satellites) that are physically distant from the area of study. |
Geographic Information System (GIS) | A system of computer hardware and software designed to show, analyze, and represent geographic data (data that have locations). |
Culture | Group of belief systems, norms, and values practiced by a people. |
Culture Complex | A group of interrelated cultural traits, such as prevailing dress codes and cooking and eating utensils. |