| Term | Definition |
| Abiotic | Composed of nonliving or inorganic
matter. |
| Acculturation | The process of changes in
culture that result from the meeting of two groups,
each of which retains distinct culture features. |
| Assimilation | The process by which a group’s
cultural features are altered to resemble those of
another more dominant group. |
| Atmosphere | The thin layer of gases
surrounding Earth. |
| Behavioral geography | The study of the
psychological basis for individual human actions
in space. |
| Biosphere | All living organisms on Earth, includ-
ing plants and animals, as well as microorganisms. |
| Biotic | Composed of living organisms. |
| Cartography | The science of making maps. |
| Citizen Science | Scientific research by amateur
scientists. |
| Climate | The long-term average weather con-
dition at aparticular location. |
| Concentration | The spread of something
over a given area. |
| Connection | The relationships among people
and objects across the barrier of space. |
| Conservation | The sustainable management
of a natural resource. |
| Contagious diffusion | The rapid, wide-
spread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout
a population. |
| Cultural ecology | A geographic approach
that emphasizes human–environment relation-
ships. |
| Cultural landscape | An approach to geog-
raphy that emphasizes the relationships among
social and physical phenomena in a particular
study area. |
| Culture | The body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute
a group’s distinct tradition. |
| Density | The frequency with which some-
thing exists within a given unit of area. |
| Diffusion | The process of spread of a feature
or trend from one place to another over time. |
| Distance decay | The diminished importance
and eventual disappearance of a phenomenon
with increasing distance from its origin. |
| Distribution | The arrangement of something
across Earth’s surface. |
| Ecology | The scientific study of ecosystems. |
| Ecosystem | A group of living organisms and
the abiotic spheres with which they interact. |
| Environmental determinism | 19 & 20 century approach to the study of geography which argued that the general laws sought by human geographers could
be found in the physical sciences.Geography was
therefore the study of how the physical environment caused human activities. |
| Expansion diffusion | The spread of a feature
or trend among people from one area to another
in an additive process. |
| Formal region (or uniform region) | An area in which everyone shares in common one or
more distinctive characteristics. |
| Functional region (or nodal region) | An area organized around a node or focal point. |
| Geographic information science (GIScience) | The development and analysis of data about
Earth acquired through satellite and other electronic information technologies. |
| Geographic information system (GIS) | A computer system that stores, organizes, analyzes,
and displays geographic data. |
| Geotagging | Identification and storage of a
piece of information by its precise latitude and longitude coordinates. |
| Global Positioning System (GPS) | A system that determines the precise position of something
on Earth through a series of satellites, tracking
stations, and receivers. |
| Globalization | Actions or processes that
involve the entire world and result in making
something worldwide in scope. |
| Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) | The time in
the zone encompassing the prime meridian, or
0° longitude. |
| Hearth | The region from which innovative
ideas originate. |
| Hierarchical diffusion | The spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of
authority or power to other persons or places. |
| Humanistic geography | The study of different ways that individuals form ideas about place and give those places symbolic meanings. |
| Hydrosphere | All of the water on and near
Earth’s surface. |
| International Date Line | An arc that for the most part follows 180 ° longitude, When the International Date Line is crossed heading east (toward America), the clock moves back 24 hours, or one entire day. When it is crossed heading west (Asia), the calendar moves ahead one day. |
| Latitude | The numbering system used to
indicate the location of parallels drawn on a globe
and measuring distance north and south of the
equator (0°). |
| Lithosphere | Earth’s crust and a portion of
upper mantle directly below the crust. |
| Location | The position of anything on Earth’s surface. |
| Longitude | The numbering system used to indicate the location of meridians drawn on a globe and measuring distance east and west of the
prime meridian (0°). |
| Map | A two-dimensional, or flat, representation
of Earth’s surface or a portion of it. |
| Map scale | The relationship between the size of an object on a map and the size of the actual feature on Earth’s surface. |
| Mashup | A map that overlays data from one source on top of a map provided by a mapping service. |
| Mental map | A representation of a portion of Earth’s surface based on what an individual knows about a place that contains personal im-
pressions of what is in the place and where the place is located. |
| Meridian | An arc drawn on a map between the North and South poles. |
| Network | A chain of communication that connects places. |
| Nonrenewable resource | Something produced in nature more slowly than it is consumed
by humans. |
| Parallel | A circle drawn around the globe parallel to the equator and at right angles to the meridians. |
| Participatory GIS (PGIS) | Community-based mapping, representing local knowledge and information. |
| Pattern | The geometric or regular arrangement of something in a particular area |
| Place | A specific point on Earth, distinguished
by a particular characteristic. |
| Polder | Land that the Dutch have created by
draining water from an area. |
| Possibilism | The theory that the physical environment may set limits on human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to the physical environment and choose a course of action from many alternatives. |
| Poststructuralist geography | The study of
space as the product of ideologies or value systems
of ruling elites. |
| Preservation | The maintenance of resources
in their present condition, with as little human
impact as possible. |
| Prime meridian | The meridian, designated
as 0° longitude, that passes through the Royal
Observatory at Greenwich, England. |
| Projection | A system used to transfer locations from Earth’s surface to a flat map. |
| Region | An area distinguished by a unique
combination of trends or features. |
| Relocation diffusion | The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another. |
| Remote sensing | The acquisition of data about
Earth’s surface from a satellite orbiting the planet
or from other long-distance methods. |
| Renewable resource | Something produced
in nature more rapidly than it is consumed by
humans. |
| Resource | A substance in the environment
that is useful to people, is economically and
technologically feasible to access, and is socially
acceptable to use. |
| Scale | Generally, the relationship between the
portion of Earth being studied and Earth as a
whole. |
| Site | The physical character of a place. |
| Situation | The location of a place relative to
another place. |
| Space | The physical gap or interval between two
objects. |
| Space–time compression | The reduction in
the time it takes to diffuse something to a distant
place as a result of improved communications
and transportation systems. |
| Spatial association | The relationship be-
tween the distribution of one feature and the
distribution of another feature. |
| Stimulus diffusion | The spread of an underlying principle even though a specific characteristic is rejected. |
| Sustainability | The use of Earth’s renewable
and nonrenewable natural resources in ways that
do not constrain resource use in the future. |
| Syncretism | The combining of elements of
two groups into a new cultural feature. |
| Toponym | The name given to a portion of
Earth’s surface. |
| Transnational corporation | A company
that conducts research, operates factories, and
sells products in many countries, not just where
its headquarters or shareholders are located. |
| Uneven development | The increasing gap in economic conditions between core and peripheral regions as a result of the globalization of the economy. |
| Vernacular region (or perceptual region) | An area that people believe exists as
part of their cultural identity. |
| Volunteered geographic information (VGI) | Creation and dissemination of geographic
data contributed voluntarily and for
free by individuals. |
