| Question |
Answer |
| What is Human Geography? | The field of study that focuses on how people make places, how they organize space and society, how they interact with each other in places and across space, and how they make sense of others and themselves in their locality, region, and world. |
| What are Geographic Questions? | Questions that deal with the study of human phenomena on Earth. The "why of where" and the "so what" factors. Looking at the spatial distribution of phenomenon raising questions about how that arrangement came to be and what keeps that pattern going... |
| Why do geographers use maps, and what do maps tell us? | Maps are used as geographic tools (cartography). Maps are used to wage war, make political propaganda, solve medical problems, locate shopping centers, warn of natural hazards, show political boundaries...etc. |
| What are the 5 themes of Geography? | location, human-environment, region, place, movement |
| Why are geographers concerns with scale and connectedness? | Scale - local, regional, national, global. Geographers can make different observations at different scales, they can study single phenomenon across different scales to see what happens and how things are connected. |
| What is environmental determinism? What is possibilism? | Environmental determinism is belief that behavior (individual & collective) is affected, controlled, or determined by physical environment people live in. (Aristotle Anc.Greece). Possibilism is that belief of the natural environment only limits choices. |
| What is contagious diffusion? What is Hierarchical diffusion? | Contagious diffusion spreads everywhere and affects nearly all adjacent individuals. (ex. a sneeze/cold) Hierarchical diffusion spreads through levels or steps. (ex. Birkenstock sandals, the Corset Dress//fasion.) |
| Globalization | process that increases interaction, deepens relationship, and heightens interdependence w/o through to country borders. |
| physical geography | study of physical phenomena on Earth |
| human geography | study of human phenomena on Earth (language, religion, identity, landform, climate, environmental change.) |
| spatial | arrangement of places and phenomena, how they are laid out, organized, & arranged on Earth, & how they appear on the landscape. |
| spatial distribution | how something is laid out across space. |
| pattern | design of spatial distribution (how something is laid out across space.) |
| medical geography | mapping the distribution of a disease in order to find its cause. (Ex. Cholera Map in Soho London, 1854, Dr. John Snow) |
| pandemic | a world wide outbreak of a disease. |
| epidemic | a regional outbreak of a disease |
| spatial perspective | looking at how things are laid out. Observing variations in geographic phenomena across space. |
| 5 Themes of Geography | location, human-environment, region, place, movement |
| location | the geographic position of people and things on the earth's surface and how they affect what happens and why. |
| human-environment | relationship among phenomena in individual places (including the relationship between humans and the physical world). |
| region | features that tend to be concentrated in particular areas (ex. U.S.: New England, Mid-West, East Coast, South, North...) |
| place | uniqueness of a location. |
| movement | mobility of people, goods, and ideas across the surface of the planet. |
| sense of place | infusing a place with meaing and emotion, but remembering important events that occurred in a place, or by labeling a place with a certain character. (Ex. feeling of "home".) |
| perceptions of places | developed ideas about places people have never been through books, movies, stories, and pictures. (NYC, Los Angeles, Paris, Alabama...) |
| spatial interaction | how things are laid how and how the people in those different places exchange ideas, goods, diseases,... or do not exchange ideas, goods, diseases... |
| distances | the measurement of physical spaces between to points or places. |
| accessibility | the ability for something to be gotten/achieved. the degress to which it is easily possible to get to a certain location from other locations. This varies and can be measured. |
| connectivity | how things come together or are linked between one location and another in a transport network. |
| landscape | a core element of geography that refers to the material character of a place, complexity of natural features, human structures, and other tangible objects that give a place a particular form. |
| cultural landscape | the visible imprint of human activity on the landscape. (concept-- Carl Sauer, 1927, UC Berkley.) |
| sequent occupance | Refers to the idea that as occupiers arrive they bring their own technoloy and cultural traditions & transform the landscape, but they can also be influenced by what they find when they arrive & leave some of it there. (concept- Derwent Whittlesey, 1929) |
| Cartography | the study of maps/ map making. |
| reference maps | show locations of palces and geographic features. |
| thematic maps | tell storeis, usually showing the degree of some attribute or the movement of a geographic phenomenon. |
| absolute location | latitude/longitude, coordinates, an exact location. |
| relative location | describes where a place is in relation to another place. |
| global positioning system (GPS) | allows us to locate things on the surgace of the earth with extraordinary accuracy; researchers can collect data quickly and easily in the field. |
| geocaching | A hunt for a cache whose coordinates are placed on the Internet by other geocachers. |
| mental maps | the maps we carry in our minds of places we have been and places we have merely heard of. (ex. a mental map of your house, park, school, church, publix, etc.) |
| activity spaces | those places we travel to routinely in our rounds of daily activity (ex. Ms.O's classroom, the gym, cafeteria, your kitchen, the bus/ bus stop, clock tower...) |
| terra incognita | unknown lands that are off-limits. |
| generalize/ generalized maps | not entirely specific; the map of world precipitation uses the mean annual precipitation received around the world. A map that does not use specific information. |
| remote sensing | geographers moniter the Erath's surgace form a distance to understand the scope and rate of environemtnal change over short and long periods of time by satellites and aircraft (airplanes, balloons.) |
| Geographic information systems (GIS) | geographers use this advancement in computer technology and data storage to compare a variety of spatial data by combining layers of spatial data in a computerized environment, creating maps in which patterns and processes are superimposed. |
| formal region | a physical criteria of an area and can also be defined by cultural traits (the people share one or more cultural traits -- food, belief systems, dress, dances, hair styles, languages etc.) |
| functional region | the product of interactions of movement of various kinds. (Ex. a city, has a surrounding region within which workers commute, either ot the downtown area to to subsidiary centers such as office parks and shopping malls -- that entire urban area.) |
| perceptual regions | intellectual constructs designed to help us understand the nature and distribution of phenomena in human geography. (Zelinsky's article "North America's Vernacular Regions") |
| culture | Refers to music, literature, an the arts of a society, and all other features of its way of life: dress, routine living habits, food, architecture, education, government, law, even agricultural practices. (closely associated with Anthropology.) |
| cultural trait | a single attribute or characteristic of a culture. (ex. wearing a turban) |
| culture complex | more than one culture may exhibit a culture trait, but each will consiste of a discrete combination of traits... (ex. herding cattle -- but it's used in different ways by different cultures. Maasai, E. Africa) |
| cultural hearth | an area where cultural traits develop (originate) and from which the cultural traits diffuse. |
| independent invention | the term for a trait with many hearths that developed independent of each other. |
| culture diffusion | Process where something spreads -- an idea or innovation from its hearth (source) to other places. (Carl Sauer - Agricultural Origins and Dispersals; Haegerstrand, 1970 brought in time and distance to the equation.) |
| time-distance decay | both time and distance can cause something not to be adopted the longer it takes to reach its potential adopters. The farther a place is from the hearth or longer the idea takes to get there, the less likely it will be adopted. |
| cultural barriers | Some cultural traits are not adoptable in particular cultures because of prevailing attitudes or taboos... examples are alcohol, certain forms of meat, fish, and other foods, the use of contraceptives. |
| expansion diffusion | an idea that develops in a hearth and ramins strong there while also spreading outward. Moves without people physically moving to become "knowers" of the trait or innovation.(Ex. Islam -- Arabian Peninsula to Egypt and N. Africa, SW Asia, and W. Africa) |
| relocation diffusion | The opposite of expansion diffusion where the actual movemnt of individuals who have already adopted the idea or innovation carry it to a new, sometimes distant locale, where they proceed to disseminate it. Usually occurs through migration. |
| contagious diffusion | A type of expansion diffusion. A form of expansion diffusion in which nearly all adjacent individuals are affected. (a disease, a religion like Islam.) |
| hierarchical diffusion | Ex. a new fashion or genre of music may not spread throughout a contiguous populations -- often it's hierarchical. This diffusion is a pattern where the main channel of diffusion is some segment, level, or step of those who might adopt what is diffusing. |
| stimulous diffusion | (expan. diffuse) Some ideas to adopt are 2 vague, unattainable, or different yet these ideas have an impact & may indirectly promote local experimentation & eventual changes in ways of doing things. (ex. mass-production of food led to vegburgers in India) |
| environmental determinism | Environmental determinism is belief that behavior (individual & collective) is affected, controlled, or determined by physical environment people live in. (Aristotle Anc.Greece). |
| possibilism | Possibilism is that belief of the natural environment only limits choices available to a culture. |
| isotherms | lines connecting points of equal temperature values. Believed by Markham to be the key factor in the shifting centers of power in the Ancient World. (Markham, 1947, Climate and the Energy of Nations.) |
| cultural ecology | an area of inquiry concerned with culture as a system of adaptation to environment. |
| political ecology | an area of inquiry fundamentally concerned with the environmental consequences of dominant political-economic arrangements and understandings. |
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