| Term |
Definition |
| Absolute Distance | The distance that can be measured with a standard unit of length such as a mile or kilometer |
| Absolute location | The exact position of an object or place, measured within some other place |
| Accessibility | The relative ease with which a destination may be reached from some other place |
| Azimuthal Projection | A map projection in which the plane is the most develop-able surface |
| Breaking Point | The outer edge of a city's sphere of influence, used in the law of retail gravitation to describe the area of a city's hinterlands that depends on the city for it's retail supply |
| Cartogram | A type of thematic map that transforms such space such that the political unit with the greatest value for some type of data is represented by the largest relative area |
| Choropleth Map | A thematic map that uses tones or colors to represent spatial data as average values per unit area |
| Cognitive Map | An image o a portion of the earth's surface that an individual creates in his or her mind. Cognitive maps can include knowledge of actual locations and relationships between locations as well as personal perceptions and preferences of particular places |
| Complementarity | The actual or potential relationship between two places usually referring t economic interactions |
| Connectivity | The degree of economic, social, cultural r political connection between two places. |
| Contagious Diffusion | the spread of a disease, 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 the earth's surface. |
| Distance decay Effect | The decrease in interaction between two phenomenon 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. |
| Expansion Diffusion | The spread of ideas, innovations, fashion or other phenomenon to surrounding areas through contact and exchange |
| 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 no longer have any meaning |
| Geoid | The actual shape of the earth which is round and oblate, or slightly squashed; the earths circumference is longer around the equator then it is around the meridians, from north south circumference |
| Gravity Model | A mathematical formula that describes the level of interaction between two places based on the size of their populations and their distance form each other |
| Hazards | Anything in the landscape, real or perceived, that is potentially threatening. Hazards are usually avoided in spatial behavior |
| Hierarchical Diffusion | a form of diffusion in which an idea or innovation spreads by passing first among the most connected places or peoples. An Urban geography is usually involved encouraraging leapfrogging (often through media) of innovations over wide areas, with geographi |
| International Date Line | The line of longitude that marks where each new day begins entered on the 180th meridian |
| Intervening Opportunities | The idea that one place has a demand for some god or service and two places have a supply of equal price and quantity, then the closer of the two suppliers to the buyer will represent an intervening opportunity, thereby blocking the third form being able |
| Isoline | 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 a higher resolution and cover much smaller regions than small scale maps. |
| Environmental Determinism
(Environmentalism) | The view that the natural environment has a controlling influence over various aspects of human life including cultural development. |
| Law of retail gravitation | Law that states that people will be drawn to larger cities to conduct their business because larger cities have a wider influence on the hinterlands that surround them. |
| Location charts | On a map, a chart or graph that gives specific statistical information of a particular political nit 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 the earth's sphere onto a flat surface. The term can also be used to describe the type of map that results from the process of projecting. All map projections have distortions in either area, direction, d |
| Mercator projection | A true conformal cylindrical map projection particularly good for navigation because it maintains accurate direction. |
| Meridian | A line of longitude that runs north-south. All lines of longitude are equal in length and intersect at the poles |
| Model | A simplified abstraction of reality, structured to clarify casual relationships and to help geographers explain patterms , make decisions and predict future behaviors |
| Preference Map | A map that displays individual preferences for certain places. |
| Prime meridian | An imaginary line passing through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, England which marks 0 degree of longitude |
| Proportional Symbols map | A thematic map in which the size of a chosen symbol such as a circle or a triangle indicates the relative magnitude of some statistical value for a given geographic region. |
| Reference Map | A map type that shows reference information for a particular place making it useful for finding landmarks and for navigating. |
| Relative Distance | A measure of distance that includes the costs of overcoming the friction of absolute distance separating two places. Often relative distance 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 the like form one place to another through migration |
| Resolution | A maps smallest discernible unit. If an object has to be one kilometer long in order to show up on a map then the maps resolution is said to be one kilometer. |
| Robinson Projection | Projection that attempts ti balance several possible projection errors. It does not maintain completely accurate area, shape, distance or direction but minimizes errors in each. |
| Scale | The ratio between the size of an area on a map and the actual size of the same area on the earth's surface. |
| 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 spacial context |
| Small Scale | Map scale ratio in which the ratio of units on the map to the units on the earth is quite small. Small scale maps usually depict large areas. |
| Spacial Diffusion | Spacial diffusion refers to the ways in which phenomenon such as tech innovations, cultural trends or even outbreaks of disease, travel over space |
| Thematic Maps | 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 between those places |
| Topographic maps | Maps that use isolines to represent constant elevations. If you took a topographic map out into a field and walked exactly along the path of an isoline you would always stay at the same elevation |
| Topological Space | The amount of connectivity between places regardless of the absolute distance separating them |
| 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 3-D |
| Cultural Landscape | The forms & artifacts sequentially imprinted on the physical landscape by human occupants; the physical landscape is modified into a cultural landscape forming an interacting unity between the two. |
| Arithmetic density | The population of a region expressed as a average per unit area.( population divided by number of square miles |
| Physiologic Density | The number of people per unit area of arable land |
| Demographic transition model | changes in populaiton growth in industrializing countries; high birth and death rates followed by plunging death ratesresult-huge population gain followed by convergence of birth and death rates at low level |
| Epidemiological Transition Model | ? |
| Gravity Model | ? |
| Von Thunene Model | Explains the location of ag activities in a commercial, profit making economy. Spatial competition allocates farming activities into rings around central mkt city with profit earning capability the determining force in how far crops locate from mkt. |
| Weber Model | ? |
| Rostow -Stages of Growth | ? |
| Burgess- Concentric Circle | Model of American City:5 land use rings around center city |
| Multiple Nuclei | mid 20th century American city: Several land use zones arranged around nuclear growth points |
| Cristaller-Central Place Theory | Model for how and where central places in urban heirarchy would be functionally and spatially distributed with respect to one another. |
