| Term | definition |
| Anthropegenic | Human induced changes on the natural environment |
| Cartography | Theory and practice of making visual representations of the earths surface( mapmaking) |
| Cultural ecology | The study of the interactions between societies and the natural environments they live in |
| cultural landscape | The human-modified natural landscape specifically containing the imprint of a particular culture or society |
| Earth system sience | Systematic approach to physical geography that looks at the interaction between the earths physical systems and the procceses on a global scale |
| Environmental Geography | The intersection between human and physical geography, which explores the spatial impacts humans have on the physical environment and vice versa |
| Eratsthenes | The head librarian at Alexandria during the third century B.C.; he was one of the first cartographers. Performed a remarkably accurate computation of the earths cicumfrence. Also credited with coining the term "geography." |
| Fertile crescent | Name given to crescent -shaped are of fertile land stretching from the lower nile valley, along the east mediterranean coast, and into Syria and present day Iraq where agriculture and early civilization first began about 8000B.C. |
| Geographical Information Systems(GIS) | A set of computer tools used to capture, store, transform, analyze, and display geographic data |
| Global Positioning System (GPS) | Aset of sattelites used to help determione location anywhere on the earths surface with a portable electronic device |
| Idiographic | pertaining to the unique facts or characteristics of a particular place |
| George Perkins Marsh | Inventor , diplomat, politician, and scholar. Provided the first description of the extent to which natural systems had been impacted by human actions. |
| Natural landscape | the physical landscape or environment that has not been affected by human activities |
| Nomethetic | concepts or rules that can be applied universally |
| W.D. Pattison | He claimed that geography drew from four distinct traditions: the earth science tradition, the culture-environment tradition, the locational tradition, and the area analysis tradition. |
| Physical geography | the realm of geography that studies the structures, processes, distributions, and change through time of the natural pheno,ena of the earths surface |
| Ptolemy | Roman geographer-astronomer and author of guide to geography which included maps containing a grid system of lattitude and longitude |
| Qualitative data | Data associated with a more humanistic approach to geography, often collected through intervewis, empirical observations, or the interpretation of texts, artwork, old maps, and other archives |
| Quantitative data | Data associated with mathematical models and statistical techniques |
| Region | Aterritory that encompasses many places that share similar attributes in comparison of the attributes of places elsewhere |
| Regional geography | the study of geographic regions |
| Remote sensing | Observation and mathematical measurement of the earths surface using aircraft and satellites. the sensors include both photographic images, thermal images, multispectral scanners, and radar images |
| 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 interaction between humans and the physical environment. |
| Sense of Place | Feelings evoked by people as a reslut of certain experiences and memories associated with a particular place |
| Spatial perspective | An intellectual framework that looks at the particular locations of specific phenomena, how and why that phenomena is where it is, and finaly how it is spatialy related to phenomena in other places |
| Sustainability | The concept of using the earths resources in such a way that they provide for peoples needs in the present without diminishing the earths ability to provide for future generations |
| Systematic geography | the study of the earths integrated systemes as a whole instead of focusing on a sepcific phenomena in a specific place |
| Thematic layers | individual maps of specific features that are overlaid on one another in a gis to understand and analyze a spatial relationship |