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ch. 9&10 vocabulary
world geography
Term | Definition |
---|---|
conquistador | name for the spanish explorers who claimed land in the americas for spain. |
cultural convergence | the contact and interaction of one culture with another. |
caudillo | a latin american military dictator. |
pampas | a grasslands regions in Argentina and uruguay. |
cay | a small low island or coral reef. |
coral | the rocklike skeletons of tiny sea animals. |
tropical storm | a storm with winds of at least 39 miles per hour. |
hurricane | a destructive tropical storm that forms over the Atlantic ocean, usually in late summer and early fall, with winds of at least 74 miles per hour |
El nino | a warm ocean current off south america's northwestern coast that influences global weather patterns |
canopy | the uppermost layer of a forest where tree branches meet. |
mestizo | a person of mixed European and native american heritage |
mulatto | a person of mixed African and other ancestry |
market economy | an economic system in which decisions about production, price, and other economic factors are determined by the law of supply and demand. |
GDP per capita | the total value of goods and services produced within a county in a year, including the domestic output of foreign firms and excluding the output of domestic firms in foreign countries |
command economy | an economic system that is controlled by a single central government. |
traditional economy | an economic system in which families produce goods and services for their own use, with little surplus and exchange of goods; also known as a subsistence economy |
plateau | an area of high, flat land |
peninsula | a strip of land that juts out into an ocean |
irrigation | the watering of farmland with water drawn from reservoirs or rivers |
sinkhole | a hole formed when limestone is dissolved, causing the land above to collapse. |
hacienda | a large Spanish-owned estate in the Americas, often run as a farm or a cattle ranch. |
land reistricution | a policy by which land is taken from those who own large amounts and redistributed those who have little or none. |
ejido | farmland owned collectively by members of a rural community. |
subsistence farming | farming that provides only enough for the needs of the needs of a family or a village |
latifundio | a large commercial farm owned by a private individual or a farming company. |
cash crop | a farm crop grown for sale and profit |
migrant worker | a worker who travels from place to place, working where extra help is needed to cultivate or harvest crops. |
NAFTA | North American Free Trade Agreement, which phased out trade barriers among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. |
maquiladora | a factory in Mexico, along the United States border, that assembles goods for export. |