click below
click below
Normal Size Small Size show me how
1- Thinking Geograph
Chapter 1 - Thinking Geographically
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Abiotic | A system composed of nonliving or inorganic matter. |
Atmosphere | The thin layer of gases surrounding Earth. |
Biosphere | All living organisms on Earth. |
Biotic | The system composed of living organisms. |
Cartography | The science of making maps. |
Concentration | The spread of something over a given area. |
Connection | Relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space. |
Contagious diffusion | The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population. |
Cultural ecology | The geographic study of human-environment relationships. |
Cultural landscape | Fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group. |
Density | The frequency with which something 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 diminishing in 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 | An approach to the study of geography that 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 | An area in which everyone shares in one or more distinctive characteristics. |
Functional region | An area organized around a node or focal point. |
Geographic grid | A system of imaginary arcs drawn in a grid pattern on Earth's surface. |
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. |
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 environmen |