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Chapter 1 vocab
58 vocabulary words
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Agricultural density | The ratio of the number of farmers to the total amount of land suitable for agriculture |
| Arithmetic density | The total number of people divided by the total land area |
| Base line | An east-west line designated under the Land ordinance of 1785 to facilitate the surveying and numbering of townships in the united states. |
| cartography | the science of making maps |
| concentration | the spread of some thing over a given area |
| connections | relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space |
| contagious diffusion | the rpaid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population |
| cultural ecology | geographic approach that emphasizes human environment relationships |
| cultural landscape | fashioning of a natural landscape by cultural group |
| culture | the body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group's distinct tradition |
| density | the frequency with which something exists within a given unit of area |
| diffusion | |
| distance decay | the diminishing in importance and eventual disappearance of a phenomenon with the increasing distance from its origin. |
| distribution | the arrangement of something across earth's surface |
| environmental determinism | A nineteenth- and early twentieth- century approach to the study of geography which argued that the general laws sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. |
| Expansion diffusion | the spread of a feature or trend among people from one area to another in a snowballing 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 information system | a computer system that stores, organizes, analyzes, and displays geographic data |
| global positioning system | 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 entire world and result in making something world wide in scope. |
| greenwich mean time | the time in in that zone encompassing the prime meridian, or 0 longitude |
| Hearth | the region from which innovative ideas originate |
| hierachical diffusion | the spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of authority or power to other persons or places |
| international date line | an arc that for the most part follows 180 longitude, although it deviates in several places to avoid dividing land areas. |
| Land ordinance of 1785 | a law that divided much of the united states into townships to facilitate the sale of the land to the equator. |
| latitude | the numbering system used to indicate the location of parallels drawn on a globe and measuring distance east and west of the prime meridian. |
| location | the position of anything on Earths surface |
| longitude | the numbering system used to indicate the location of meridians drawn on a globe and measuring distance east and west of the prime meridian |
| map | a two dimensional, or flat, representation of Earth's surface or a portion of it |
| Mental map | a representation of a portion of earth's surface based on what an individual knows about a place, containing personal impressions of what is in a place and where places are located. |
| meridian | an arc drawn on a map between the north and south poles |
| parallel | a circle drawn around the globe parallel to the equator and at right angles to the meridian |
| pattern | the geometric or regular arrangement of something in a study area |
| physiological density | the number of people per unit of area of arable land,, which is land suitable for agriculture |
| place | a specific point on earth distinguished by a particular character |
| polder | land created by a dutch by draining water from an area |
| possibilism | the theory that the physical may set limits on human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to the physical environment and choose a course of action from many alternatives. |
| prime meridian | the meridian, designated as 0 longitude, that passes through the royal observatory at Greenwich, England. |
| principal meridian | a north- south line designated in the land ordinance of 1785 to facilitate the surveying and numbering of townships in the united states. |
| projections | the system used to transfer locations from earth's surface to a flat map |
| region | an area distinguished by a unique combination of trends or features |
| regional studies | an approach to geography that emphasizes the relationships among social and physical phenomena in a particular study area |
| relocation diffusion | the spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another. |
| remote sensing | the acquisition of data about earth's surface from a satellite orbiting the planet or from other long-distance methods |
| resource | a substance in the environment that is useful to people, is economically and technically feasible to access, and is socially acceptable to use. |
| scale | Generally, the relationship between the portion of earth being studied and earth as a whole; specifically, the relationship between the size of an object on a map and the size of the actual feature on earths surface |
| section | a square mile on a side. The land ordiance of 1785 divided township in the united states into 36 sections |
| site | the physical character of a place |
| situation | the location of a place relative to another place |
| space | the physical gap or interval between two objects |
| space- time compression | the reduction in the time it takes to diffuse something to a distant place as a result of improved communications and transportation systems |
| stimulus diffusion | the spread of an underlying principle, even though a specific characteristic is rejected |
| toponym | the name given to a portion of earths surface |
| township | a square normally 6 miles on a side. |
| transnational corporation | a company that conducts research, operates factories, and sells products in many countries, not just where its headquarters or shareholders are located |
| uneven development | the increasing gap in economic conditions between core and peripheral regions as a result of the globalization of the economy |
| vernacular region | an area that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity |