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Chapter 1 vocab
Geography vocabulary
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Geography | The spatial study of people, place, space, and environment. |
Human geography | One of the two major divisions of geography; the spatial analysis of human phenomena, including population, cultures, activities, and landscapes. |
Globalization | Processes heightening interactions, increasing interdependence, and deepening relations across country borders. |
Fieldwork | Observations researchers make of physical and cultural landscapes with a focus on seeing similarities and differences. |
Patterns | Description of the spatial distribution of a human or physical phenomenon (e.g., scattered or concentrated). |
Physical geography | One of the two major divisions of geography; the spatial analysis of physical phenomena, including climate, environmental hazards, weather systems, animals, and topography. |
Spatial distribution | Physical locations of geographic phenomena, usually shown on a map. |
Pandemic | An outbreak of a disease that spreads worldwide. |
Epidemic | Widespread, rapid diffusion of disease among a people in a particular location or region at a particular time. |
Spacial perspective | Looking at where things occur, why they occur where they do, and how places are interconnected. |
Geographic concepts | Mental categories used to organize and analyze the world spatially. |
Location | Position on Earth, including both absolute location and relative location (one of the five themes of geography). |
Absolute location | Precise location of a place, usually defined by latitude and longitude. |
Relative location | The location of a place or attribute in reference to another place or attribute. |
Location theory | Understanding the distribution of cities, industries, services, or consumers with the goal of explaining why places are chosen as sites of production or consumption. |
Environmental determinism | Set of theories that use environmental differences to explain everything from intelligence to wealth. |
Hearths | Area or place where an idea, innovation, or technology originates. |
Possibilism | Theory in geography that humans, not environment, shape culture. |
Carrying capacity | The idea that land can hold a measurable amount of plant and animal life. |
Cultural ecology | Study of the historical interaction between humans and environment in a place, including ways humans have modified and adapted to environment. |
Political ecology | An approach to studying human-environment interactions in the context of political, economic, and historical conditions operating at multiple scales. |
Region | Area of Earth identified as sharing a formal, functional, or perceptual commonality that makes it different from regions around it |
Formal region | Area of land with common cultural or physical traits. |
Cultural traits | A learned belief, norm, or value passed down through generations in a culture. |
Functional region | Area of land defined as sharing a common purpose in society. |
Nodes | Connection point in a network, where goods and ideas flow in, out, and through the network. |
Perceptual regions | Area of land that an individual perceives as being similar. |
Vernacular region | a perceptual region that has such strong significance to the people in the perceptual region that it becomes the lens through which they see their world and a way people identify themselves. |
Place | Uniqueness of a location |
Sense of place | Infusing a place with meaning as a result of experiences in a place. |
Perception of places | How a place is envisioned. |
Movement | Mobility of people, goods, and services across Earth |
Diffusion | Spread of an idea, innovation, or technology from its hearth to other people and places. |
Spatial interaction | Degree of connectedness or contact among people or places. |
Distances | Difficulty in time and cost that usually comes with increasing distance. |
Accessibility | Ease of flow between two places. |
Connectivity | Position of a place or area relative to others in a network. |
Time-distance decay | The likelihood of a trait or innovation diffusing decreases the farther away in time or distance it moves from the origin |
Expansion diffusion | The spread of an idea or innovation from its hearth across space without the aid of people moving. |
Contagious diffusion | Spread of an idea or innovation from one person or place to another person or place based on proximity. Specific type of expansion diffusion. |
Hierarchical diffusion | Spread of an idea or innovation from one person or place to another person or place based on a hierarchy of connectedness. |
Stimulus diffusion | A process of diffusion where two cultural traits blend to create a distinct trait. |
Relocation diffusion | Spread of an idea or innovation from its hearth by the act of people moving and taking the idea or innovation with them. |
Cultural landscape | The visible human imprint on the landscape. |
Sequent occupance | imprints left on the cultural landscape by a series of successive societies. Each society contributed to the cumulative cultural landscape. |
Scale | Geographical scope (local, national, or global) in which we analyze and understand a phenomenon. |
Rescale | Changing the geographical scope at which a problem is addressed by engaging decision makers and gatekeepers at another scale. |
Context | The physical and human geographies creating the place, environment, and space in which events occur and people act. |
cartography | The art and science of making maps. |
Reference maps | Maps showing absolute location of places and geographic features. |
Thematic maps | A map that tells a story, typically showing the degree of some attribute or the movement of a geographic phenomenon using map symbols. |
Global Positioning System | Satellite-based system for determining the absolute location of places or geographic features. |
Mental maps | Maps of an area made from memory or experience by individuals or groups (also known as cognitive maps). |
Activity spaces | Places within the rounds of daily activity. |
Terra incognita | Areas on maps that are not well defined because they are off limits or unknown to the map maker. |
Remote sensing | A method of collecting data or information through the use of instruments (e.g., satellites) that are physically distant from the area of study. |
Geographic information systems | A system of computer hardware and software designed to show, analyze, and represent geographic data (data that have locations). |
Culture | Group of belief systems, norms, and values practiced by a people. |
Culture complex | A group of interrelated cultural traits, such as prevailing dress codes and cooking and eating utensils. |
Independent invention | When an innovation is realized in more than one hearth independent of each other. |