click below
click below
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Chapter 1
North America
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Borderland | It’s a term for a linear zone that parallels a political boundary. The most dynamic of these areas are marked by significant cultural and economic interaction across the boundary that separated them. |
Transition Zone | An area of spatial change where the peripheries of two adjacent realms or regions join. Cultures blend when they meet; is not a sharp boundary. |
Physiographic Region | A region that prevails substantial natural-landscape homogeneity. They are expressed by a certain degree of uniformity in surface of relief, climate, vegetation, and soils. |
Continentality | A climate effect that results from a continental interior being insulated from oceanic influences. Inland climate extremes occur due to continentality. |
Rain Shadow Effect | The relative dryness in an areas downwind of mountain ranges resulting from orographic precipitation, wherein moist air masses are forced to deposit most of their water content as they cross the highlands |
Federations | It’s shared power between political divisions within the government. |
Aquifer | An underground reservoir of water contained within a porous; water-bearing rock layer. |
Fossil Fuel | The energy resources of coal, natural gas, and oil which were formed by the geologic compression and transformation of tiny plant and animal organisms. |
Urban System | A hierarchical network or grouping of urban areas within a finite geographic area, such as a country. |
American Manufacturing Belt | North America’s near-rectangular core area, its corners are Boston, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Baltimore |
Distribution Center | A centralized focus of economic activity specializing in the distribution of goods, situated as a major hub on its regional transportation network. |
Intermodal Connections | Facilities and activities related to the transfer of goods in transit from one transportation mode to another |
Outer City | It’s the non-central-city portion of the American metropolis; it’s no longer “sub” to the “urb”, this outer ring was transformed into a full-fledged city during the late twentieth century. |
Deindustrialization | The process in which the industrial activity in a country or region is removed or reduced because of a major economic or social change |
Central Business District (CBD) | It’s the downtown heart of a central city; marked by high land values, a concentration of business and commerce, and the clustering of the tallest buildings |
Information Economy | It’s the new, increasingly dominant, postindustrial economy that is maturing in the most highly advanced countries of North America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim. |
GPS (Global Positioning System) | The orbiting-satellite-based navigation system that provides locational and time information, anywhere on or near the Earth’s surface where there is an obstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites |
Gentrification | The upgrading of an older residential area through private reinvestment, usually in the downtown area of a central city. Usually involves people who cannot afford the heightened costs of living. |
Neighborhood Effect | The impact of one’s neighborhood on an individual’s outlook, aspirations, socialization, and life chances. |
Residential Geography | The spatial distribution of a residential population. The term is most often used by urban geographers to describe the clustering of various social groups into the neighborhoods that form the residential fabric of cities and suburbs. |
Sun Belt | A region of the United States generally considered to stretch across the Southeast and Southwest. Is anchored by the mega-states of California, Texas, and Florida. It attracts large numbers of relocating people and activities since the 1960s |
Migration | A change in residence that is intended to be permanent |
Electoral Geography | The spatial distribution of political preferences as expressed in voting behavior for political parties and/or candidates. |
Melting Pot | When blending cultures are being contested by increasing ethnic and cultural complexity |
First Nations | Name given Canada’s indigenous peoples of American descent, whose U.S. counterparts are called Native Americans |
World-City | A large city with particularly significant international linkages that also has a high ranking in the global urban system. Includes London, New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore, and Paris. |
Technopole | A planned techno-industrial complex that innovates, promotes, and manufactures the products of the postindustrial information economy. |
Pacific Rim | A far-flung group of countries and components of countries that face the Pacific Ocean; they exhibit relatively high levels of economic development, industrialization, and urbanization; their imports and exports mainly move across Pacific waters |
Tar Sands | The main source of oil from non-liquid petroleum reserves. The oil is mixed with sand and requires massive open-pit mining as well as a costly, complicated process to extract it |
Boreal Forest | The subarctic, mostly coniferous snowforest that blankets Canada south of the tundra that lines the Arctic shore; it’s known as the taiga in Russia |