| Term | Definition |
| Cultural ecology | A geographic approach that emphasizes human–environment relationships. |
| International Date Line | An arc that for the most part follows 180° longitude. When the International Date Line is crossed heading east (toward America), the clock moves back a day. When it is crossed heading west (toward Asia), the
calendar moves ahead one day. |
| Site * | The physical character of a place. |
| Poststructuralist geography | The study of space as the product of ideologies or value systems of ruling elites. |
| Connection | The relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space. |
| Syncretism * | The combining of elements of two groups into a new cultural feature. |
| Remote sensing * | The acquisition of data about Earth’s surface from a satellite orbiting the planet or from other
long-distance methods. |
| Density * | The frequency with which something exists within a given unit of area. |
| Parallel | A circle drawn around the globe parallel to the equator and at right angles to the meridians. |
| Cultural landscape* | An approach to geography that emphasizes the relationships among social and physical phenomena
in a particular study area. |
| 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 (0°). |
| Complementarity | A measure of how well one country’s export profile matches another country’s import profile. |
| Formal region (or uniform region) * | An area in which everyone shares in common one or more distinctive characteristics. |
| Expansion diffusion * | The spread of a feature or trend among people from one area to another in an additive process. |
| Relative Location * | The position of one place or person in relation to another place or person. |
| Scale * | Generally, the relationship between the portion of Earth being studied and Earth as a whole. |
| Transnational corporation * | A company that conducts research, operates factories, and sells products in many countries, not just
where its headquarters or shareholders are located. |
| Cartography | The science of making maps |
| Prime meridian | The meridian, designated as 0° longitude, passes through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich,
England. |
| Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) | The time in the zone encompassing the prime meridian, or 0° longitude. |
| Ecosystem | A group of living organisms and the abiotic spheres with which they interact. |
| Toponym * | The name given to a portion of Earth’s surface. |
| Clustered | Position close together. Often used interchangeably with "concentration". |
| Participatory GIS (PGIS) | Community-based mapping, representing local knowledge and information. |
| Distribution | The arrangement of something across Earth’s surface. |
| Place * | A specific point on Earth, distinguished by a particular characteristic. |
| Network | A chain of communication that connects places. |
| Resource | A substance in the environment that is useful to people, is economically and technologically feasible
to access, and is socially acceptable to use. |
| Friction of distance* | The inhibiting effect of distance on the intensity and volume of forms of interaction. Note: time-space
compression decreases friction of distance. |
| Spatial association * | The relationship between the distribution of one feature and the distribution of another feature. |
| Geographic information system (GIS) * | A computer system that stores, organizes, analyzes, and displays geographic data. |
| Spatial interaction * | The connectivity of people, businesses, or other features across space. |
| Global Positioning System (GPS) | A system that determines the precise position of something on Earth through a series of satellites,
tracking stations, and receivers. |
| Abiotic | Composed of nonliving or inorganic matter. |
| Location * | The position of anything on Earth’s surface. |
| Conservation | The sustainable management of a natural resource. |
| Projection | A system used to transfer locations from Earth’s surface to a flat map. |
| Functional region (or nodal region) * | An area organized around a node or focal point. |
| Distance decay * | The diminished importance and eventual disappearance of a phenomenon with increasing distance
from its origin. |
| Concentration | The spread of something over a given area versus another area. |
| Volunteered geographic information (VGI) | Creation and dissemination of geographic data contributed voluntarily and for free by individuals. |
| Meridian | An arc drawn on a map between the North and South poles. |
| Possibilism * | The theory that the physical environment 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. |
| Thematic map * | A map that emphasizes the spatial patterns of geographic statistics or attributes, and sometimes the
relationship between them. |
| Soil depletion * | The erosion, salinization, or degrading of fertile soil. |
| 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. |
| Behavioral geography | The study of the psychological basis for individual human actions in space. |
| Absolute Location | A precise position on the Earth's surface |
| Preservation | The maintenance of resources in their present condition, with as little human impact as possible. |
| Renewable resource | Something produced in nature more rapidly than it is consumed by humans. |
| Space | The physical gap or interval between two objects. |
| Situation * | The location of a place relative to another place. |
| Perceptual region (or Vernacular region) * | An area that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity. |
| Spatial diffusion * | A feature spreading across space. |
| Biosphere | All living organisms on Earth, including plants and animals, as well as microorganisms. |
| Dispersed * | Diffused or spread out over an area. |
| Climate | The long-term average weather condition at a particular location |
| Sustainability * | The use of Earth’s renewable and nonrenewable natural resources in ways that do not constrain
resource use in the future. |
| Humanistic geography | The study of different ways that individuals form ideas about place and give those places symbolic
meanings. |
| Nonrenewable resource | Something produced in nature more slowly than it is consumed by humans. |
| Ecology | The scientific study of ecosystems. |
| Latitude | The numbering system used to indicate the location of parallels drawn on a globe and measuring
distance north and south of the equator (0°). |
| Mental map | A representation of a portion of Earth’s surface based on what an individual knows about a place that
contains personal impressions of what is in the place and where the place is located. |
| Geotagging | Identification and storage of a piece of information by its precise latitude and longitude coordinates. |
| Uneven development | The increasing gap in economic conditions between core and peripheral regions as a result of the
globalization of the economy. |
| Mashup | A map that overlays data from one source on top of a map provided by a mapping service. |
| Contagious diffusion* | The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population. |
| Culture* | The body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group’s
distinct tradition. |
| Relocation diffusion (also known as Migration diffusion)* | The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another. |
| Hearth * | The region from which innovative ideas originate. |
| Map | A two-dimensional, or flat, representation of Earth’s surface or a portion of it. |
| Stimulus diffusion * | The spread of an underlying principle even though a specific characteristic is rejected. |
| Map scale | The relationship between the size of an object on a map and the size of the actual feature on Earth’s
surface. |
| Atmosphere | The thin layer of gases surrounding Earth. |
| Diffusion * | The process of spread of a feature or trend from one place to another over time. |
| Region * | An area distinguished by a unique combination of trends or features |
| Biotic | Composed of living organisms. |
| Environmental determinism * | An approach to the study of geography which argued that the
general laws sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. |
| Lithosphere | Earth’s crust and a portion of the upper mantle directly below the crust. |
| Polder | Land that the Dutch have created by draining water from an area. |
| Sense of place * | How a person feels about a place and why it is important to them. |
| Spatial perspective * | A geographic focus that seeks to identify and explain the uses of space. |
| Globalization * | Actions or processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in
scope. |
| Hydrosphere | All of the water on and near Earth’s surface. |
| Pattern | The geometric or regular arrangement of something in a particular area. |
| Hierarchical diffusion * | The spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of authority or power to other persons
or places. |
