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AP Human Geography Vocabulary Terms from Unit 1

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Term
Definition
Fieldwork   The study of geographic phenomena by visiting places and observing how people interact with and thereby change those places  
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Human Geography   The spatial analysis of human population, its cultures, activities and landscapes  
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Globalization   The expansion of economic, political, and cultural processes to the point that they become global in scale and impact; the process transcends state boundaries and have outcomes that vary across places and scales  
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Physical Geography   The spatial analysis of the structure, processes, and location of the earth's natural phenomena such as climate, soil, plants, animals and topography  
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Spatial   Pertaining to space on the Earth's surface; sometimes used as a synonym for geographic  
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Spatial Distribution   Physical location of geographic phenomena across space  
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Pattern   The design of a spatial distribution  
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Medical Geography   The study of health and disease within a geographic context and from a geographical perspective; looks at sources, diffusion routes, and distributions of diseases  
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Pandemic   An outbreak of a disease that spreads worldwide  
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Epidemic   Regional outbreak of a disease  
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Spatial Perspective   Observing variations in geographic phenomena across space  
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5 Themes   Location, Human-Environment Interaction, Region, Place, Movement  
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Location   The geographical situation of people and things  
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Location Theory   An attempt to explain the locational pattern of an economic activity and the manner in which its producing areas are interrelated  
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Human-Environment Interaction   The reciprocal relationship between humans and environment  
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Region   an area on the earth's surface marked by a degree of formal, functional or perceptual homogeneity of some phenomenon  
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Place   The uniqueness of a location  
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Sense of Place   State of mind derived through the infusion of a place with meaning and emotion by remembering important events that occurred in that place or by labeling a place with a certain character  
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Perception of Place   Belief or "understanding" about a place developed through books, movies, stories or pictures  
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Movement   The mobility of people, goods and ideas across the surface of the planet  
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Spatial Interaction   The connectivity between places  
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Distance   The measurement of the physical space between two places  
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Accessibility   The degree of ease with which it is possible to reach a certain location from other locations; it varies from place to place and can be measured  
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Connectivity   The degree of direct linkage between one particular location and other locations in a transport network  
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Landscape   The overall appearance of an area; usually a combination of natural and human-introduced influences  
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Cultural Landscape   The visible imprint of human activity and culture on the landscape; layers of buildings, forms, and artifacts sequentially imprinted on the landscape by the activities of various human occupants  
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Sequent Occupance   The notion that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape  
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Cartography   The art and science of making maps, including data, compilation, layout, and design; also concerned with the interpretation of mapped patterns  
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Reference Maps   Maps that show the absolute location of places and geographic features determined by a frame of reference, typically latitude and longitude  
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Thematic Maps   Maps that tell stories, typically showing the degree of some attribute or the movement of a geographic phenomenon  
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Absolute Location   The position or place of a certain item on the surface of the earth as expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude and longitude  
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Global Positioning System   Satellite-based system for determining the absolute location of places or geographic features  
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Geocaching   A hunt for a cache, the coordinates which are placed on the internet by other geocachers  
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Relative Location   The regional position or situation of a place relative to the position of other places  
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Mental Map   Image or picture of the way space is organized as determined by an individual's perception, impression, and knowledge of that space  
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Activity Space   The space within which daily activity occurs  
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Generalized Map   The process of selecting and representing information on a map in a way that adapts to the scale of the display medium of the map.  
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Remote Sensing   A method of collecting data or information through the use of instruments that are physically distant from the area or object of study  
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Geographic Information Systems   A collection of computer hardware and software that permits spatial data to be collected, recorded, stored, retrieved, manipulated, analyzed and displayed to the user  
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Rescale   Involvement of players at other scales to generate support for a position or an initiative  
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Formal Region   A type of region defined by the particular set of activities or interactions that occur within it  
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Functional Region   A region defined by the particular set of activities or interactions that occur within it  
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Perceptual Region   A region that only exists as a conceptualization or an idea and not as a physically demarcated entitiy  
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Culture   The sum total of the knowledge, attitudes, and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a society  
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Culture Trait   A single element of normal practice in a culture  
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Culture Complex   A related set of cultural traits, such as prevailing dress codes and cooking and eating utensils  
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Cultural hearth   Heartland, source area, innovation center; place of origin of a major culture  
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Independent invention   The term for a trait with many cultural hearths that developed independent of each other  
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Cultural Diffusion   The expansion and adoption of a cultural element, form its place or origin to a wider area  
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Time-Distance Decay   The declining degree of acceptance of an idea or innovation with increasing time and distance from its point of origin or source  
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Cultural Barrier   Prevailing cultural attitude rendering certain innovations, ideas or practices unacceptable or unadoptable in that particular culture  
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Expansion Diffusion   The spread of an innovation or an idea through a population in an area in such a way that the number of those influenced grows continuously larger, resulting in an expanding area of dissemination  
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Contagious diffucion   The distance=controlled spreading of an idea, innovation, or some other item through a local population by contact from person to person  
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Hierarchical Diffusion   A form of diffusion in which an idea or innovation spread by passing first among the most connected places or peoples  
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Stimulus Diffusion   A form of diffusion in which a cultural adaptation is created as a result of the introduction of a cultural trait from another place  
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Relocation Diffusion   Sequential diffusion process in which the items being diffused are transmitted by their carrier agents as the evacuate the old areas and relocate to new ones  
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Geographic Concept   Ways of seeing the world spatially that are used by geographers in answering research questions  
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Environmental Determinism   The view that the natural environment has a controlling influence over various aspects of human life, including cultural development  
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Possibilism   A response to determinism- that holds that human decision making, not the environment, is the crucial factor in cultural development  
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Cultural Ecology   The multiple interactions and relationships between a culture and the natural environment  
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Political Ecology   Approach to studying nature-society relations that is concerned with the ways in which environmental issues both reflect, and are the result of, the political and socioeconomic context in which they are situated  
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Terra Incognita   Unknown or unexplored territory  
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Centrality   The strength of an urban center in its capacity to attract producers and consumers to its facilities; a city's "reach" into the surrounding region  
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Pangaea   The primeval supercontinent that broke apart and formed the continents and oceans as we know them today  
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Subduction   The process that takes place at convergent boundaries by which one tectonic plate moves under another tectonic plate and sinks into the mantle as the plates converge  
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Divergent Boundary   The linear feature that exists between two tectonic plates that are moving away from each other  
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Convergent Boundary   An actively deforming region where two (or more) tectonic plates or fragments of the lithosphere move toward one another and collide  
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Transform Boundary   Boundary that exists where two tectonic plates grind past each other  
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New Madrid Fault   A series of faults at a weak spot in the earth's crust; it runs 150 miles from Arkansas into Missouri and Illinois; it was responsible for the most violent series of earthquakes in North American history  
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San Andreas Fault   It is a continental transform fault that extends roughly 1300 km through California; it forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate  
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Alluvial   A deposit of clay, silt, sand, and gravel left by flowing streams in a river valley or delta, typically producing fertile soil  
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Liquifaction   Phenomenon in which the strength and stiffness of a soil is reduced by earthquake shaking or other rapid loading  
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Jackson Purchase Region   A region of southwestern Kentucky, bounded by the Tennessee River on the east, the Ohio River on the north, and the Mississippi River on the west, that was ceded to the United States by the Chickasaw Peoples in 1818  
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Western Coal Fields Region   It is characterized by Pennsylvanian age sandstones, shales and coal seams  
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Pennyroyal Region   It is a large area of the state that features rolling hills, caves, and karst topography in general; t is also called the "Mississippi Plateau"  
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Bluegrass Region   It makes up the northern part of the state where a majority of the state's population has lived and developed its largest cities  
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Knobs Region   It is a narrow, arc shaped region consisting of hundreds of isolated hills  
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Eastern Mountains & Coal Fields Region   Part of the Central Appalachian bituminous coalfield, including all or parts of 30 Kentucky counties; the region is known for its coal mining  
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Tropics   The region between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn  
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Meridians   A circle of constant longitude passing through a given place on the earth's surface and the terrestrial poles, most notably the International Date Line and Prime Meridian  
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Longitude   The distance of a place east or west of the meridian at Greenwich, England, usually expressed in degrees and minutes  
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Latitude   The distance of a place north or south of the earth's equator, usually expressed in degrees and minutes  
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