APHUG unit 1 vocabulary

Photographic interpretation

photos geographers take of a place to gather observable data about the world. These photos can be taken from the ground or by using aerial photography(images taken from an airplane by a professional).

Elevation

the distance of features above sea level-usually measured in feet or meters, and can impact climate, weather, agriculture, etc. Higher_____: colder temperatures; becomes harder for certain crops to grow.____is shown on maps with contours(isolines).

Sustainability

trying to use resources in ways that allow their use in the environment. Ex: stemming from natural resource depletion, mass consumption, the effects of pollution, and the impact of climate change.

Thematic maps

show spatial aspects of information or of a phenomenon. Ex: Choropleth, Dot-distribution, Graduated Symbol, Isoline; Cartogram.

Satellite Imagery

images of the Earth taken from artificial satellites orbiting the planet.

Absolute Location

precise spot where something-usually described by longitude and latitude

Census Data

specific information about people. Can be collected by: surveys, the general view, examination, or description of someone or something. Inaccuracies can happen while information is collected as people can lie, be counted twice, or under count homelessness.

Distance Decay

increase relationship between distance and connection. Ex: the weakening in radio signal as it travels across space away from a radio tower. Friction of Distance causes the decay, or weakening of the signal.

Time-space Compression

the shrinking "time distance," or relative distance, between locations because of improved methods of transportation and communication. Ex: London and NYC are an ocean apart; however, it feels closer due to modern methods of transportation like airplanes.

Pattern

refers to the general arrangement of things being studied, and geographers must be able to describe _____ accurately and precisely.

Natural Resources

items that occur in the natural environment that people can use. Ex: air, water, oil, fish, soil, and animals.

Land Use

study of how land is utilized, modified, and organized by people. Geographers study the patterns of this concept and draw conclusions on the reasons for the specific use and the varying impacts on the environment, landscape, and people.

Absolute Distance

usually measured in terms of feet, miles, meters, or kilometers; is a measurement of how far or how near things are to one other. Ex: The library is 1.5 miles away from the school.

Personal Interviews

geographers may interview experts to gather information about a specific place. Ex: a naturalist being interviewed about local birds in the Galapagos Islands.

Place

refers to the specific human characteristics of a location.

Flows

refers to the patterns and movement of ideas, people, products, and other phenomena.

Relative Distance

indicates the degree of nearness based on time or money often dependent on the mode of travel. Ex: the library is 10 minuets away from school

Geospatial Information System(GIS)

a computer system that collects, stores, analyzes, and displays geographic data.

Relative direction

directions such as left, right, up, down, forward, and backward are based on people's perception of places. Ex: Canada is above the United States.

Clustering

arranged in a group or concentrated in an area, and one of the six common distribution patterns. Ex: areas such as restaurants in a food court at a mall.

Dispersal

spread out over a large area.

Reference Map

named because they are designed for people to refer to for general information about places. Ex: Political, Physical, Road, and Plat.

Policy Documents

geographers may look to legislation to gather geographic data. Ex: the Great American Outdoors and passed by congress establishes the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration to support maintenance projects of federal lands. Geographers may look at this document to access how land is being used.

Travel Narratives

stories and notes about descriptions made in the field.

Media Reports

data taken from things like newspapers, online news sources, and television to help get information about an area.

Environmental Determinism

the beliefs that land forms and climate are the most powerful forces shaping human behavior, and societal development while ignoring the influence of culture.

Remote Sensing

gather information from satellites that orbit the Earth or other aircraft above the atmosphere. Apart of developments in gathering data as a part of modern day technology. They gather data such as urban sprawl, droughts, and agricultural land usage.

Field Observations

is used to refer to the act of physically visiting a location, place, or region according to first hand information there. Geographers can often be found writing notes taking photos, sketching maps, counting and measuring things, and interviewing people as they walk through an area that they are interested in studying. This was the only way to collect data for the majority of history.

Map Projection

the process of showing a curved surface on a flat surface. The Earth is a sphere while a map is flat, so all maps are distorted in some aspect. Ex: Mercator, Peters, Conic, Robinson.

Mercator Projection

Navigation; directions are accurate, lines of latitude and longitude meet at right angles

Peters Projection

spatial distributions related to area, sizes of land masses are accurate

Conic Projection

general use in mid-latitude countries, lines of longitude converge, lines of latitude are curved, size and shape are both close to reality.

Robinson Projection

general use; no major distortion, oval shape appears more like a globe than it does a rectangle.

Mercator cons

distance between lines of longitude appears constant, landmasses near the poles appear large.

Peters cons

shapes are inaccurate, especially near poles.

Conic cons

direction is not constant; on a world map, longitude lines converge at only one pole.

Robinson cons

area, shape, size, and direction are all slightly distorted.

Space

the area between two or more phenomena of things. Geographers look through the lens of ____ to understand place. Geographers are intensely interested in how new ___ is arranged, used, and reflected in people's attitudes and beliefs.

Satellite Navigation Systems

can help provide much more specific data about the location of an object or place on Earth using geographic coordinates of longitude and latitude.

Landscape Analysis

the task of finding and describing landscapes.

Relative Location

description of where something is based on relation to other things. Ex: Salt Lake City is south of the Great Salt Lake and west of the Rocky Mountains.

Possibilism

in relation to environmental determinism contemporary geographers developed a theory acknowledging limits on the effects of the natural environment and focuses more on the role that human culture plays.

Global (scale)

the entire world. Ex: global Earth at night image, world population density map.

Regional (scale)

interactions occurring within a region, in a regional setting (North America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Midwest, eastern China).

National (scale)

one country. Ex: the United States, Thailand

Local (scale)

a province, state, city, county, or neighborhood. Ex: Tennessee, Moscow

Formal Region

regions that are united by one or more traits: political(Brazil in South America), physical(Sahara in North Africa), cultural(Southwest Nigeria where most people speak Yoruba), and economic(Ghana who exports gold). Aka uniform or homogeneous.

Function Region

regional scale organized around a focal point and are defined by an activity usually political, social, or economic that happens around the region. They are also organized by networks of communication, transportation, and other interactions. Ex: airport: node; locations that planes go to: functional region. aka node

Perceptual/Vernacular Region

defining the sense of place that people describe to them. Boundaries of this region type is widely different because people have a different sense of what delivers and unites these regions. Ex: Middle East, Upstate New York, Southern United States. All of these regions exist but they depend on the person defining them.