Unit 1 vocab: APHG

The study of geographic phenomena by visiting places and observing how people interact with and thereby change those places.

One of the two major divisions of geography; the spatial analysis of human population, its culture, activities, and landscapes.

The expansion of economic, political, and cultural processes to the point that they become global in scale and impact. The processes of globalization transcend state boundaries and have outcomes that vary across places and scales.

One of the two major divisions of systematic geography; the spatial analysis of the structure, processes, and location of the Earth’s natural phenomena such as climate, soil, plants, animals, and topography.

Pertaining (about) to the space on the Earth’s surface; sometimes used as a synonym for geographic.

Physical location of geographic phenomena across space.

The design of a spatial distribution

The study of health and disease within a geographic context and from a geographical perspective. Among other things, medical geography looks at sources, diffusion routes, and distribution of diseases.

An outbreak of a disease that spreads worldwide.

Regional outbreak of a disease.

Observing variations in geographic phenomena across space.

Developed by the Geography Educational National Implementation Project, the five themes of geography are location, human environment, region, place, and movement.

The geographical situation of people and things.

A logical attempt to explain the locational pattern of economic activity and the manner in which its producing areas are interrelated. The agricultural location theory contained in the von Thunen model is a leading example.

Reciprocal relationship between humans and environment.

An area on the Earth’s surface marked by a degree of formal, functional, or perceptual homogeneity of some phenomenon.

Uniqueness of a location

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.

State of mind is 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.

Belief or “understanding” about a place developed through books, movies, stories or pictures.

The mobility of people, goods, and ideas across the surface of the planet. 

A condition that exists when two regions, through an exchange of raw materials and/or finished productions, can specifically satisfy each other’s demands. The presence of a nearer opportunity that greatly diminishes the attractiveness of sites farther away. (interaction between two places through people, ideas, or goods moving from one place to the other)

Measurement of the physical space between two places.

The degree of ease with which it is possible to reach a certain location from other locations. Accessibility varies from place to place and can be measured.

The degree of direct linkage between one particular location and other locations in a transport network.

The overall appearance of an area. Most landscapes are a combination of natural and human-induced influences.

The visible imprint of human activity and culture on the landscape. The layers of buildings, forms, and artifacts sequentially imprinted on the landscape by the activities of various human occupants.

The notion that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative culture landscape.

The art and science of making maps, including data compilation, layout, and design. Also concerned with the interpretation of mapped patterns.

Maps that show the absolute location of places and geographic features determined by a frame of reference, typically latitude and longitude.

Maps that tell stories, typically showing the degree of some attribute or the movement of a geographic phenomenon.

The position or place of a certain item on the surface of the Earth as expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude, 0 to 90 north or south of the equator, and longitude, 0 to 180 east or west of the Prime Meridian passing through Greenwich, England.

Satellite-based system for determining the absolution of places or geographic features.

A hunt for a cache, the GPS coordinates which are placed on the Internet by other geocachers.

The regional position or situation of a place relative to the position of other places. Distance, accessibility and connectivity affect relative location.

Image or picture of the way space is organized as determined by an individual’s perception, impression, and knowledge of that space.

The space within which daily activity occurs.

Maps that generalize the trends or annuals received around the world.

A method of collecting data or information through the use of instruments that are physically distant from the area or object of study.

A collection of computer hardware and software that permits spatial data to be collected, recorded, stored, retrieved, manipulated, analyzed, and displayed to the user.

Involvement of players at other scales to generate support for a position or an initiative.

A type of region marked a certain degree of homogeneity in one or more phenomena; also called uniform region or homogenous region.

A region defined by the particular set of activities or interactions that occur within it.

A region that only exists as a conceptualization or an idea and not as a physically demarcated entity.

The sum total of the knowledge, attitudes, and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a society.

A single element of normal practice in a culture, such as  the wearing of a turban.

A related set of cultural traits, such as prevailing dress codes and cooking and eating utensils.

Heartland, source area, innovation center; place of origin of a major culture.

The term for a trait with many cultural hearths that developed independently of each other.

The expansion and adoption of a cultural element, from its place of origin to a wider area.

The declining degree of acceptance of an idea or innovation with increasing time and distance from its point of origin or source.

Prevailing cultural attitude renders certain innovations, ideas, or practices unacceptable or unadoptable in that particular culture.

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.

Sequential diffusion process in which the items being diffused are transmitted by their carrier agents as they evacuate the old areas and relocate to new ones. The most common form of relocation diffusion involves the spreading of innovations by a migrating population.

Ways of seeing the world spatially that are used by geographers in answering research questions.

The view that the natural environment has a controlling influence over various aspects of human life, including cultural development, is also referred to as environmentalism.

Geographic viewpoint—a response to determinism that holds that human decision-making, not the environment, is the crucial factor in cultural development. Nonetheless, possibilists view the environment as providing a set of broad constraints that limit the possibilities of human choice.

The multiple interactions and relationships between culture and the natural environment.

An 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 contexts in which they are situated.