Unit 1: Thinking Geographically

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

specific directions using cardinal directions (north, south, east, west).

the distance that can be measured with a standard unit of length, such as a mile or kilometer.

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.

when the less dominant culture adopts some of the traits of the more influential one.

A term that refers to a part of the Earth's surface with less specificity than region. For example, "urban area" alludes very generally to a place where urban development has taken place, whereas "urban region: requires certain specific criteria on which a delimitation is based (e.g., the spatial extent of commuting or the built townscape).

Vertical plane between states that cuts through the rocks below, and the airspace above the surface.

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

space is transformed according to statistical factors, with the largest mapping units representing the greatest statistical values.

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.

typical weather in region: the average weather or the regular variations in weather in a region over a period of years.

The spread of something over a given area.

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

theory governing movement of continents: a theory that explains the formation, alteration, and extremely slow movement of the continents across the Earth's crust.

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

the areas within which a particular cultural system prevails.

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.

A collection of interacting elements that taken together shape a group's collective identity.

A collective of culture regions sharing related culture systems; a major world area having sufficient distinctiveness to be perceived as a set apart from other realms in terms of cultural characteristics and complexes.

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 population of a country or region expressed as an average per unit area. The figure is derived by dividing the population of the areal unit by the number of square kilometers or miles that make up the unit.

The number of people per unit area of arable land.

The encroachment of desert conditions on moister zones along the desert margins, where plant cover and soils are threatened by desiccation - through overuse, in part by humans and their domestic animals, and, possibly, in part because of inexorable shifts in the Earth's environmental zones.

A process of improvement in the material conditions of people through diffusion of knowledge and technology

The spatial spreading or dissemination of a culture element or some other phenomenon.

the scattering or distribution of something within an area or space

The effects of distance on interaction, generally the greater the distance the less interaction.

The arrangement of something across Earth's surface.

The view that the natural environment has a controlling influence over various aspects of human life, including cultural development; aka environmentalism.

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

Affiliation or identity within a group of people bound by common ancestry and culture

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

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

A region defined by the particular set of activities or interactions that occur within it. A central node services (forms a function) for the area around it.

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

the categorization of members of a group according to importance.

Literally, "country behind," a term that applies to a surrounding area served by an urban center. That center is the focus of goods and services produced for this and is its dominant urban influence as well. In the case of a port city, it also includes the inland area whose trade flows through that port.

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

The geographic situation of people and things.

Term used to designate large coalescing supercities that are forming in diverse parts of the world; formerly used specifically with an uppercase "M" to refer to the Boston-Washington multimetropolitan corridor on the northeastern seaboard of the US, but now used generically with a lower-case "m" as a synonym for conurbation.

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

landscape unaffected by human activity.

The entrenchment of the colonial order, such as trade and investment, under a new guise.

when the pattern in along straight lines, like rivers, streets, or railroad tracks.

when objects circle another object, like cities forming around mosques.

exists when no regular distribution can be seen.

A region that only exists as a conceptualization or an idea and not as a physically demarcated entity. For example, in the US, "the South" and "the Mid-Atlantic region"

one of the two major division 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; aka physical geography.

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

directions using things like left, right, forward, backward, up, down.

A measure of distance that includes the costs of overcoming the friction of absolute distance separating two places. Often it describes the amount of social, cultural, or economic connectivity between two places.

Representation of a real-world phenomenon at a certain level of reduction or generalization. In cartography, the ratio of map distance to ground distance.

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

The internal physical attributes of a place, including its absolute location, its spatial character and physical setting.

The external locational attributes of a place; its relative location regional position with reference to other nonlocal places.

Way that things spread through space and over time.

the science of classifying plants, animals, and microorganisms into increasingly broader categories based on shared features.

large pieces of rock that form portions of the Earth's mantle and crust and which are in motion.

the natural land surface.

adoption of aspects of other cultures: the change in a culture brought about by the diffusion within it of aspects from other cultures.

an area of change where borders of two adjacent regions join; marked by a gradual shift in the characteristics that distinguish neighboring realms.

An increase in the percentage of the number of people living in urban settlements.

Maps where one dot represents a certain number of a phenomenon, such as a population.

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

A satellite based system for determining the absolute location of places or geographic features.

use line symbols to portray a continous distribution such as temperature or elevation. Lines that connect points of equal numeric value. One of the best-known types of this map is the contour map, which shows elevation above/below sea level.

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

The unique characteristics of a location.

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

Describes the uniqueness of a certain place by using characteristics that distinguish it from other places near it.

A method of collecting data or information through the use of instuments (e.g. satellites) that are physically distant from the area or object of study.

The spread of an idea from persons or nodes of authority or power to other persons or places (Ex: hip-hop/rap music)

The rapid, widespread diffusion of a characteristic throughout the population. (Ex: ideas placed on the internet)

The spread of an underlying principle, even though a characteristic itself apparently fails to diffuse. (Ex: PC & Apple competition)

The spread of a feature from one place to another in a snowballing process. Hierarchical, contagious, and stimulus diffusion are types of this term.

A thematic map in which areas are shaded or patterned in proportion to the measurement of the statistical variable being displayed (e.g., population density)

The spread of an idea through physical movement of people from one place to another. Ex: spread of AIDS from New York, California, & Florida.

Connections, meanings, memories, or emotions associated with a place.

How things are grouped together in space.

the study of the interactions between societies and the natural environments in which they live

the effects of distance on interaction, generally the greater the distance the less interaction

the loss of uniqueness in the cultural landscape so that one place looks just like the next

The use of Earth's renewable resources in a way that do not constrain resource use in the future.

A specific point on Earth distinguished by a particular character.