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Barron's Human Geography Unit 1

All words for the first vocab quiz except for the following terms:

Pattison's Four Traditions (1964): W.D. Pattison

earth-science: physical geography (not one of the Five Themes)

locational: spatial tradition (location)

man-land: human/environmental interaction

area-studies: regional geography

Terms : Hide Images
23899788AnthropogenicCaused or produced by humans
23899789Absolute locationPosition on Earth's surface using the coordinate system of longitude (that runs from North to South Pole) and latitude (that runs parallel to the equator).
23899790Relative locationPosition on Earth's surface relative to other features. (Ex: My house is east of I-75).
23899791Absolute distanceExact measurement of the physical space between two places.
23899792Relative distanceApproximate measurement of the physical space between two places.
23899793SiteThe physical character of place; what is found at the location and why it is significant.
23899794SituationThe location of a place relative to other places.
23899795Formal Regionarea within which everyone shares in common one or mare distinctive characteristics. The shared feature could be a cultural value such as a common language, or an environmental climate.
23899796Functional Region(nodal) Area organized around a node or focal point. The characteristic chosen to define this kind of region dominates at a central focus or node and diminishes in importance outward. This region is tied to the central point by transportation or communication systems or by economic or functional associations.
23899797Perceptual Region(vernacular) is a place that people believe exists as a part of their cultural identity. Such regions emerge from peoples informal sense of place rather than from scientific models developed through geographic thought. (Often identified using a mental map- which is an internal representation of a portion of Earths surface)
23899798Environmental perceptiona person's idea or image of a place; may often be inaccurate.
23899799Cultural traita single element of normal practice in a culture (e.g., wearing a turban)
23899800Culture complexa combination of related cultural traits (e.g., prevailing modes of dress; nationalism)
23899801Culture hearthThe region from which innovative ideas originate. This relates to the important concept of the spreading of ideas from one area to another (diffusion). Must be viewed in the context of time ...
23899802Ancient culture hearthFertile Crescent, Indus Valley, Chang & Yellow River Valley (China), Nile River Valley and Delta, Meso-America (origin of farming developed during the First Agricultural Revolution beginning around 12,000 years ago).
23899803Modern culture hearthEurope, North America, Japan (origin and focus of the Industrial Revolution beginning in the early 1800s after the onset of the Second Agricultural Revolution).
23899804Cultural landscapeFashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group. This is the essence of how humans interact with nature.
23899805Sequent occupanceThe notion that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape. This is an important concept in geography because it symbolizes how humans interact with their surroundings.
23899806Cultural diffusionThe process of spread of a feature or trend from one place to another over time.
23899807Relocation diffusionThe spread of an idea through physical movement of people from one place to another.
23899808Migrant diffusionspread of an idea through people, in which the phenomena weakens or dies out at its previous source ... moves like a "Slinky" (e.g., spread of the Spanish Flu toward the end of World War I).
23899809Expansion diffusionThe spread of a feature from one place to another in a snowballing process...
23899810Hierarchical diffusionThe spread of an idea from persons or nodes of authority or power to other persons or places
23899811Contagious diffusionThe rapid, widespread diffusion of a characteristic throughout the population. (Ex: ideas placed on the internet)
23899812Stimulus diffusionthe spread of an underlying principle, even though a characteristic itself apparently fails to diffuse. (Ex: PC & Apple competition, p40)
23899813AcculturationProcess of adopting only certain customs that will be to their advantage
23899814TransculturationA near equal exchange of culture traits or customs
23899815AssimilationProcess of less dominant cultures losing their culture to a more dominant culture
23899816Environmental determinismA 19th- and early 20th-century approach to the study of geography that argued that the general laws sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. Geography was therefore the study o f how the physical environment caused human activities (e.g., Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, and Steel)
23899817PossibilismThe physical environment may limit some human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to their environment.
23899818Cultural EcologyThe geographic study of the multiple interactions of human-environmental relationships
23899819Holocene epochcurrent interglaciation period (sustained warming phase between glaciations during an ice age), extending from around 12,000 years ago to the present (some scientists speculate that since humans influence the Earth as no species was able to before, we have recently entered the Anthropocene epoch).
23899820First Agricultural Revolutionbeginning around 12,000 years ago; achieved plant domestication (human influence on genetic modification of a plant) and animal domestication (genetic modification of an animal to make it more amenable to human control and use); began permanent settlements along fertile river valleys which moved humans from egalitarian societies (equal) to more stratified societies (unequal).
23899821(Geographic Information Systems) GIScollection of computer hardware and software permitting spatial data to be collected, recorded, stored, retrieved, used, and displayed.
23899822(Global Positioning System) GPSsatellite-based system for determining the absolute location of places.
23899823Remote sensingmethod of collecting data or information through the use of instruments (e.g., satellites) that are physically distant from the area or object of study.
23899824Qualitative datadescribed in terms of its quality (that is, informal or relative characteristics such as culture, language, religion, ...).
23899825Quantitative dataprecisely describes data using numbers and measures (population, political, economic, ...).
23899826Map projectionan image of the earth put onto a 2 dimensional object
23899827Azimuthaldirections from a central point are preserved; usually these projections also have radial symmetry
23899828Mercatorstraight meridians and parallels that intersect at right angles, used for marine navigation
23899829Petersequal-area cylindrical, areas of equal size on the globe are also equally sized on the map
23899830Robinsondistorts shape, area, scale, and distance in an attempt to balance the errors of projection properties
23899831Fullerusing the surface of a polyhedron, it is unfolded to a net in many different ways and flattened to form a two-dimensional map which retains most of the globe's relative proportional integrity
23899832dotrepresents a certain number of phenomena (e.g., population)
23899833thematicmade to reflect a particular topic about a geographic area (e.g., geographic, topographic, political, ...)
23899834choropleththematic map in which areas are shaded or patterned in proportion to the measurement of the statistical variable being displayed (e.g., population density)
23899835referencegeneralized map type designed to show general spatial properties of features (e.g., world maps, road maps, atlas maps)
23899836proportional symboltype of thematic map in which the areas of symbols are varied in proportion to the value of an attribute (e.g., city population)
23899837preferencemap demonstrating progressively more desirable options
23899838cartogrammap in which some thematic mapping variable is substituted for land area (e.g., GDP)
23899839latitudeParallel lines that run horizontally across Earth (Equator, Tropic of Cancer & Capricorn, Arctic & Antarctic Circles)
23899840meridianline of longitude (ex: International Date Line)
23899841TODALSIGacronym for assessing the validity and reliability of any map
23899842Scalerepresentation of a real-world phenomenon at a certain level of reduction or generalization
23899843locationposition; situation of people and things (5 themes)
23899844human/environmental interactionreciprocal relationship b/w humans & env. (5 themes)
23899845regionarea on Earth's surface marked by a degree of homogeneity (uniformity) of some phenomenon (5 themes)
23899846placeuniqueness of a location (or similarity of two or more locales); phenomena within an area (5 themes)
23899847movementmobility of people, goods and ideas; phenomena between areas (5 themes)

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