Basic Concepts Flashcards
(42 cards)
Absolute Location
The precise spot where something is according to a system.
Relative Location
A description of where something is in relation to other things.
Site
Characteristics at the immediate location.
Situation
The location of the place relative to its surroundings and its connectivity to other places.
Toponym
A place name.
Direction
Used in order to describe where things are in relation to each other.
Distance
The amount of space between two things or people.
Scale
The ratio between the size of things in the real world and the size of the same things on the map.
Built environment
The physical artifacts that humans have created and that form part of the landscape.
Sequent occupance
The notion that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the
cumulative cultural landscape.
Environmental determinisim
Climate is the determining factor in progress, energy, and the culture of people/human behavior is strongly affected by and controlled or determined by the physical environment.
Possibilism
The environment may limit some human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to their environment.
Spatial interaction
A basic concept that considers how locations interact with each other in terms of the movement of people, freight, services, energy, or information.
Accessibility
How quickly and easily people in one location can interact with people in another location.
Connectivity
How well two locations are tied together by roads or other links.
Distance decay/Friction of distance
When things are farther apart they are less connected.
Time-space compression
The shrinking of relative distance between locations because of improved methods of transportation and communication.
Distribution
The way a phenomenon is spread out over an area.
Arithmetic Density
The total number of objects in an area.
Physiological Density
The number of people per unit of area suitable for agriculture.
Dispersed/Scattered Pattern
Phenomena are spread out over a large area.
Clustered/Agglomerated Pattern
Phenomena are arranged in a group or concentrated in an area.
Formal Region
Uniformity in one or more physical or cultural features.
Functional Region (Nodal)
Spatial system defined by the interactions and connections that give it an organizational basis.
