Chapter 1: Introduction to Human Geography

Question 1

Human geography

Answer 1

Field that focuses on how people make places, how we organize space and society, how we interact with each other in places and across space, and how we make sense of others and their places

Question 2

Globalization

Answer 2

Set of processes that are invading interactions, deepening relationships, and accelerating interdependence across national borders

Question 3

Location

Answer 3

How the Geo graphical position of people and things on earth’s surface affects what happens and why

Question 4

Physical geography

Answer 4

Spatial material characteristics of the natural environment

Question 5

Spatial distribution

Answer 5

How something is distributed across space

Question 6

Medical geography

Answer 6

Mapping the distribution of a disease or other medical condition

Question 7

Pandemics

Answer 7

Worldwide outbreaks of diseases

Question 8

Epidemic

Answer 8

A disease that is particular to a locality or region

Question 9

Ability

Answer 9

In the context of political power, the capacity of the state to influence other states or achieve its goals through diplomatic, economic, and militaristic means

Question 10

Location theory

Answer 10

An element of contemporary human geography that seeks to answer a wide range of questions – some of them theoretical, others highly practical: why are villages, towns, and cities spaced the way they are?

Question 11

Human environment interaction

Answer 11

The relationship between humans and the physical world

Question 12

Region

Answer 12

Features tend to be connected in particular areas which we call regions

Question 13

Place

Answer 13

All places on the surface of Earth have unique human and physical characteristics one of the purposes of geography is to study the special characteristics and meaning of places

Question 14

Sense of place

Answer 14

Developed by people by infusing a place with meaning and emotion by remembering important events that occurred in a place, or by labeling a place with a certain character

Question 15

Movement

Answer 15

Refers to the mobility of people, goods, and ideas across the surface of the planet

Question 16

Distances

Answer 16

The measured physical space between two places

Question 17

Accessibility

Answer 17

The ease of reaching one location from another

Question 18

Connectivity

Answer 18

The degree of linkage between locations in a network

Question 19

Landscape

Answer 19

The material character of a place, the complex of natural features, human structures, and other tangible objects that give a place a particular form

Question 20

Cultural landscape

Answer 20

The visible imprint of human activity on the landscape

Question 21

Sequent occupance

Answer 21

Sequential imprints of occupants, whose impacts are layered one on top of the other, each layer having some impacts on the next

Question 22

Cartography

Answer 22

The art and science of making maps

Question 23

Reference maps

Answer 23

Show locations of places and geographic features

Question 24

Thematic maps

Answer 24

Tell stories, typically showing the degree of some attribute with the movement of a geographic phenomenon

Question 25

Absolute location

Answer 25

Of places using a coordinate system that allows for the precise plotting of where on earth something is

Question 26

Geocaching

Answer 26

A hobby treasure hunt game based on the use of GPS

Question 27

Relative location

Answer 27

The location of the place in relation to other human and physical features

Question 28

Mental map

Answer 28

Maps that we carry in our minds of places we have been in places we have merely heard of

Question 29

Activity spaces

Answer 29

Those places we travel to routinely in our rounds of daily activity

Question 30

Remote sensing

Answer 30

The use of technology they gathers data at a distance from the earth’s surface

Question 31

Geographic information systems (GIS)

Answer 31

Used to compare a variety of spatial data by creating digital representations of the environment, combining layers of spatial data, and creating maps in which patterns and processes are superimposed

Question 32

Formal region

Answer 32

Has a shared trait, it can be a shared cultural trait or a physical trait

Question 33

Functional region

Answer 33

Defined by a particular set of activities or interactions that occur within it

Question 34

Perceptual regions

Answer 34

Intellectual constructs designed to help us understand the nature and distribution of phenomena in human geography

Question 35

Culture

Answer 35

And all encompassing term that identifies not only the whole tangible lifestyle of peoples, but also their prevailing values and beliefs

Question 36

Culture trait

Answer 36

A single attribute of a culture

Question 37

Culture complex

Answer 37

A discrete combination of traits

Question 38

Cultural hearth

Answer 38

An area where cultural traits develop and from which cultural traits diffuse

Question 39

Independent invention

Answer 39

Each hearth where A trait develops in more than one heart without being influenced by its development elsewhere

Question 40

Cultural diffusion

Answer 40

When ideas, people, or goods move across space, this process of dissemination

Question 41

Time – distance decay

Answer 41

Factors that cause decay in the diffusion process of cultural traits and complexes

Question 42

Cultural barriers

Answer 42

Powerful obstacles to the spread of ideas or innovations

Question 43

Expansion diffusion

Answer 43

When an innovation or idea develops in a hearth and remain strong there while also spreading outward

Question 44

Contagious diffusion

Answer 44

A form of expansion diffusion in which nearly all adjacent individuals and places are affected

Question 45

Hierarchical diffusion

Answer 45

A pattern in which the main channel of diffusion is some segment of those who are susceptible to what is being diffused

Question 46

Stimulus diffusion

Answer 46

When ideas do not necessarily fit with a population yet still have an impact

Question 47

Relocation diffusion

Answer 47

Involves the actual movement of individuals left already adopted the idea or innovation, and to carry it to a new, perhaps distant, locale, where they proceed to disseminate it

Question 48

Possibilism

Answer 48

The choices that a society makes depend on what its members need and on what technology is available to them

Question 49

Cultural ecology

Answer 49

An area of inquiry concerned with culture as a system of adaptation to and alteration of environment

Question 50

Political ecology

Answer 50

Fundamentally concerned with the environmental consequences of dominant political – economic arrangements and understandings