Unit 1

Question 1

relative distance

Answer 1

a measurement of the physical space between two places expressed as a cost in time or cost in difficulty of travel

Question 2

absolute distance

Answer 2

a measurement of the physical space between two places expressed in feet and miles or meters and kilometers

Question 3

Distance

Answer 3

measurement of the physical space between two places

Question 4

Network Distance

Answer 4

a type of absolute distance that measures the distance between two places along a transportation or a communication route

Question 5

Euclidean distance

Answer 5

a type of absolute distance that measures the distance between two places in a straight line (“as the crow flies”)

Question 6

relative location

Answer 6

a description where something is in relation to something else

Question 7

space

Answer 7

the physical gap or interval between two objects

Question 8

location

Answer 8

the position of anything on Earth’s surface

Question 9

absolute location

Answer 9

the precise spot where something is on the earth’s surface according to a system (i.e, coordinate system or street address system)

Question 10

Flow

Answer 10

the amount of people, ideas, and goods moving among places
Spatial interaction the degree of the flow of people, ideas, and goods among places.

Question 11

Movement

Answer 11

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

Question 12

distance decay

Answer 12

the effects of distance on interaction, generally the greater the distance between two places the less interaction between those places

Question 13

friction of distance

Answer 13

the increase in time and cost that usually comes with increasing distance

Question 14

time-space compression

Answer 14

the shrinking “time distance” between locations resulting from improvements in transportation and communication technologies

Question 15

Society

Answer 15

a group of people living within defined territorial borders and who share a common culture

Question 16

Culture

Answer 16

the body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group’s distinct tradition

Question 17

Nature

Answer 17

the combination of all of the physical, chemical, and biological factors acting upon an organism or an ecological community.

Question 18

Land use

Answer 18

an area on Earth’s surface on which, in which, or with which people have done something.

Question 19

natural resource

Answer 19

any material, substance, or organism found in nature that is useful to people

Question 20

nonrewable resources

Answer 20

something produced in nature more slowly than it is consumed by humans

Question 21

renewable resource

Answer 21

something produced in nature more rapidly than it is consumed by humans

Question 22

Sustainability

Answer 22

the use of Earth’s renewable and nonrenewable natural resources in ways that do not constrain resource use in the future

Question 23

environmental determinism

Answer 23

a nineteenth- and early twentieth-century approach to the study of geography which argued that the general laws sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. Geography therefore was the study of how the physical environment caused human activities.

Question 24

Possibilism

Answer 24

the theory that the physical environment may set limits on human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to the physical environment and choose a course of action from many alternatives

Question 25

Region

Answer 25

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

Question 26

Functional Region

Answer 26

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

Question 27

perceptual/folk region

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Formal Region

Answer 28

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

Question 29

National Scale

Answer 29

patterns, processes, and interactions occurring at the scale of a country

Question 30

Global Scale

Answer 30

patterns, processes, and interactions occurring at the scale of the world

Question 31

Regional Scale

Answer 31

patterns, processes, and interactions occurring within larger areas of the world (such as a continent or multiple countries neighboring each other) or within an area of a country (province, state, district, county, or city)

Question 32

Local Scale

Answer 32

patterns, processes, and interactions occurring within very small areas of a country (small towns, neighborhoods)

Question 33

Map Scale

Answer 33

the ratio of map distance to ground distance; indicated on a map as a bar graph, representative fraction, and/or verbal statement.

Question 34

Scale

Answer 34

the representation of a real-world phenomenon at a certain level of reduction or generalization.

Question 35

Mental Map

Answer 35

Image or picture of the way space is organized as determined by an individual's perception, impression, and knowledge of that space activity space The space within which daily activity occurs

Question 36

Geographic Data

Answer 36

a type of data that includes both spatial data (i.e., the location of phenomena) and attribute data (i.e., the characteristics of phenomena)

Question 36

Geographic Data

Answer 36

a type of data that includes both spatial data (i.e., the location of phenomena) and attribute data (i.e., the characteristics of phenomena)

Question 37

geospatial technologies

Answer 37

digital technologies that allow geographers to collect data about the earth and run sophisticated analyses

Question 38

Media Reports

Answer 38

stories created by journalists or news organizations that are published in newspapers, magazines, or websites; broadcast on television or radio; or streamed.

Question 39

Geographic Information System (GIS)

Answer 39

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

Question 40

satellite navigation system

Answer 40

a combination of receiver units and a network of satellites that allows for the calculation of the receiver's location on the earth's surface and can assist finding routes for aircraft, ships, and ground vehicles

Question 41

Remote Sensing

Answer 41

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

Question 42

Online mapping and visualization

Answer 42

a web-based tool that allows for the upload or entry of geographic data and the transformation of that data into maps or charts

Question 43

Map Projection

Answer 43

a systematic method of transferring the spherical surface of the Earth to a flat map

Question 44

Simplification

Answer 44

depends on a maps intended use; takes many forms: omission, straightening, exaggeration, and distortion.

Question 45

Map Scale

Answer 45

the degree to which a map "zooms in" on an area

Question 46

Data Aggregation

Answer 46

the size of the geographic units under investigation

Question 47

Thematic Maps

Answer 47

Maps that highlight a particular feature or a single variable such as temperature, city size, or acreate in potatoes. Maps that tell stories, typically showing the degree of some attribute or the movement of a geographic phenomenon.

Question 48

Reference Map

Answer 48

Maps that show a variety of of common features, such as cities, boundaries, mountains, and roads. Maps that show the absolute location of places and geographic features determined by a frame of reference, typically latitude and longitude.