Fieldwork
A method of studying what people are doing and observing how their actions and reacctions vary.
Human Geography
The study of 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 ourselves in our localtiy, region, and world.
Globalization
A set of processes that are increasing interactions, interpendence without regard to country borders.
Physical Geography
The spatial analysis of the structure, processes, and location of Earth's natural phenomena.
Spatial
How something is laid out; space on Earth's surface.
Spatial Distribution
Physical location of geographic phenomena across space.
Pattern
The design of spatial distribution.
Medical Geography
The study of health and disease within a geographic context and from a geographical perspective; looking at sources, diffusion routes, and distribution of disease.
Pandemics
A worldwide outbreak of disease.
Epidemic
Regional outbreak of disease.
Spatial Perspective
Observing variations in geographic phenomena across space.
Five THemes (of geography)
Location, human-environment, region, place, and movement.
Location
The geographical situation of people and things.
Location Theory
A logical attempt to explain the locational pattern of the economic activity and the manner in which its producing areas are interrelated.
Human-environment
Reciprocal relationship between humans and environment.
Region
An area on the Earth's surface marked by a degree of formal, funtional, or perceptual homogeneity of some phenomenon.
Place
Uniqueness of a location.
Sense of Place
State of mind derived through the infusion of a place with meaning and emotion by remembering important events that occurred in that place or by labeling a place with a certian character.
Perceptions of Places
Belief or "understanding" about a place developed through books, movies, stories or pictures.
Movement
The mobility of people, goods and ideas across the surface of the planet.
Spatial Interaction
Depends on the distances between places. Both Complementarity and Intervening Opportunity.
Distances
Measurement of the physical space between two places.
Accessibility
The degree of ease with which it is possible to reach a certian location from other locations.
Connectivity
The degree of direct linkage between one particular location and other locations in a transport network.
Landscape
Material character of a place, complex of natural featues, human structures, and other tangible objects that give a place its form.
Cultural Landscape
The visible imprint of human activity ona landscape.
Sequent Occupance
Cultural succession and its lasting imprint.
Cartography
The art and science of making maps.
Reference Maps
Maps that show the absolute location of places and geographic features determined by a frame of reference, typically latitude and longitude.
Thematic Maps
Maps that tell stories, typically showing the degree of some attribute of the movement of a geographic phenomenon.
Absolute Locations
The position of place of a certian item on the surface of the Earth as expresed in degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude, and longitude.
Global Positioning System (GPS)
Satellite-based system for determining the absolute location of places or geograpic features.
Geocaching
A hunt for a cache, the GPS coordinates which are placed on the Internet by other geocachers.
Relative Location
The regional position or situation of a place relative to the position of other places.
Mental Maps
Maps in our minds of places we have been and places we have only heard of.
Activity Space
The space within which daily activity occurs.
Generalized Map
A vague map of an area without specific details.
Remote Sensing
A method of collecting data or information through the use of instruments that are physically distant from the area or object of study.
Geographic Information System (GIS)
A collection of computer hardware and software that permits spatial data to be collected, recorded, stored, retrieved, manipulated, analyzed, and displayed to the user.
Formal Region
A uniform region.
Functional Region
Defined by the particular set of activities or interactions that occur within it.
Perceptual Region
A region that only exists as a conceptualization or an idea and not as a physically demarcated entity.
Culture
The sum total of the knowledge, attitudes, and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a society.
Cultural Trait
A single element of normal practice in a culture, such as the wearing of a turban.
Cultural Complex
A related set of cultural traits, such as prevailing dress codes and cooking and eating utensils.
Cultural Hearth
Heartland, source area, innovation center; place of origin of a major culture.
Independent Invention
The term for a trait with many cultural hearths that developed independent of each other.
Cultural Diffusion
The expansion and adoption of a cultural element, from its place of origin to a wider area.
Time-distance Decay
The declining degree of acceptance of an idea or innovation with increasing time and distance from its point of origin or source.
Cultural Barriers
Prevailing cultural attitude rendering certian innovations; ideas or practices unacceptable or unadoptable in that particular culture.
Expansion DIffusion
The spread of an innovation or an idea through a population in an area in such a way that the number of those influenced grows continuously larger.
Contagious Diffusion
The distance-controlled spreading of an idea, innovation, or some other item through a local population by contact from person to person.
Hierarchial Diffusion
An idea or innovation spreads by passing first among the most connected places or peoples.
Stimulus Diffusion
A cultural adaptation is created as a result of the introduction of a cultural trait from another place.
Relocation Diffusion
Items being diffusion are transmitted by their carrier agents as they evacuate the old areas and relocate new ones.
Environmental Determinism
The view that the natural environment has a controlling influence over various aspects of human life, including cultural development.
Isotherms
Line on a map connecting point of equal temperature values.
Possibilism
Geographic viewpoint- a response to determinism- that holds that human descision making, not the environment, is the critical factor in cultural development.
Cultural Ecology
An area of inquiry concened with culture as a system of adaptation to environment.
Political Ecology
Area of inquiry fundementally concerned with the enviormental consequences of dominant political- economic arrangements and understandings.