human geo

Sequent occupance

The 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.

Cultural landscape

Fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group. This is the essence of how humans interact with nature.

Arithmetic density

The total number of people divided by the total land area. This is what most people think of as density; how many people per area of land.

Physiological density

The number of people per unit of area of arable land, which is land suitable for agriculture. This is important because it relates to how much land is being used by how many people.

Hearth

The region from which innovative ideas originate. This relates to the important concept of the spreading of ideas from one area to another (diffusion).

Diffusion

The process of spread of a feature or trend from one place to another over time.

Relocation diffusion

The spread of an idea through physical movement of people from one place to another. Ex: spread of AIDS from New York, California, & Florida.

Expansion diffusion

The spread of a feature from one place to another in a snowballing process. This can happen in 3 ways:
1.Hierarchical
2.Contagious
3.Stimulus

Hierarchical diffusion

The spread of an idea from persons or nodes of authority or power to other persons or places (Ex: hip-hop/rap music)

Contagious diffusion

The rapid, widespread diffusion of a characteristic throughout the population. (Ex: ideas placed on the internet)

Stimulus diffusion

the spread of an underlying principle, even though a characteristic itself apparently fails to diffuse. (Ex: PC & Apple competition, p40)

Absolute distance

Exact measurement of the physical space between two places.

Relative distance

Approximate measurement of the physical space between two places.

Distribution

The arrangement of something across Earth's surface.

Site

The physical character of place; what is found at the location and why it is significant

Space Time Compression

The reduction in the time it takes to diffuse something to a distant place, as a result of improved communications and transportation system.

Friction of Distance

is based on the notion that distance usually requires some amount of effort, money, and/or energy to overcome. Because of this "friction," spatial interactions will tend to take place more often over shorter distances; quantity of interaction will decline

Spatial Distribution

Physical location of geographic phenomena across SPACE