Cartography
The science of making maps.
Climate
The long-term average weather condition at a particular condition
Concentration
The spread of something over a given area
Contagious Diffusion
The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population
Cultural Landscape
The fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group
Culture
The body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group's distinct religion
Density
The frequency with which something exists something exists within a given unit of area
Diffusion
The process of spread of a feature or trend from one place to another over time
Distribution
The arrangement of something across Earth's surface
Environmental Determinism
A nineteenth and early twentieth-century approach to the study of geography which argued that the generic law sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. Geography was therefore the study of how the physical environment caused human activities
Formal Region (AKA Uniform, or Homogeneous Region)
An area in which everyone shares in common one or more distinctive characteristics
Functional Region
An area organized around a node or focal point
Geographic Information System (GIS)
A computer system that stores, organizes, analyzes, and displays geographic data
Globalization
Actions or processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in scope
Hearth
The region from which innovative ideas originate
Hierarchical Diffusion
The spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of authority or power to other persons or places
Housing Bubble
A rapid increase in the value of houses followed by a sharp decline in their value
Location
The position of anything on Earth's surface
Map
A two-dimensional, or flat, representation of Earth's surface or a portion of it
Map Scale
The relationship between the size of an object on a map and the size of the actual feature on Earth's surface
Mental Map
A representation of a portion of Earth's surface based on what an individual knows about a place, containing personal impressions of what is in the place and where the place is located
Pattern
The geometric or regular arrangement of something in a study area
Place
A specific point on Earth distinguished by a particular characteristic
Possibilism
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
Projection
A system used to transfer locations from Earth's surface to a flat map
Region
An area distinguished by a unique combination of trends or features
Scale
Generally, the relationship between the portion of Earth being studied and Earth as a whole
Site
The physical character of a place
Situation
The location of a place relative to another place
Sustainability
The use of Earth's renewable and nonrenewable natural resources in ways that do not constrain resources in the future