AP Human Geography Midterm Chapter 1

Human Geography Concepts

• Human Geography: Examines how people create places, organize society, interact across spaces, and understand their localities.
• Physical Geography: Focuses on the Earth's physical phenomena, such as landforms and climates.
• Space: Refers to the arrangement and organization of places and phenomena on Earth.
• Medical Geography: Involves mapping disease distribution, highlighting the significance of geography in health.

Disease and Geography

• Pandemic: A global outbreak of disease affecting multiple countries or continents.
• Epidemic: A regional outbreak of disease, impacting a specific area.
• Example of Medical Geography: Mapping the cholera outbreak in London illustrates the relationship between health and geography.

Geographic Themes

• Five Themes of Geography: Location, Place, Human-Environment Interaction, Movement, and Region.
• Location: The geographical position influencing events and activities; e.g., San Francisco's trade positioning on the bay.
• Human-Environment Interaction: Describes how human activities impact and alter the physical environment.

Place and Perception

• Place: The distinct characteristics of a location influenced by human actions.
• Perception of Place: How individuals view a location, such as business reluctance to move to Appalachia based on negative perceptions.

Movement and Landscape

• Movement: Involves the mobility of people, goods, and ideas on Earth.
• Landscape: The composite of natural features and human structures that shape a location.
• Cultural Landscape: The visible effects of human activity on the environment.

Cultural Dynamics

• Sequent Occupance: The cultural succession that leaves lasting impacts on an area, exemplified by New Orleans' diverse cultural influences.
• Various Types of Diffusion:
  • Expansion Diffusion: Ideas spread from a central hearth while remaining strong.
  • Contagious Diffusion: Affects nearly all adjacent individuals, similar to contagion.
  • Hierarchical Diffusion: Spreads in a patterned manner, often from larger to smaller populations.
  • Stimulus Diffusion: Adaptation of an idea primarily influenced by a specific culture's taboos.

Cultural Transmission

• Relocation Diffusion: Transfer of ideas through the movement of individuals who create them.
• Independent Invention: Cultural traits that emerge independently across different societies.

Geographic Principles

• Distance Decay: Describes how traits lose influence as they spread further from their origin.
• Absolute Location: Defined by coordinates, such as latitude and longitude.
• Relative Location: A place's location in relation to other places.

Environmental Perspectives

• Environmental Determinism: Theory suggesting human behavior is heavily influenced by the physical environment.
• Possibilism: Conflicts with determinism by stating that the environment limits, but does not dictate, cultural choices.

Geographic Concepts

• Site: The physical characteristics of a location chosen for various significant reasons (defensive, trade, etc.).
• Situation: A location's relative position and significance regarding surrounding areas.
• Toponym: The study of place names and their significance.

Geographic Regions

• Formal Region: Exhibits uniformity in specific characteristics, such as a desert.
• Functional Region: Defined by interactions and movements, such as a city and its suburbs.
• Perceptual Region: Subjective perception of a region, often influenced by historical and cultural contexts (e.g., the South).

Geographic Technologies

• Geographic Information System (GIS): A technological tool for layering spatial data to analyze relationships.
• Reference Maps: Display locations of geographic features.
• Thematic Maps: Illustrate specific themes or trends in geographic phenomena.
• Global Positioning System (GPS): Provides precise location information.

Map Projections

• Mercator Projection: Projects the Earth's surface onto a cylinder, maintaining direction but distorting size.
• Robinson Projection: Balances size and shape distortions but compromises on accurate directions.
• Remote Sensing: Techniques for observing and analyzing Earth's surface from a distance.