Ap Human Geography Unit 1 Test Questions – Flashcards

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Space
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The geometric surface of the Earth.
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Activity Space
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An area where activity occurs on a daily basis.
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Place
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An area of bounded space of some human importance.
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Toponym
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A place name that is assigned when human importance is recognized.
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Regions
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A type of place.
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Sequent Occupancy
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The succession of groups and cultural influences throughout a place's history.
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Place-Specific
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Several different historical layers contribute to culture, society, local politics, and economy of a specific place.
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Scale
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The relationship of an object or place to the Earth as a whole.
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Map Scale
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Describes the ratio of distance on map and the distance in the real world on absolute terms.
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Relative Scale (scale of analysis)
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Describes the level of aggregation.
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Level of Aggregation
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The level at which you group things together for examination.
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Formal Region
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An area of bounded space that possesses some homogeneous characteristic or uniformity.
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Functional Region
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Areas that have a central place or node that is the focus or point of orign that expresses some practical. purpose
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Vernacular Region
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Based upon the perception or collective mental map of the region's residents.
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Homogenous Characteristic
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This means that across the region there is at least one thing that is the same everywhere within the regional boundary.
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Uniformity
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The state of being the same or homogeneous.
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Linguistic Region
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Where everyone speaks the same language but groups in that region can be very different culturally.
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Regional Boundaries
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Differ based upon the type of region.
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Culture Regions
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Tend to have fuzzy borders.
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Political Regions
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Finite and well-defined.
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Enviormental Regions
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Transitional and measurable.
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Bio-regions (biomes)
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A region defined by characteristics of the natural environment rather than by man-made divisions.
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Ecotone
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The environmental zone between two bio-regions.
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Nodal Regions (a.k.a. Functional Regions)
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Areas that have central place or node that is a focus or point of origin that expresses some practical purpose.
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Central Place (node)
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A focus or point of origin.
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Market Area
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A type of functional region.
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Distance Decay
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The farther away different places are from a place of origin, the less likely interaction will be with the original place.
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Area of Influence
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How far a place influences it surroundings, like how people come from longer distances but make a smaller number of trips.
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Intervening Opportunity
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An attraction at a shorter distance that takes precedence over an attraction that is farther away.
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Mental Map
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The cognitive image of landscape in the human mind.
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Absolute Location
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Defines a point or place on the map using coordinates such as latitude and longitude; latitude is given first followed by longitude with a cardinal direction, seperated by a comma.
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Relative Location
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Refers to the location of a place compared to a known place or geographic feature.
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Latitude
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Measures distance, in degrees, north or south of the equator.
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Longitude
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Measures distance, in degrees, east or west of the Prime Meridian.
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Notation
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The act of noting, marking, or setting down in writing.
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Decimal Degrees
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When decimals are used to divide partial degrees instead of minutes and seconds.
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Equator
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0 degrees longitude.
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North Pole
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90 degrees latitude.
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South Pole
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90 degrees latitude.
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Prime Meridian
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0 degree longitude.
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International Date Line
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Meanders around a number of international boundaries.
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Royal Naval Observatory
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A landmark through which the Prime Meridian runs in Greenwich, England.
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Site
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Refers to the physical characteristics of a place.
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Situation
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Refers to the place's inter-relatedness.
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Distance
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Measured absolutely, or it can be measured relatively in terms of the degree of interaction between places or in units of time traveled.
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Absolute Distance
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Distance between two places as measured in linear units such as miles or kilometers.
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Relative Distance
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The amount of social, cultural, or economic connectivity between places.
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Distance Decay
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The farther away different places are from a place of origin, the less likely interaction will be with the original place.
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Tobler's law
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States that all places are interrelated, but closer places are more related that farther ones.
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Friction of Distance
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When the length of distance becomes a factor that inhibits the interaction between two points.
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Space-Time Compression
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Decreased time and relative distance between places.
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Modes of Transportation
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(i.e. airplanes) Reduce time travel between two distant points, and as a result, increase interaction.
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Central Places
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Can be thought of as any node of human activity and are most often the centers of economic exchange.
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Transportation Nodes
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Markets are often located here; also provides accessibility to and from these points; tend to be centrally located within the larger economic region.
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Central Place Theory
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Proposed by Walter Christaller that explains how and where central places in the urban hierarchy should be functionally and spatially distributed with respect to one another.
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Core and Periphery
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Many different regional, cultural, economic, political, and environmental phenomena and human activities display some sort of this relationship.
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Central Buisness District (CBD)
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The core of the urban landscape.
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Cluster
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When things are grouped together on the earth's surface.
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Growth Pole
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Refers to a grouping of firms or an industry that generates expansion in an economy.
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Agglomeration
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When clustering occurs purposefully around a central point or an economic growth pole.
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Random Pattern
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When there is no rhyme or reason to the distribution of a spatial phenomenon.
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Scattered Pattern
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Objects that are normally ordered but appear dispersed.
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Linear Pattern
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A pattern that appears in a straight line.
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Sinuous Pattern
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A pattern that appears as a wavy line (i.e. like the pattern of heartbeats on an EKG).
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Land Survey Patterns
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Have an effect on the property lines and political boundaries of states and provinces.
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Metes and Bounds Survey Pattern
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The use of natural landscape features (i.e. tree stumps, rocks, etc.) to divide land; East of central Ohio and Ontario, used until 1830s, but developed in Europe centuries earlier.
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Township and Range Survey Pattern
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Survey system based upon lines of latitude and longitude; after the 1830s, when new techniques to accurately determine longitude were transferred from sea navigation to land survey, surveyors in the United States and Canada used this rectilinear survey system.
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Long-Lot Survey Pattern
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These have a narrow frontage along a road or waterway with a very long lot shape behind; former French colonial areas such as Quebec and Louisiana have these survey systems.
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Arithmetic Density
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The concept of density calculated by the number of things per square unit of distance.
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Agricultural Density
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Refers to the number of people per square unit of land actively used for farming.
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Physiologic Density
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Measures the number of people per square unit of arable land, meaning both the land that is farmed and the land that has the potential to be farmed but is not active.
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Malthusian Theory
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The idea that population is growing faster than the food supply needed to sustain it.
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Diffusion Patterns
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The multiple different ways and patterns in which human phenomena diffuse spatially or spread across the Earth's surface.
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Hearth
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Point of origin or place of innovation.
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Hiearchical Diffusion
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The pattern originates in a first-order location then moves down to second-order locations and from each of these to subordinate locations at increasingly local scales.
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Contagious Diffusion
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The pattern begins at a point of origin and then moves outward to nearby locations, especially those on adjoining transportation lines. This could be used to describe a disease but can also describe the movement of other things, such as the news in rural regions.
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Stimulus Diffusion
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A general or underlying principle diffuses and then stimulates the creation of new products or ideas. For example, it occurs when vegetarian eating habits (principle) influence restaurants to offer more vegetarian dishes (new products).
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Expansion Diffusion
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The pattern originates in a central place and then expands in all directions to other locations. Note that the distance does not have to be equal in all directions.
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Relocation Diffusion
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The pattern begins at a point of origin and then crosses a significant physical barrier, such as an ocean, mountain range, or desert, then relocates on the other side. Often the journey can influence and modify the items being diffused.
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Topographic Maps
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Shows the contour lines of elevation as well as the urban and vegetation surface with road, building, river, and other natural landscape features. These maps are highly accurate in terms of location and topography. They are used for engineering surveys and land navigation, especially in wilderness regions.
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Thematic Maps
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A number of different map types can be grouped under this heading, and that each one expresses a particular subject and does not show land forms for other features (i.e. Dot Density Maps; Isotherms).
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Isotherms
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A weather map that shows temperature contour lines.
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Chloropleth Maps
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Expresses the geographic variability of a particular theme using color variations. These variations can be expressed using colorized symbols, contour areas filled with different colors, or polygons denoting country boundaries filled with different colors to express the variability in the map.
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Isoline Maps
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Calculates data values between points across a variable surface. Each point is then interpolated with the other nearby or neighboring points to create a continuous surface of isoline contours.
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Dot Density Maps
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Uses dots to express the volume and density of a particular geographic feature. The dots can represent the number of people in an area , or can express the number of events or phenomena that occurred in an area.
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Flow-Line Maps
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Uses lines of varying thickness to show the direction and volume of a particular geographic movement pattern (i.e. map of flow-lines showing the total number of foreign immigrants in the US).
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Cartograms
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Uses simplified geometries to represent real-world places. Political boundaries become polygons, and linear features such as roads become lines with basic angles often at 90 degrees and 135 degrees. More about the data being expressed than they are about landscape.
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Projections
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Methods of mapping Earth on a flat surface.
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Equal-Area Projections
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Attempt to maintain the relative spatial science and the areas on the map; however, these can distort the actual shape of polygons.
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Lambert Projection
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Bends and squishes the northern Canadian border islands to keep them at the same map scale as southern Canada on a flat sheet of paper.
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Conformal Projections
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Attempt to maintain the shape of polygons on the map, but also cause the distortion of the relative area from one part of the map to the other.
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Distortion
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A change in the shape, size, or position of a place when it is shown on a map.
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Mercator Projection
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Attempt to maintain the shapes of areas on the map, but often get the size wrong (i.e. the shape of Greenland is preserved, but it appears to be much larger than South America, when in reality it is much smaller).
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Robinson Projection
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Projection that attempts to balance several possible projection errors.
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Goode's Homolosine Projection
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A pseudo-cylindrical, equal-area, composite map projection used for world maps.
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Model
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An abstract generalization of real-world geographies that share a common pattern.
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Spatial Model
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Attempt to show the commonalities in pattern among similar landscapes.
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Urban Model
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Show how different cities have similar spatial relationships and economic or social structures.
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Non-Spatial Model
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Model that do not necessarily relate specific spaces, but rather other factors.
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Demographic Transition Model
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Uses population data to construct a general model of the dynamic growth in national scale populations without reference to space.
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Epidemiological Transition Model
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Describes changing patterns of population age distributions, mortality, fertility, life expectancy, and causes of death.
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Concentric Zone Model
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Created in 1923 by theorist Ernest Burgess and represents the Anglo-America city of the United States and Canada during the height of industrialization; can be modified to create a graph showing the cost to distance relationship in urban real estate prices.
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Bid-Rent Curve
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Explains why land prices are relatively low in suburban areas, but exponentially higher in the central business district (CBD).
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Gravity Model
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A mathematical model that is used in a number of different types of spatial analysis. Used to calculate transportation flow between two points, determine the area of influence of a city's businesses, and estimate the flow of migration to a particular place.
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Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
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Incorporate one or more data layers in a computer program capable of spatial analysis and mapping.
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Data Layers
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Numerical, coded, or textual data that is attributed to specific geographic coordinates or areas.
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Spatial Analysis
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Looking at data to determine how phenomena relate together in space.
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Global Positioning System (GPS)
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Utilizes a worldwide network of satellites, which emit a measurable radio signal.
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Navstar Satellites
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Network of U.S. satellites that provide GPS services.
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Aerial Photography
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Images of Earth from an aircraft, printed on film, but digital camera usage is on the increase
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Satellite-Based Remote Sensing
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A computerized scanner to record data from the Earth's surface. These data include not only visual light wavelengths, but also infrared and radar information.
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What are "soft" borders?
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People can travel just about anywhere in the world.
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What do we need to do?
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Strive to understand the ongoing changes Make sense of the new directions of the world Ask questions Acquire correct and objective info. Organize info. Analyze info. Answer Questions
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What is one of the most powerful tools used to understand the world?
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Geography
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What do geographers study?
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The Old Nation; states, countries, capitals, location, etc. The Earth and everything about it.
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What types of questions should we be asking when it concerns location?
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Not only "where?", but "why?", "how?", and "so what?".
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What is geography?
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The location (absolute and relative) and distribution of physical (natural) and cultural (human) features at or near the Earth's surface.
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What are geographic realms?
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Basic Spatial unit in our world's organizational scheme (neighborhoods).
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What is Spatial Perspective?
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Anything pertaining to space on the Earth's features. Focuses of not only where, but why things are located where they are, how they got there, and how they could change.
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What is the correlation between large and small scales?
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The smaller the fraction (larger the denominator), the smaller the scale. Small scales show BIG detail Big scales show small detail
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What are the methods of portraying a scale on a map?
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Graphic Scale - scale bar Verbal Scale - written statement Fractional Scale - representative fraction
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What are the types of maps? (SPITT DCC)
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Symbolic Thematic Proportional Symbol Isoline Topographic Dot Maps Cartogram Choropleth
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What is a Symbolic Map?
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A map that uses symbols for State (country) nationalism
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What is a Thematic Map?
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A type of map or chart specifically designed to show a particular theme connected with a specific geographic area.
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What is a Proportional Symbol Map?
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A map that uses symbols of different sizes to represent data associated with different areas or locations within the map.
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What is an Isoline Map?
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A map that is illustrated with contour lines.
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What is a Topographic Map?
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A map that is covered with closed lines that never touch, and have contour intervals.
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What is a Dot Map?
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A map that uses a dot symbol to show the presence of a feature or phenomenon. Dot maps rely on a visual scatter to show spatial pattern.
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What is a Cartogram Map?
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A map in which some thematic mapping variable - such as travel, time, population, or Gross National Product - is substituted land area or distance.
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