| A | B |
|---|
| Greek Definition of Geography | earth writing (to write about the earth) |
| Purpose of Early Geography | Exploring uncharted territories for trade |
| Eratosthenes | One of the world's first cartographers / Accurately computed circumference of earth / coined word geography |
| Ptolemy | Published "Guide to Geography" / created global grid system |
| Exploration | Early explorers included Bartholomeu Dias, Christopher Columbus |
| George Perkins Marsh | Wrote "Man and Nature - Physical Geography as Modified by Human Actions" |
| Carl Sauer | First modern geographer / coined term Cultural Landscape / Studied the complex relationship between humans and the environment |
| The Quantitative Revolution | 1950s and 1960s movement that stressed empirical (or numerical) measurements, hypothesis testing, and development of mathematical models |
| Remote Sensing | Process of capturing image from Earth's surface from airborne platform such as satellite or airplane |
| Global Positioning System (GPS) | A network of satellites that orbit the earth, broadcasting location information to handheld receivers on Earth's surface. |
| Geographic Information System (GIS) | A family of software programs that allow geographers to map, analye, and model spatial data. |
| Divisions of Geography | Human Geography, Physical Geography, Envionmental Geography |
| Human Geography | Study of human activities on the Earth's Surface especially Economic, Behavioral, Cultural, Political, Population, Urban, and Social activities |
| Physical Geography | Study of spatial characteristics of the Earth's physical and biological systems |
| Earth System Science | a way to study interactions between physical systems on a global scale |
| Systematic Geography | Study of the Earth's integrated systems as a whole, instead of focusing on particular processes in a single place |
| Environmental Geography | The study of human environment relationships |
| WD Pattisons Four Traditions of Geography | tUsing The earth, culture, spatial analysis, and area to study geography |
| Five Themes of Geography | Location, Human / Environment interaction, Regions, Place, and Movement |
| Thinking Geographically | Involves developing a spatial perspective, an appreciation of scale, and the ability to analyze and interpret varied forms of geographic data |
| The Spatial Perspective | The process of answering the where and why questions that relate to the spatial distribution of different types of phenomena |
| The Importance of Scale | A general concept that refers to a conceptual hierarchy of spaces, from small to large, that reflect actual levels of organization in the real world |
| The Region as a Concept | conceptual constructions that geographers use for convenience in studying groups of the earth's surface area according to certain similarities |
| Regional Geography | investigation of the unique characteristics, patterns, and processes existent within that place |
| Idiographic | facts or features unique to a particular place or region, such as its history or ethnic composition |
| Nomothetic | refers to concepts that are universally applicable |
| The Geoid | the term for the bumpy oblate spheroid that is the Earth's Surface (slightly bigger horizontally than vertically) |
| Projection | the process of a three-dimensional Earth surface is transferred to a two-dimensional map |
| Map Distrotion | the result of projecting a three-dimensional surface onto a two-dimensional surface (happens in shape, area, direction, and distance) |
| The Mercator Projection | Landmasses become increasingly distorted, or large in size, at high latitude near the North and South Poles |
| The Peters Projection | A cylindrical projection that retains accurate sizes of all the world's landmasses and is used to focus attention on the world's poorest countries |
| The Fuller Projection | Maintains the accurate size and shape of landmasses but completely rearranges direction |
| The Robinson Projection | Does not maintain accurate area, shape, distance, or direction but minimizes errors in each (an attempt to balance projection errors) |
| Azimuthal Projections | Either the North or South pole is oriented at the center of the map, giving an impression of looking up or down at the Earth |
| Cartographic Scale (Map Scale) | the ratio between distance on a map and the actual distance on the Earth's surface |
| Resolution | Refers to a map's smallest discernable unit; basically it is the smallest thing visible on a map |
| Generalization | Averaging over details; results in changing from a large scale map to a small scale map |
| Reference Maps | maps used to navigate between places and include topographic, atlases, road maps, and other navigational maps |
| Thematic Maps | Maps that display one or more variable across a specific space such as population, voting, or economic patterns |
| Isoline Maps | Maps that use lines to represent quantities of equal value (most common is topographic map where each line represents a constant elevation) |
| Proportional Symbols Maps | size of the chosen symbol (circle, triangle, or flow line) indicates relative magnitude of some value for a given geographic region |
| Dot Density Maps | use maps to represent particular values; for example, cropland harvested where each dot represents 1,000 bushels of corn |
| Choropleth Maps | Use colors or tonal shadings to repreent categorie of data for given geographic areas |
| Cartograms | Powerful tool for illustrating comparative patterns (example: a cartogram of electoral votes in the US would make some the larger states by area smaller because they have fewer electoral votes) |
| Visualizations | exist digitally and use sophisticated software to create dynamic computer maps, some of which are 3D and / or interactive |
| Simplification | refers to level of detail portrayed on a map |
| Aggregation | Refers to the size of the unit under investigation such as cities, counties, states, or countries |
| Power of Maps | Ability to make something nonspatial (like population rates) spatial thereby facilitating the perception of spatial relationships |
| Deception of Map | The ability of a cartographer to exclude important information or overgeneralization of important features or details |
| Cognitive Maps | A dynamic (changing) internal representation of a place or environment (a mental map) |
| Preference Maps | Maps that show people's ideas about environmental, social, or economic quality of life in various places |
| Absolute Location | the precise location of any object or place on the Earth's surface as determined by latitude and longitude |
| Relative Location | How to describe a place's location in terms of it relationship to places around it |
| Latitude and Longitude | Most common grid system to give absolute location |
| Site | the physical and cultural features of a place |
| Situation | describes a place's relationship to other places around it |
| Absolute Distance | exact measure of the separation between two points |
| Relative Distance | less precise but often meaningful measures are used to describe separation between two points (i.e. Time to get from one place to another) |
| Density | the amount of a particular feature within a given area |
| Concentration or Dispersion | describes the distance between features |
| Spatial Association | Describes the distribution of two or more feature and how they do or do not relate to one another |
| Distance Decay | describes the pattern of diminishing likelihood of interaction with a place with increasing distance from that place |
| First Law of Geography | Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more closely related than far things |
| The Gravity Model | based on Newton's law of universal gravitation with the implication that large cities may still have extensive interactions despite being separated by great distances (i.e. New York and Los Angeles |
| Connectivity | a measure of all the means of connection and communication between places |
| Accessibility | relative ease with which you can reach a destination |
| Network | The areal pattern of connections between places |
| Time-Space Compression (Convergence) | The idea that with increasing transportation and communications technology, absolute distance between places is, in effect, shrinking |
| Spatial Diffusion | The ways in which phenomena, such as technological innovations, cultural trends, or outbreaks of disease, travel over space |
| Contagious Expansion Diffusion | Rapid spread resulting in direct contact with an individual through the snow-ball effect |
| Hierarchical Diffusion | Diffusion from a source or place of power to others |
| Barriers to Diffusion | Physical and Cultural features that prevent things or ideas from spreading |
| Time-Distance Decay | The idea that the longer it takes for something to spread or move over space, the less likelihood of interaction or spread of that phenomena |
| Regions | Generally designed as pieces of Earth's surface area |
| Formal Regions | Politically determined with exact boundaries |
| Functional Regions | Region with vague boundaries that serve a function (newspaper circulation) |
| Vernacular (Cognitive or Perceptual) Regions | how people informally organize places in their mind |
