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| Absolute distance | The distance that can be measured with a standard unit of length, such as a mile or kilometer. |
| Absolute location | The exact position of an object or place, measured within the spatial coordinates of a grid systems. |
| Accessibility | The relative ease with which a destination may be reached from some other place. |
| Azimuthal projection | A map projecton in which the plane is the most developable surface. |
| Breaking point | The outer edge of a city's sphere pf influence, used in the law of retail gravitation to describe the area of a city's hinterlands that depend on that city for its retail supply. |
| Cartograms | A type of thematic map that transforms space such that the political unit with the greatest value for some type of data is represented by the largest relative area. |
| Choropleth map | A thematic map that uses tones or colors to represent spatial data as average values per unit area. |
| Cognitive map | An image of a portion of the earth's surface that an individual creates in his or her mind. Cognitive maps can include knowledge of actual locations and relationships between locations as well as personal perceptions and preferences of particular places. |
| Complementarity | The actual or potential relationship between two places, usually referring to economic interactions. |
| Connectivity | The degree of economic, social, cultural, or political connection between two places. |
| Contagious diffusion | The spread of a disease, innovation, or cultural traits through direct contact with another person or another place. |
| Coordinate system | A standard grid, composed of lines of latitude and longitude, used to determine the absolute locatioon of any object, place, or feature on the earth's surface. |
| Distance decay effect | The decrease in interaction between two phenomena, places, or people as the distance between them increases. |
| Dot maps | Thematic maps that use points to show the precise locatins of specific observations or occurences, such as crimes, car accidents, or births. |
| Expansion diffusion | The spread of ideas, innovations, fashion, or other phenomena to surrounding areas through contact and exchange. |
| Friction of distance | A measure of how much absolute distance affects the interaction between two places. |
| Fuller projection | A type of map projection that maintains the accurate size and shape of landmasses but completely rearranges direction such that the four cardinal directions-north, south, east, and west-no longer have any meaning. |
| Geoid | The actual shape of the earth, which is rough and oblate, or slightly squashed; the earth's circumfrence is longer around the equator then it is along the meridians, from north-south circumfrence. |
| Gravity model | A mathematical formula that describes the level of interaction between two places, based on the size of their populations and their distance from each other. |
| Hazards | Anything in the landscape, real or perceived, that is potentially threatening. Hazards are usually avoided in spatial behavior. |
| Hierarchial diffusion | A type of diffusion in which something is transmitted between places because of something the two places have in common. |
| International Date Line | The line of longitude that marks where each new day begins, centered on the 180th meridian. |
| Intervening opportunities | The idea that one place has a demand for some good or service and two places have a supply of equal price and quality, then the closer of the two suppliers to the buyer will represent an intervening opportunity, thereby blocking the third from being able to share its supply of goods or services. Intervening opportunities are frequently utilized because transportation costs usually decrease with proximity. |
| Isoline | Map line that connects points of equal or very similair values. |
| Large-scale | A relatively small ratio between map units and ground units. Large-scale maps usually have higher resolution and cover much smaller regions than small-scale maps. |
| Latitude | The angular distance north or south of the equator, defined by lines of latitude, or parallels. |
| Law of retail gravitation | Law that states that people will be drawn to larger cities to conduct their business because larger cities have a wider influence on the hinterlands that surround them. |
| Location charts | On a map, a chart or graph that gives specific statistical information of a particular political unit or jurisdiction. |
| Longitude | The angular distance east or west of the prime meridian, defined by lines of longitude, or meridians. |
| Map projection | A mathematical method that involves transferring the earth's sphere onto a flat surface. This term can also be used to describe the type of map that results from the process of projecting. All map projections have distortions in either area, direction, distance, or shape. |
| Mercator projection | A true conformal cylindrical map projection, the Mercator projection is particularly useful for navigation because it maintains accurate direction. Mercator projections are famous for their distortion in area that makes landmasses at the poles appear oversized. |
| Meridian | A line of longitude that runs north-south. All lines of longitude are equal in length and intersect at the poles. |
| Parallel | An east-west line of latitude that runs parallel to the equator and that marks distance north or south of the equator. |
| Preference map | A map that displays individual preferances for certain places. |
| Prime meridian | An imaginary line passing through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, which marks 0˚ line of longitude. |
| Proportional symbols map | A thematic map in which the size of a chosen symbol-such as a circle or triangle-indicates the relative magnitude of some statistical value for a given geographic region. |
| Reference map | A map type that shows reference information for a particular place, making it useful for finding landmarks and for navigating. |
| Relative distance | A measure of distance that include the costs of overcoming the friction of absolute distance separating two places. Often relative distance describes the amount of social, cutural, or economic connectivity between two places. |
| Relative location | The position of a place relative to places around it. |
| Relocation diffusion | The diffusion of ideas, innovations, behaviors, and the like from one place to another through migration. |
| Resolution | A map's smallest discernable unit. If, for example, an object has to be one kilometer long in order to show up on a map, then that map's resolution is one kilometer. |
| Robinson projection | Projection that attempts to balance several possible projection errors. It does not maintain completely accurate area, shape, distance, or direction, but it minimizes errors in each. |
| Scale | The ratio between the size of an area on a map and the actual size of that same area on the earth's surface. |
| Site | The absolute locationof a place, described by local relief, landforms, and other cultural or physical characteristics. |
| Situation | The relative location of a place in relation to the physical and cultural characteristics of the surrounding area and the connections and interdependencies within that system; a place's spatial context. |
| Small-scale | Map scale ratio in which the ratio the ratio of units on the map to units on the earth is quite small. Small-scale maps usually depict large areas. |
| Spatial diffusion | Spatial diffusion refers to the ways in which phenomena, such as technological innovations, cultural trends, or even outbreaks of disease, travel over space. |
| Thematic map | A type of map that displays one or more variables-such as population, or income level-within a specific area. |
| Time-space convergence | The idea that distance between some places is actually shrinking as technology enables more rapid communication and increased interaction between those places. |
| Topographic maps | Maps that use isolines to represent constant elevations. If you took a topographic map out into the field and walked exactly along the path of an isoline on your map, you would always stay at the same elevation. |
| Topological space | The amount of connectivity between places, regardless of the absolute distance separating them. |
| Transferability | The costs involved in moving goods from one place to another. |
| Visualization | Use of sophisticated software to create dynamic computer maps, some of which are three-dimensional or interactive. |
