Angelika Lin
AP Human Geography
2014.09.03
Chapter 1 Outline
Key Questions
Names of place commonly have:
AP Human Geography
2014.09.03
Chapter 1 Outline
Key Questions
- How do geographers describe where things are?
- Why is each point on earth unique?
- Geo means earth and graphy means to write (ancient Greek scholar Eratosthenes)
- Five asepects in the thinking about the world: {Where and Why}
- Place
- Regions
- Scale
- Space
- Connections
- How do geographers address where things are?
- Maps
- Contemporary tools
- Map: a two dimensional model of earth’s surface.
- Place: a specified point on earth.
- Region: an area of earth distinguished by both cultural and physical features.
- Scale: the relation between the actual size of something and its size on a map.
- Space: the physical gap between two objects
- Connections: relation amoung people and objects across a barrier of space.
- Cartography: the science of map-making.
- Projection: the method of transferring location from actual point to a map.
- Geographic information system (GIS): a system that can capture, store and analyze geographic data.
- Global Positioning system (GPS): a system that determines one’s exact location on earth.
- Aristotle was the first person who demonstrated that the Earth is spherical.
- Eratosthenes was the creator of the word Geography.
- Earliest surviving maps are from Babylonian clay tablets.
- Why is each point on earth unique?
- Accurate compass direction, land mass, size, shape, and more.
- Location: the position that something occupies on earth’s surface
- Toponym: the name given to a place on earth
- Site: the physical character of a place
- Situation: The location of a place relative to other places
- Meridian / Longitude: an arc drawn between the North and South poles
- Prallel / latitude: parallel to equator.
- Greenwich Mean Time (GMT): the internationally agreed official time reference for Earth.
- International Date Line: the longitude at which one moves forward or backward 1 day.
- Cultural landscape: the area of earth modified by human activities. Earth science, culture environment, locational, area analysis.
- Formal region: an area within which everyone shares one or more distinctive characteristics.
- Functional region: an area organized around a node or focal point.
- Vernacular region: a place that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity. Also a specific language dialect* is widely used. [dialect means the form of a language that is spoken in special way that may be differ from other forms of same language]
- Mental map: one’s perceived image of the surrounding landscape’s organization.
- Culture: the body of customary beliefs, material traits, and social forms that constitute the characteristic tradition of a group.
- Cultural ecology: the geographic study of human-environment relations.
- Environmental determinism: believe that physical environment causes social development.
- Alexander von Humboldt
- Carl Ritter
- Friedrich Ratzel
- Ellen Churchill Semple
- Ellsworth Huntington - “climate was determining factor”
- Possibilism: the counter of Environmental determinism, believe that environment limit some activities of people yet does not necessary decide the development.
- Resources: supplies provide by earth.
- Climate: usually use Koppen system developed by Vladimir Koppen (German).
- Tropical climates
- Dry climates
- Warm mid-latitude climates
- Cold mid0latitude climates
- Polar climates
- Polder: a piece of land that is created by draining water from an area. First build in 13th century in Netherlands.
Names of place commonly have:
- British origins in N. America and Austrlia
- Portuguese origins in Brazil
- Spanish origins elsewhere in Latin America
- Dutch origins in S. Africa
- The Board of Geographical Names was established in the late nineteenth century to be the final arbiter of names on U.S. Maps.
- Why are different places similar?
- Globalization: different cultures and economic systems around the world are becoming connected and similar to each other because of the influence of large multinational companies and of improved communication
- Distribution: the arrangement of a feature in a space
- Density: the frequency with which something occurs
- Arithmetic density: the total number of people in an area
- Physiological density: the total number of people per unit of arable* land. [arable means connected with growing crops]
- Agricultural density: the total number of farmers per unit of arable land.
- Concentration: the extent of a feature’s spread over space.
- Pattern: the geometric arrangement of objects in space.
- Space-time compression: the reduction in the time it takes for smt to reach another place.
- Distance decay: the distance of two groups reduce the likeliness of interation.
- Diffusion: the process of characteristics spread across space.
- Innovations spread from the place they originated, hearths.
- Two types of diffusion:
- Relocation diffusion is the spread of an idea through the physical movements of people.
- Expansion diffusion is the spread of an idea through “snowballing” and is further divided into 3 subgroups of the following:
- Hierarchical diffusion is the spread of something through only certain (or elite) classes of society.
- Contagious diffusion is the spread of something rapidly through all levels of society
- Stimulus diffusion is the spread of an underlying principle, even if a characteristic fails to diffuse itself.