Mapmaking.

Cartographers must make two important decisions in creating a map-- scale and projection.

The system used to transfer locations on Earth's surface to a flat map.

• Geographic Information System
• computer system that can capture, store, query, analyze and display geographic data
• key to GIS is geocoding: the position of any object on Earth can be measured and recorded with with mathematical precision and then stored in a computer

• acquires data about the Earth's surface from a satellite orbiting Earth or from other long-distance methods

• Global Positioning System
• system that accurately determines the precise position of somethign on Earth
• useful in coding the precise location of objects which can be entered as a layer in a GIS

• physical character of a place
• second way that geographers describe the location of a place
• characteristics include climate, water sources, topography, soil, vegetation, latitude, and elevation

• location of a place relative to other places
• valuable way to indicate location for two reasons
  • finding an unfamiliar place; eg) identifying important buildings, streets, and other landmarks to direct people to the desired location
  • understanding the importance; eg) many locations are important because they are accessible to other places

• used to precisely describe the location of any place on the Earth's surface
• Meridian- an arc drawn between the North and South poles
• Parallel- a circle drawn around the globe parallel to the equator and at right angles to the meridians

• Latitude- the numbering system to indicate the location of a parallel
• Longitude- numbering system which identifies each meridian on the Earth's surface

• Prime Meridian- meridian that passes through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England at 0 degrees longitude
• Equator- 0 degrees latitude

• Greenwich Mountain Time
• time at the prime meridian as designated by an international agreement

• an arc that for the most part follows 180 degrees longitude, although it deviates in several places to avoid dividing land areas
• when you cross the IDL heading east the clock moves back 24 hours
• when you cross the IDL heading west the clock moves ahead 24 hours

• way in which a region derives its unified character
• a combination of cultural features such as language and religion, economic features such as agriculture and industry, and physical features such as climate and vegetation

• an area within which everyone shares in common one or more distintctive characteristics
• also called a uniform region or a homogeneous region
• eg) a cultural value (language), an economic activity (producing a particular crop), or an environmental property (climate)

• an area organized around a node or focal point
• also called a nodal region
• characteristic chosen to define a functional region dominates at a central focus or node and diminishes in importance outward
• used to display information about economic areas

• a place that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity
• also known as a perceptual region
• eg) Americans referring to the South as a place of distinct cultural, environmental and economic features from that of the U.S.

• an internal representation of a portion of the Earth's surface
• useful way to identify a perceptual region
• depicts what an individual knows about a place, containing personal impressions of what is in a palce and wheres palces are located

• a region can be constructed to encompass an area of widely varying svale, from a very small portion of Earth to a very large portion
• different conclusions can be reched concerning a region's characteristics

• the body of customary beliefs, material traits, and social forms that together constitute the distinct tradtion of a group of people
• Latin for cultus which means "to care for"

• a 19th and early 20th century approach to the study of geography that argued that the general laws sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences
• how the physical environment caused social development

11 major world climates

A

B

C

D

E

Know the major regions where each occurs

• A) - Humid Low-Latitude Climates
  • Humid tropical, Seasonally humid tropical
• B) - Dry Climates
  • Semiarid, Desert
• C) - Warm Mid-Latitude Climates
  • Humid Subtropical, Mediterranean, Marine west coast
• D) - Cold Mid-Latitude Climates
  • Humid continental, Subarctic
• E) - Polar Climates
  • Ice cap, Tundra

• mixture of trees and grasses
• trees do not form a continuous canopy, and the resultant lack of shade allows grass to grow
• Savanna covers large areas of Africa, South Asia, South America, and Australia

• a piece of land that is created by draining water from an area

• first created in the thirteenth century , were contructed primarily by private developers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and by the government during the past 200 years

• a force or process that involves the entire world and results in making something worldwide in scope
• globalization of the economy has been led primarily by transnational corporations 
• people are plugged into a global economy and culture, producing a world that is more uniform, integrated, and interdependent

• the number of persons per unit of area suitable for agriculture
• a high physiological population density may mean that a country has difficulty growing enough food to sustain its population

• used to describe the reduction in time it takes for something to reach another place

• trailing-off phenomenon in which the farther away one group is from another, the less likely the two groups are to interact
• contact diminishes with increaing distance and eventually disappears

• the process by which a characteristic spreads across space from one place to another over time

• The place from which an innovation orginates

• something originates at a hearth or node and diffuses from there to other places

• the spread of an idea from persons or nodes of authority or power to other persons or places
• may result from the spread of ideas from political leaders, socially elite people, or other important persons to others in the community

• the rapid, widespread diffusion of a characteristic throughout the population
• spreads without regard for hierarchy and without requiring permanent relocation of people
• eg) rapid adoption throughout the U.S. of AIDS prevention methods and new medicines

• spread of an underlying principle, even though a characteristic itself apparently fails to diffuse

• AKA- relatively developed country or a developed country
• a country that has progressed relatively far along a continuum of development

• AKA- developing country
• a country that is at a relatively early stage in the process of economic development

Four Major Biomes

AND

Where Each Occurs

• Biomes- major forms of plant communities
• Forest Biome- trees form a continuous canopy (much of N. America, Europe, and Asia and tropical areas of S. America, Africa and SE Asia)
• Savanna Biome- a mixture of trees and grasses (covers large areas of Africa, S. Asia, S. America and Australia)
• Grassland Biome- covered by grass rather than trees (former American praries)
• Desert Biome- almost completely without vegetation ()

• scientific study of population characteristics
• demographers look statistically at how people are distributed spatially and by age, gender, occupation, fertility, health, and so on

• the portion of the Earth's surface occupied by permanent human settlement
• ~500 years ago much of North America and Asia lay outside the ecumene

• the total number of live births in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the city
• if CBR=20 this means that for every 1,000 people in a country, 20 babies are born over a 1 year period

• the total number of deaths in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society
• CDR is expressed as the annual number of deaths per 1,000 population

• the percentage by which a population grows in a year
• computed by CBR-CDR after first converting the two measures from numbers per 1,000 to percentages

• the number of years needed to double a population, assuming a constant rate of natural increase
• affected by the rate of natural increase

• the average number of children a woman will have throughout her childbearing years          ( ~ 15-49 )
• another way to measure the number of births in a society

• annual number of deaths of infants under 1 year of age, compared with total live births
• usually expressed as the number of deaths among infants per 1,000 births rather than as a percentage (per 100)

• measures the average number of years a newborn infant can expect to live at current mortality levels

• the process of change in a society's population from a condition of high crude birth and death rates and low rate of natural increase to a condition of low crude birth and death rates, low rate of natural increase, and a higher total population

• Stage 1- Low Growth
• Stage 2- High Growth
• Stage 3- Moderate Growth
• Stage 4- Low Growth

Agricultural Revolution

(Stage 1)

• time when human beings first domesticated plants and animals and no longer relied entirely on hunting and gathering
• caused burst of population growth around 8000 B.C.

Industrial Revolution

(Stage 2)

• industrial revolution was a conjunction of major improvements in industrial technology (invention of the steam engine, mass production,powered transportation) that transformed the process of manufacturing goods and delivering them to market
• result was an unprecedented level of wealth, some of which was used to make communities healthier places to live

Medical Revolution

(Stage 2)

• improved medical practices suddenly eliminated many of the traditional causes of death in LDCs and enabled more people to experience longer and healthier lives

• a decline of the total fertility rate to the point where the natural increase rate equals zero

• bar graph displaying a country's population by age and gender groups
• a population pyramid normally shows the percentage of the total population in 5-year age groups, with the youngest group (0 to 4 years old) at the base of the pyramid and the oldest group at the top

• the number of people who are too young or too old to work, compared to the number of people in their productive years

• English economist (1766-1834)
• one of the first to argue that the world's rate of population increase was outrunning the development of food supplies
• An Essay on the Principle of Population
• Today:           1 person, 1 unit of food
• +25 years:        2 persons, 2 units of food
• +50 years:        4 persons, 3 units of food
• +75 years:        8 persons, 4 units of food
• +100 years:        16 persons, 5 units of food

• contemporary geographers who adopted Malthus's theory because of two characteristics of population growth
• 1) - rapid pop. growth in LDCs because of medical technology increasing the gap between pop. growth and resources available
• 2) - future lack of resources outside of food (clean air, suitabl farmland, energy) that may cause wars and civil violence

Epidemic

Pandemic

• Epidemiological Transition- distinctive causes of death in each stage of the demographic transition
• Epidemiology- Branch of medical science concerned with the incidence, distribution, and control of diseases that affect large numbers of people
• Pandemic- disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects a very high proportion of the population

Migration

Emigration

Immigration

• Migration- a trype of relocation diffusion which involves a permanent move to a new location

Emigration- a migration from a location

• Immigration- migration to a location

• economic reasons
• cultural and environmental factors also induce migration, although not as frequently as economic factors

• Push Factor- induces people to move out of their present location (people view their residence to negatively they feel pushed away)

• Pull Factor- induces some people to move into a new location (people find a place so attractive they feel pulled in)

• 1930's
• severe drought which caused thousands of families to abandon their farms and homes in Oklahoma and surrounding states

• large scale emigration of talented people

• migration of people to a specific location because relatives or members of the same nationality previously migrated there

• Guest Workers- workers who migrate to the more developed countries of Northern and Western Europe, usually from Southern and Eastern Europe or from North Africa, in search of higher-paying jobs

• Time-Contract Workers- millions of Asians migrated in the nineteenth century, recruited for a fixed perioed to work in mines or on plantations, and when their contracts expired, many would settle permanently in the new country