the natural landscape with its array of landforms (such as mountains and plateaus) is a key element in the total physical geography – or physiography – of any part of the terrestrial world. Other physiographic components include climate and the physical features that mark the natural landscape, such as vegetation, soils, and water bodies. Literally means landscape description, but commonly refers to the total physical geography of a place; includes all of the features of the Earth’s surface, including landforms, climate, soils, vegetation, and water bodies.

the Romans founded numerous other cities throughout their empire and linked them to the capital through a vast system of overland and water routes, facilitating political control and enabling economic growth in their provinces. It was an unparalleled infrastructure (or setup), much of which long outlasted the empire itself. The foundations of a society: urban centers, transport networks, communications, energy distribution systems, farms, factories, mines, and such facilities as schools, hospitals, postal services, and police and armed forces. 

Roman rule brought disparate, isolated peoples into the imperial political and economic sphere. By guiding (and often forcing) these groups to produce particular goods or materials, the Romans launched Europe down a road for which it would become famous: local functional specialization. The workers on Elba, a Mediterranean island, mined iron ore. Those near Cartagena in Spain produced silver and lead. Certain farmers were taught irrigation to produce specialty crops. Others raised livestock for meat or wool. The production of particular goods by particular people in particular places became and remained a hallmark of the realm. A hallmark of Europe’s economic geography that later spread to many other parts of the world, whereby particular people in particular places concentrate on the production of particular goods and services. 

Mercantilism and colonialism empowered the states of Western Europe; the UK (Britain) was the superpower of its day. But all countries, even Europe’s nation-states in their heyday, are subject to divisive stresses. Political geographers use the term centrifugal forces to identify and measure the strength of such division, which may result from religious, racial, linguistic, political, economic, or regional factors. 

Centrifugal forces are measured against centripetal forces, the binding, unifying glue of the state. General satisfaction with the system of government and administration, legal institutions, and other functions of the state (notably including its treatment of minorities) can ensure stability and continuity when centrifugal forces threaten. In the recent case of Yugoslavia, the centrifugal forces unleashed after the end of the Cold War exceeded the weak centripetal forces in that relatively young state, and it disintegrated with dreadful consequences.

soon the economic steps led to greater political cooperation as well. In 1949, the participating governments created the Council of Europe, the beginnings of what was to become a European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg, France. Europe was embarked on still another political revolution, the formation of a multinational union involving a growing number of European states. Geographers define supranationalism as the voluntary association in economic, political, or cultural spheres of three or more independent states willing to yield some measure of sovereignty for their mutual benefit. Supranational organizations include the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but none has reached the plateau by the European Union (EU). 

the term devolution has come into use to describe the powerful centrifugal forces whereby regions or peoples within a state, through negotiation or active rebellion, demand and gain political strength and sometimes autonomy at the expense of the center. Most states exhibit some level of internal regionalism, but the process of devolution is set into motion when a key centripetal binding force – the nationally accepted idea of what a country stands for – erodes to the point that a regional drive for autonomy, or for outright secession, is launched. 

general term used to identify a large multimetropolitan complex formed by the coalescence of two or more major urban areas. The Atlantic Seaboard Megalopolis, extending along the northeastern U.S. coast from southern Maine to Virginia, is a classic example. 

opportunists in post-Soviet Russia who used their ties to government to enrich themselves.

the treeless plain that lies along the Arctic shore in northern-most Russia and Canada, whose vegetation consists of mosses, lichens, and certain hardy grasses. 

the subarctic, mostly coniferous snowforest that blankets northern Russia and Canada south of the tundra that lines the Arctic shore. 

Permanently frozen water in the near-surface soil and bedrock of cold environments, producing the effect of completely frozen ground; surface can thaw during brief warm season. 

capital city positioned in actually or potentially contested territory, usually near an international border; it confirms the state’s determination to maintain its presence in the region in contention. 

demographic resettlement policies pursued by the central planners of the Soviet Empire, whereby ethnic Russians were encouraged to emigrate from the Russian Republic to the 14^th non-Russian republics of the USSR. 

the reorganization of a country’s agriculture under communism that involves the expropriation of private holdings and their incorporation into relatively large-scale unites, which are farmed and administered cooperatively by those who live there. 

the various degenerative effects of distance on human spatial structures and interactions.

a far-flung group of countries and parts of countries (extending clockwise on the map from New Zealand to Chile) sharing the following criteria: they face the Pacific Ocean; they evince relatively high levels of economic development, industrialization, and urbanization; their imports and exports mainly move across Pacific waters. 

giving a Chinese cultural imprint; Chinese acculturation. 

government policy designed to reduce the rate of natural population increase. China’s one-child policy, instituted in 1979 after Mao’s death, is a classic example. 

manufacturing and export center within China, created since 1980 to attract foreign investment and technology transfers. Seven SEZ’s – all located on China’s Pacific coast – currently operate: Shenzhen, adjacent to Hong Cong; Zhuhai; Shantou; Xiamen; Hainan Island, in the far south; Pudong, across the river from Shanghai; and Binhai New Area, next to the port of Tianjin.  

one of the burgeoning beehive countries of the Western Pacific Rim. Following Japan’s route since 1945, these countries have experienced significant modernization, industrialization, and Western-style economic growth since 1980. Three leading economic tigers are South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. The term is increasingly used more generally to describe any fast-developing economy. 

in the eyes of the Western world, the Westernization process that involves the establishment of urbanization, a market (money) economy, improved circulation, formal schooling, adoption of foreign innovations, and the breakdown of traditional society. Non-Westerners mostly see “modernization” as an outgrowth of colonialism and often argue that traditional societies can be modernized without being modernized. 

government-controlled corporations competing under free-market conditions, usually in tightly regimented society. South Korea is a leading example. 

refers to the seasonal reversal of wind and moisture flows in certain parts of the subtropics and lower-middle latitudes. The wet monsoon occurs in the hot summer months, which produce onshore winds that bring large amounts of rainfall. The air-pressure differential over land and sea is the triggering mechanism, with windflows always moving from areas of relatively higher pressure toward areas of relatively low pressure. Monsoons make their greatest regional impact in the coastal and near-coastal zones of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. 

in a layered or stratified society, the population is divided into a hierarchy of social classes. In an industrialized society, the working class is at the lower end; elites that possess capital and control the means of production are at the upper level. In the traditional caste system of Hindu India, the “untouchables” form the lowest class or caste, whereas the still-wealthy remnants of the princely class are at the top. 

the field of geography that focuses on the spatial aspects of demography and the influence of demographic change on particular places. 

multi-stage model, based on Western Europe’s experience, of changes in population growth exhibited by countries undergoing industrialization. High birth rates and death rates are followed by plunging death rates, producing a huge net population gain; this is followed by the convergence of birth and death rates at a low overall level.  

the rapid growth of the world’s human population during the past century, attended by accelerating rates of increase. 

the strict social stratification and segregation of people – specifically in India’s Hindu society – on the basis of ancestry and occupation. 

a country whose institutions have collapsed and in which anarchy prevails. Somalia is a current example. 

territorial embodiment of a successful guerrilla movement. The establishment by antigovernment insurgents of a territorial base, in which they exercise full control; thus a state within a state. 

heartland, source area, discrete spatial unit; a region within which certain cultural norms prevail. 

the process of spreading and adopting a cultural element, from its place of origin across a wider area. 

 the theory that cities able to control irrigated a farming over large hinterlands held political power over other cities. Particularly applies to early Asian civilizations based in such river valleys as the Chang (Yangzi), the Indus, and those of Mesopotamia. 

the spreading of an innovation or an idea through a fixed population in such a way that the number of those adopting grows continuously larger, resulting in an expanding area of dissemination. 

sequential diffusion process in which their career agents transmit the items being diffused as they relocate to new areas. The most common from of relocation diffusion involves the spreading of innovations by a migrating population. 

the distance-controlled spreading of an idea, innovation, or some other item through a local population by contact from person to person – analogous to the communication of a contagious illness.

a form of diffusion in which an idea or innovation spreads by trickling down from larger to small adoption units. An urban hierarchy is usually involved, encouraging the leapfrogging of innovations over wide areas, with geographic distance a less important influence. 

introduction and establishment of the Muslim religion. A process still under way, most notably along the Islamic Front that marks the southern border of the African Transition Zone. 

religious movement whose objectives are to return the foundations of that faith and to influence state policy. Often called religious fundamentalism, but in the case of Islam, Muslims prefer the term revivalism. 

a national group that aspires to become a nation-state but lacks the territorial means to do so; the Palestinians and Kurds of Southwest Asia are classic examples.

the trough or trench that forms when a thinning strip of the Earth’s crust sinks between two parallel faults (surface fractures). 

the study of health and disease within a geographic context and from a spatial perspective. Among other things, this geographic field examines the sources, diffusion routes, and distribution of diseases. 

referring to a disease in a host population that affects many people in a kind of equilibrium without causing rapid and widespread deaths. 

a local or regional outbreak of a disease. 

an outbreak of a disease that spreads worldwide

the creation of a state based on traditions of human territoriality that go back thousands of years. 

rule by an autonomous power over a subordinate and an alien people and place. Though often established and maintained through political structures, colonialism also creates unequal cultural and economic relations. Because of the magnitude and impact of the European colonial thrust of the last few centuries, the term is generally understood to refer to that particular colonial endeavor. 

 literally means apartness. The Afrikaans term for South Africa’s pre-1994 policies of racial separation, a system that produced highly segregated socio-geographical patterns. 

A village market that opens every third day or at some other regular interval. Part of a regional network of similar markets in a preindustrial, rural setting where goods are brought to market on foot and barter remains a major mode of exchange. 

the southern border of the African Transition Zone that marks the religious frontier of the Muslim faith in its southward penetration of sub-Saharan Africa.

the way people own, occupy, and use land. 

one society or culture group taking land from another. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, European colonialists took land from indigenous Africans and put it to new uses.