World Geography
5 themes of geography
Location: Where something is on the globe
Place: The characteristics of a location
Movement: How things like goods, ideas, and people move around
Relative location: Where something is relative to something else.
Example: Wakanda is 112.65 miles north of Uganda.
Absolute location: Where something is in terms of its longitude and latitude coordinates, for example, Wakanda is located at 30 degrees south, 45 degrees east.
Human-Environment Interaction: How people influence and are influenced by the environment
Region: An area which is separated by surrounding areas by a defining characteristic
Latitude: How far a place is from the equator in degrees
Longitude: How far something is from the prime meridian in degrees
Physical geography
Human Geography
Climate
Climate vs. Weather: Climate is a long-term trend in an area's weather patterns. Weather is the condition of the atmosphere at any one time.
GPS
A system of satellites which is able to triangulate the position of anything on earth to an unbelievable degree of precision
Factors that effect climate: Proximity to large bodies of water, latitude, ocean currents, elevation, and relief
Climograph: A graph depicting average monthly precipitation and temperature.
GIS: A system for overlaying data on a map in order to analyze the data effectively.
Map distortion: Any map distorts either the area or shape of a place due to the fact that the round surface of the earth cannot be perfectly projected onto a flat surface.
Demography: The study of human population patterns
Population density: The number of people per unit land area
Rate of natural increase: The rate at which the population either grows or declines.
Death rate: Deaths per 1000 people every year
Birth rate: Births per 1000 people every year
Life expectancy: How long the average person in a certain area lives
Subsistence economy: An economy in which everyone grows food to feed themselves and their families and is able to sell little as a surplus
Total fertility rate: How many children an average woman has in her lifetime
Infant mortality rate: Deaths per 1000 infants per year
Demographic transition model: A model for the development of a nation that occurs in four stages:
- Poor technology, poor medical resources, high birthrate, high death rate, no population growth
- Developing technology and medical system, high birthrate, decreasing death rate, rapid population growth
- Nearly developed technology and medical care, decreasing birthrate, low deathrate, slowing population growth
- Modern technology and medical system, low birthrate, low death rate, little to no population growth
Population pyramid: A model for a region's population which shows the population of each age cohort in the region as a block representing its relative size in the total population
Dependency ratio: The ratio of working-age individuals to retired and young individuals in a population
Geopolitics: The study of political issues involving borders or arguments over the use of a certain area of land
Sovereignty: The ability of a government to control the area inside of its borders
Push/pull factors: Characteristics of a certain area which either drive people away from it or draw them to it.
Refugee: An individual who has been displaced from their home country by unlivable conditions and as a consequence is "stateless".
Asylum: The protection of refugees by a host country.
Ethnonationalism: Patriotic pride in one's country or ethnic group
Types of boundaries: Boundaries can encompass many forms. These include geometric boundaries defined usually as latitude or longitude lines, natural boundaries such as rivers or mountain ranges, or ocean boundaries, which are the borders of a nation which lie on the coast.
UNCLOS Treaty (United Nations Convention on the Law Of the Seas): A treaty which defines countries' international maritime borders.
Territorial waters: The extent of ocean territory for which a country has complete sovereignty.
Contiguous zone: The area of the ocean 24 miles off of the coast of a country over which the country can enforce partial control as to uphold its laws.
Exclusive economic zone: The area extending 200 miles off of a country's coast within which that country can conduct economic activities such as fishing and oil drilling without the interference of other nations.
International waters: The area of the ocean which lies more than 200 miles from any nation's coast
Median line principle: The principle that delegates how a stretch of ocean which could be claimed by multiple nations must be divided.
Territorial morphology
Compact State: A country who's borders are similarly spaced from the country's center.
Prorupted state: An otherwise compact state with an elongated projection off of one of its sides.
Perforated state: A country which encompasses other countries within it.
Elongated State: A country which is stretched out and whose borders are at disproportionate distances from its center.
Fragmented State: A country which is broken up into several different, discontinuous parts.
Enclave State: A country which is completely surrounded on all sides by another country.
Exclave State: A part of a country which is isolated from the mainland.
The Economy: A nation's system for producing goods and services.
Industrialization: The process of converting from an agricultural economy to one that is based on manufacturing.
Primary sector: The part of an economy which obtains/produces raw materials
Secondary sector: The section of an economy which converts raw materials into useful goods(manufacturing)
Tertiary sector: The economic sector which provides services to other people instead of goods
More-developed countries: Countries whose economies have industrialized and thus increased the wealth of their inhabitants to the level at which they can afford modern technology and medical care
Less-developed countries: Countries whose economies have not yet industrialized and thus are still relatively poor
Human development index: A compilation of a series of factors which indicate national development to determine the true economic development of a country
GDP per capita: How much the average individual in a country produces valued in dollars.
Globalization: The process of converting global economies from domestic economies in which most goods are produced and consumed in the same country to a global economy in which most goods are exchanged overseas.
Pros: Access to more products, cheap labor markets, foreign natural resources, etc, greater incentive for countries to get along, access to more markets for corporations
Cons: Causes the offshoring of jobs in many countries, which reduces the ability of the people living in those countries to get a high-paying job, partially responsible for the mass exploitation of foreign laborers, causes environmental issues when foreign countries, recently opened up to trade, begin doing things like polluting, clear-cutting, and other bad stuff
Geographic causes of inequality: Geographic factors which are theorized to have played a major role in causing the inequality in development seen across the world today.