World Geography - Final Exam Study Guide PDF

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World Regional Geography Final Exam Study Guide

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Chapter 1 Agriculture – The practice of producing food and other products through animal husbandry, or the raising of animals, and the cultivation of plants. Authoritarianism – A political system that subordinates individual freedom to the power of the state or of elite regional and local leaders. Birth rate – The number of births per 1000 people in a given population, per unit of time (usually per year). Capitalism – An economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods, driven by the profit motive and characterized by a competitive marketplace; an economic system characterized by privately owned businesses and industrial firms that adjust prices and output to match the demands of the market. Carrying Capacity – The maximum number of people that a given territory can support sustainably with food, water, and other essential resources. Cartographers – A geographer who specializes in depicting geographic information on maps. Climate change – A slow shifting of climate patterns due to the general cooling or warming of the atmosphere. Climate – The long-term balance of temperature and precipitation that characteristically prevails in a particular region. Culture – All the ideas, materials, and institutions that people have invented to use to live on Earth that are not directly part of our biological inheritance. Death rate – The ratio of total deaths to total population in a specified community, usually expressed in numbers per 1000 or in percentages. Democratization – The transition toward political systems guided by competitive elections. Development – An inexact concept typically referring to the shift from primary activities to secondary, tertiary, and quaternary activities. Domestication – The process whereby humans used selective breeding to develop plants and animals for use as food, construction materials, and sources of energy, or to improve life in other ways. Ecological footprint – The amount of biologically productive land and sea area needed to sustain a person at the current average standard of living for a given population. Ethnic group – A group of people who share a common ancestry and sense of common history, a set of beliefs, a way of life, a technology, and usually a common geographic location of origin. Extraction – Mining, forestry, and agriculture (the primary sector). Floodplain – The flat land around a river where sediment is deposited during flooding.

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Food security – The ability of a society to consistently supply a sufficient amount of basic food to the entire population; when people consistently have access to sufficient amounts of food to maintain a healthy life. Free trade – The unrestricted international exchange of goods, services, and capital. Gender – The ways a particular social group defines the differences between the sexes. Gender Roles – The socially assigned roles for males and females although exceptions and variations exist. Global economy – The worldwide system in which goods, services, and labor are exchanged. Globalization – The growth of worldwide linkages and the changes these linkages are bringing about in daily life, especially in economies, but also in cultural and biological spheres. Green Revolution – Increases in food production brought about through the use of new seeds, fertilizers, mechanized equipment, irrigation, pesticides, and herbicides. Greenhouse gases (GHG) – Gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, released into the atmosphere by human activities, which become harmful when released in excessive amounts. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita – The total market value of all goods and services produced within a particular country’s borders and within a given year, divided by the number of people in the country. Gross National Income (GNI) per capita – The sum of a country’s gross domestic product plus all net income received from overseas, divided by the mid-year population. Human geography – The study of patterns and processes that have shaped human understanding, use, and alteration of Earth’s surface. Human well-being – Various measures of the extent to which people are able to obtain a healthy and socially rewarding standard of living in an environment that is safe and sustainable. Immigration – In-migration to a place or country. Industrial Revolution – A series of innovations and ideas that occurred broadly between 1750 and 1850, which changed the way goods were manufactured. Landforms – Physical features of Earth’s surface, such as mountain ranges, river valleys, basins, and cliffs. Latitude – The distance in degrees north or south of the equator; lines of latitude run parallel to the equator, and are also called parallels. Less developed countries (LDC) – Countries that have labor-intensive and low-wage, often agricultural, economies. Longitude – The distance in degrees east and west of Greenwich, England; lines of longitude, also called meridians, run from pole to pole (the line of longitude at Greenwich is 0° and is known as the prime meridian). Map projections – The various ways of showing the spherical Earth on a flat surface. Migration – The movement of people from one place or country to another, often for safety or economic reasons.

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More developed countries (MDCs) – Countries that have economies often generated by tertiary and quaternary sectors and that generally provide adequate education, health care, and other social services to help their people contribute to economic development. Multicultural society – A society in which many culture groups live in close association. Orographic rainfall – Rainfall produced when a moving moist air mass encounters a mountain range, rises, cools, and releases condensed moisture that falls as rain. Physical geography – The study of Earth’s physical processes: how they work and interact, how they affect humans, and how they are affected by humans. Plate tectonics – The scientific theory that Earth’s surface is composed of large plates that float on top of an underlying layer of molten rock; the movement and interaction of the plates create many of the large features of Earth’s surface, particularly mountains. Political freedoms – The rights and capacities that support individual and collective liberty and public participation in political decision making. Population pyramid – A graph that depicts the age and sex structures of a political unit, usually a country. Primary sector – Economic activity based on extracting resources (mining, forestry, and agriculture). Quaternary sector – Economic activities based on intellectual pursuits in education, research, and information technology. Race – A social or political construct that is based on apparent characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, and face and body shape, but that is of no biological significance. Region – A unit of Earth’s surface that contains distinct patterns of physical features and/or distinct patterns of human development. Scale (of a map) – The proportion that relates the dimensions of the map to the dimensions of the area it represents; also, variable-sized units of geographical analysis from the local scale to the regional scale to the global scale. Secondary sector – Economic activity based on processing, manufacturing, and construction. Spatial distribution – The arrangement of a phenomenon across Earth’s surface. Spatial interaction – The flow of goods, people, services, or information across space and among places. Subsistence economy – An economy in which families produce most of their own food, clothing, and shelter. Sustainable agriculture – Farming that meets human needs without poisoning the environment or using up water and soil resources. Sustainable development – The improvement of current standards of living in ways that will not jeopardize those of future generations. Tertiary sector – Economic activity based on sales, entertainment, and financial services. United Nations (UN) – An assembly of 193-member states that sponsors programs and agencies that focus on economic development, security, general health and well-being,

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democratization, peacekeeping assistance in hot spots around the world, humanitarian aid, and scientific research. United Nations Gender Development Index (GDI) rank – A composite measure of disparity in human development (longevity, education, and income) by gender. The closer the rank is to 1, the smaller the gap between women and men; that is, the more that the genders are tending toward equality. United Nations Human Development Index (HDI) – An index that calculates a country’s level of well-being, based on a formula of factors that considers income adjusted to PPP, data on life expectancy at birth, and data on educational attainment. Urbanization – The process whereby cities, towns, and suburbs grow as populations shift from rural to urban livelihoods. Water footprint – All the water a person consumes, including both virtual water and the water they consume directly. Weather – The short-term and spatially limited expression of climate that can change in a matter of minutes. Chapter 7 Agroforestry - Growing economically useful crops of trees on farms, in conjunction with the usual plants and crops, to reduce dependence on trees from non-farmed forests and to provide income to the farmer. Apartheid – A system of laws mandating racial segregation; South Africa was an apartheid state from 1948 until 1994. Carbon sequestration – The removal and storage of carbon taken from the atmosphere. Commercial agriculture – Farming in which crops are grown deliberately for cash rather than solely as food for the farm family. Commodities – Raw materials that are traded, usually to other countries, for processing or manufacturing into more valuable goods. Commodity dependence – Economic dependence on exports of agricultural and mineral raw materials. Desertification – A set of ecological changes that converts arid lands into deserts. Divide and rule(conquer) – The deliberate intensification of divisions and conflicts by potential rulers; in the case of sub-Saharan Africa, by European colonial powers. Dual economy – An economy in which the population is divided by economic disparities into two groups, one prosperous and the other near or below the poverty level. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) – Removing the labia and clitoris and sometimes stitching the vulva nearly shut. Genocide – The deliberate destruction of an ethnic, racial, religious, or political group. Grassroots economic development – Economic development projects designed to provide sustainable livelihoods in rural and urban areas; these often use simple technology that requires minimal or no investment in imported materials. Groundwater – Water naturally stored in aquifers as long as 5000 years ago during wetter climate conditions.

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Horn of Africa – The triangular peninsula that juts out from northeastern Africa below the Red Sea and wraps around the Arabian Peninsula. Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) – A band of atmospheric currents that circle the globe roughly around the equator; warm winds from both north and south converge at the ITCZ, pushing air upward and causing copious rainfall. Mixed agriculture – Farming that involves raising a variety of crops and animals on a single farm, often to take advantage of several environmental riches Pastoralism – A way of life based on herding; practiced primarily on savannas, on desert margins, or in the mixture of grass and shrubs called open bush. Sahel – A band of arid grassland, where steppe and savanna grasses grow, that runs east-west along the southern edge of the Sahara. Subsistence agriculture -Farming that provides food for only the farmer’s family and is usually done on small farms. Chapter 8 Agroecology – The practice of traditional, nonchemical methods of crop fertilization and the use of natural predators to control pests. Buddhism – A religion of Asia that originated in India in the sixth century B.C.E. as a reinterpretation of Hinduism; it emphasizes modest living and peaceful self-reflection leading to enlightenment. Caste system – A complex, ancient Hindu system for dividing society into hereditary hierarchical classes. Civil disobedience – Protesting of laws or policies by peaceful direct action. Dowry – A price paid by the family of the bride to the groom (the opposite of bride price); formerly, a custom practiced only by the rich. Green Revolution – Increases in food production brought about through the use of new seeds, fertilizers, mechanized equipment, irrigation, pesticides, and herbicides. Hinduism – A major world religion practiced by approximately 900 million people, 800 million of whom live in India; a complex belief system, with roots both in ancient literary texts (known as the Great Tradition) and in highly localized folk traditions (known as the Little Tradition). Jainism – A religion of Asia that originated as a reformist movement within Hinduism more than 2000 years ago; Jains are found mainly in western India and large urban centers throughout the region and are known for their educational achievements, nonviolence, and strict vegetarianism. Microcredit – A program based on peer support that makes very small loans available to very low-income entrepreneurs. Offshore outsourcing – The contracting of certain business functions or production functions to providers in areas where labor and other costs are lower. Purdah – The practice of concealing women from the eyes of nonfamily men.

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Regional conflict – A conflict created by the resistance of a regional ethnic or religious minority to the authority of a national or state government; currently, these are the most intense armed conflicts in South Asia. Religious nationalism – The association of a particular religion with a particular territory or political unit to the exclusion of other religions. Subcontinent – A term often used to refer to the entire Indian peninsula, including Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Monsoon – A wind pattern in which in summer months, warm, wet air coming from the ocean brings copious rainfall, and in winter, cool, dry air moves from the continental interior toward the ocean. Taliban – An archconservative Islamist movement that gained control of the government of Afghanistan for a while in the mid-1990s. Chapter 9 Ainu – An indigenous cultural minority group in Japan characterized by their light skin, heavy beards, and thick, wavy hair who are thought to have migrated thousands of years ago from the northern Asian steppes. Confucianism – A Chinese philosophy that teaches the importance of stability and social order based on traditional institutions such as the patriarchal family, community, and the state. Cultural Revolution – A political movement launched in 1966 to force the entire population of China to support the continuing revolution. Export-led growth – An economic development strategy that relies heavily on the production of manufactured goods destined for sale abroad. Floating population – The Chinese term for people who live and work in a place other than their household registration location; many are people who have left economically depressed rural areas for the cities. Food security – The ability of a society to consistently supply a sufficient amount of basic food to the entire population; when people consistently have access to sufficient amounts of food to maintain a healthy life. Great Leap Forward – A failed economic reform program under Mao Zedong intended to quickly raise China’s industrial level. Growth poles – Zones of development whose success draws more investment and migration to a region. Regional self-sufficiency – An economic policy in Communist China that encouraged each region to develop independently in the hope of evening out the wide disparities in the national distribution of production and income. Regional specialization – Specialization (rather than self-sufficiency) that takes advantage of regional variations in climate, natural resources, and location. Responsibility system – The second economic reform enacted by China. At the local level, economic decision making was decentralized. Under the responsibility system, farmers now could make household-level decisions, subject to the approval of the commune, about how to use land and which crops to grow.

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Special Economic Zones (SEZs) – Free trade zones within China, which are commonly called export processing zones (EPZs) elsewhere. State-aided market economy – An economic system based on market principles but with strong government guidance, in contrast to the limited government, free market economic system of the United States and, to a lesser degree, Europe. Tsunami – A large sea wave caused by an earthquake. Typhoon – A tropical storm in the western Pacific Ocean; called a cyclone or hurricane elsewhere. Wet rice cultivation – A prolific type of rice production that requires the plant roots to be submerged in water for part of the growing season. Chapter 10 Archipelago – A group, often a chain, of islands. Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – An organization of Southeast Asian governments that was established to further economic growth and political cooperation between member countries and with other areas of the world. Coral bleaching – Color loss that results when photosynthetic algae that live in the corals are expelled. Crony capitalism – A type of corruption in which politicians, bankers, and entrepreneurs, sometimes members of the same family, have close personal as well as business relationships. Cultural pluralism – The cultural identity characteristic of a region where groups of people from many different backgrounds have lived together for a long time but have remained distinct. Feminization of labor – The rising numbers of women in both the formal and the informal labor force. Foreign exchange – Foreign currency that countries need to purchase imports. Resettlement schemes – Government plans to move large numbers of people from one part of a country to another to relieve urban congestion, disperse political dissidents, or accomplish other social purposes; also called transmigration. Sex tourism – The sexual entertainment industry that services primarily men who travel for the purpose of living out their fantasies during a few weeks of vacation. Vietnam War - The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. T - The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including over 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than half of the dead were Vietnamese civilians. - Opposition to the war in the United States bitterly divided Americans, even after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. Communist forces ended the war by seizing control of South Vietnam in 1975, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following Vietnam, a nation in

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Southeast Asia on the eastern edge of the Indochinese peninsula, had been under French colonial rule since the 19th century. (Book) The bitterest battle for independence took place in French Indochina (the territories of present-da...