AP Human Geography Unit Two

The cultural landscape is a combination of cultural features and physical features. It can also be defined as an area fashioned from nature by a cultural group. According to the regional studies approach (or contemporary landscape approach), each region has its own distinct landscape that results from a unique combination of social relationships and physical processes. Humans affect even unexplored areas with their actions through activities like pollution, acid rain, and water poisoning. Paul Vidal de la Blache and Jean Brunhes, and later Carl Sauer and Robert Platt, argued that humans also affect the physical environment; humans are the most important part of changes to the Earths surface and of the cultural landscape. Carl Sauer began the fad of studying cultural landscapes instead of pre-determined regions based on environment classifications; this changed the whole approach of studying cultural geography. He believed cultures and societies developed from and shaped the cultural landscape. His work began the study of human-environment relations (environmental geography and cultural ecology). The fundamental principle underlying the cultural landscape approach is that people are the most important agents of change of Earths surface. For example, cheap labor is taken into consideration when deciding on a location for a cotton plant. A cultural geographers job is to sort out the associations among various social characteristics, each of which is uniquely distributed across Earths surface. For example, cultural geographers have determined that political unrest in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and other areas derives in large measure from the fact that the distributions of important features (like ethnicity and resources) do not match political boundaries of countries. A region is an area of Earth distinguished by a unique combination of cultural and physical traits. The people, activities, and environment will display similarities within the region but will differ from other regions. For example, there are snowballs in New Orleans but snow cones in the North; also, in the South, people can dress sandwiches whereas people in the North cannot. A formal region (or a uniform or homogenous region) is an area with a definite border within which everyone shares one or more distinctive characteristics. The shared feature could be a cultural value (a common language), an economic activity (production of a crop), or an environmental property (climate). For example, Montana is a formal region; the North American wheat belt is also a formal region. A functional region (or a nodal region) is an area organized around a node or focal point according to a certain characteristic; the node is the central focus, and from there, the characteristic diminishes outward. The region is tied to the node by transportation or communications systems or by economic or functional associations. For example, television stations and The Times Picayune are functional regions. A vernacular region (or a perceptual region) is a place that people exists as a part of their cultural identity; this region emerges from peoples informal sense of place rather from scientific models developed through geographical thought. For example, the South is a vernacular region (high cotton production, low high school graduation rates, prevalently Baptist, etc.). A mental map is an internal representation of portion of Earths surface, depicting what an individual knows about a place. Scale can change conclusions drawn about a place; small-scaled maps tend to have a general conclusion, whereas large-scaled maps tend to have a more specific conclusion. For example, looking at all of America, geographers may conclude that the Northeast has higher cancer death rates because of winds blowing factory fumes to the air and, looking at one American city, may conclude that residents in poorer

neighborhoods may be more susceptible to cancer because of lack of cancer prevention and less funds to seek medical care. Spatial association is found in cultural, economic, and environmental factors with similar distributions. Culture is a learned behavior that is passed on by imitation, instruction, and example; it is almost entirely relative (proper behavior shifts from culture to culture). Culture traits include language, religion, and ethnicity. Humans are the primary determinant of culture. The origin of the word culture is the Latin cultus meaning to care for, which can be interpreted either as to care about (peoples ideas, beliefs, values, and customs) or to care for (earning a living and obtaining food, clothing, and shelter). The problems of the United States include little shared culture and no one teaching culture. Cultural ecology is the geographic study of human-environment relationships. In the 1800s, Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter urged human geographers to adopt the scientific inquiry methods used by natural scientists; they argued that the scientific study of social and natural processes is fundamentally the same. Natural scientists have made more progress in formulating general laws than have social scientists, so an important goal of human geographers is to establish general laws. Environmental determinism is an approach used by Humboldt and Ritter on how the physical environment causes social development. Friedrich Ratzel, Ellen Churchill Semple, and Ellsworth Huntington adopted this approach. For example, British people believed that Indians were lazier because of their hotter climate and therefore unable to be helped. Possibilism states that the physical environment may limit some human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to their environment. For example, New Orleans could be flooded by the Mississippi River, but humans built levees. Human geographers are concerned with four physical processes: climate, vegetation, soil, and landforms. Climate is the long term average weather condition at a particular location; it is divided into tropical climates, dry climates, warm mid-latitude climates, cold mid-latitude climates, and polar climates. Vegetation is the plant type that covers nearly the entire land surface of the earth; it is divided into forest (trees form a continuous canopy over the ground), savanna (a mixture of trees and grasses), desert (very little vegetation), and grassland (covered with grass) biomes. Soil is the material that forms Earths surface and is divided into ten orders. Landforms vary from flat to mountainous. The Netherlands (Holland) mostly lies below sea level. Dikes and dams blocked off the Zuider Zee from the oceans (changing it from saltwater to freshwater), making freshwater sources its only water source; this changed the ecosystem. Because the Netherlands was part of a river delta, parts of it flooded often; the Delta Plan was created to build dikes to protect people from flooding. The water supply was contaminated because of this, so the Dutch began to return the polders back to marshland and break dams. The Dutch began using solar and wind power and took measures to prevent pollution; they are now leaders in reducing the causes of global warming. Floridas environmental modification is considered insensitive. Jetties and seawalls were built on barrier islands to protect themselves from storms; however, this caused erosion on the other side of the barrier islands. Parts of the Everglades were destroyed for more farmland for sugarcane, citrus fruits, and cattle; the Kissimmee River was diverted into canals and Lake Okeechobee, an important freshwater source, was polluted with cattle waste and fertilizer. The 2000 Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan was created to restore the flow of water; however, the amount of businesses and population prevented this plan from taking action. Transnational corporations conduct research, operate factories, and sell products in many countries, not just where their headquarters and principal shareholders are located; they relate to a global economy because they connect, communicate, and interconnect the whole world. For example, GE has its headquarters in Seattle, but its manufacturing mainly takes place overseas.

Culture has become globalized due to the advancements of technology. People around the world have the same aspirations (owning a house, driving a car, wearing Nike shoes, wearing jeans, drinking Coke, etc.). The main religions are Islam and Christianity. More people speak English. Cultural groups also want to retain their unique cultural characteristics in the face of globalization; they beat down those with different ideas to show their superiority. For example, Al-Qaeda went to extreme measures by crashing airplanes into symbols of American globalization such as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Geographers have an advantage over historians in that historians are not able to travel back in time to visit the era (their unit of organization) they are studying and therefore must interpret; however, geographers are able to visit the region (their unit of organization). Distribution is the arrangement of a feature in space. Density is the frequency with which something exists within a given unit of area. Arithmetic density is the total number of people divided by the total land area. Physiological density is the number of people per unit of area of arable land. Agricultural density is the ratio of the number of farmers to the total amount of arable land. Concentration is the spread of something over a given area; it can be either clustered or dispersed. Pattern is the geometric arrangement of objects in space. Patterns may be either linear, grid, irregular, or urban. The American family pattern is that the drive drives to work and back; the mom drives the kids to school, runs errands, picks up the kids, drives them to Little League or ballet lessons, and maintains the home; and the kids go to school, go to Little League or ballet lessons, and go home. Gender roles have changed tremendously since then; gender affects patterns because of the activities specific to each gender. Race affects patterns because of unintended segregation (to reinforce cultural identity or because of poverty). Homosexuals also gravitate toward one another. Space-time compression is the reduction in the time it takes for something to reach another place. Distance decay is the trailing-off phenomenon in which contact diminishes with increasing distance and eventually disappears. Physical, geological, or cultural barriers can prevent interaction. Technology reduces distance decay. Diffusion is the process by which a characteristic spreads across space from one place to another over time. A hearth is the place from which an idea originates. Relocation diffusion is the spread of an idea through physical movement of people from one place to another. Expansion diffusion is the spread of a feature from one place to another in a snowballing process. This may result from hierarchical diffusion (the spread of an idea from persons or nodes of authority to other persons or places), contagious diffusion (rapid, widespread diffusion of a characteristic throughout the population), and stimulus diffusion (the spread of an underlying principle). Uneven development is the increasing gap in economic conditions between regions in the core and periphery that result from the globalization of the economy. The consequence is that uneven development is creating greater differences between the wealthy and the poor or the more developed and the less developed countries. For example, New Orleans has technology; however, Cote dIvoire does not but knows of this technology.