Category 1: Location & Maps
The exact position of a place on Earth, described using latitude and longitude coordinates.
What is Absolute Location?
The overall movement of people from one place to another to live permanently or for an extended period.
What is Human Migration?
Natural features of the Earth's surface, which include both landforms (like mountains) and water bodies (like rivers).
What are Physical Features?
To change or alter the physical environment—such as clearing forests or building dams—to better meet human needs.
What is to Modify? Or Human Modification
Sparsely populated areas outside of cities dominated by open land, agriculture, and small communities
What are Rural areas?
This type of map shows natural features of the Earth's surface, such as landforms and body of water formations
What is a Physical Map?
Negative conditions in a home country or region—like war, poverty, or natural disasters—that compel people to leave.
What are Push Factors?
Materials found in nature—such as water, forests, minerals, and oil—that people use to meet their needs.
What are Natural Resources?
A system of transporting water from rivers or other sources to dry land to grow crops.
What is Irrigation?
The process of areas becoming more city-like as populations grow and people move from rural countryside into densely populated regions.
What is Urbanization?
Describing the position of a place in relation to other places around it using landmarks or directional cues (e.g., "Mexico is south of the United States").
What is Relative Location?
Desirable conditions in a new destination—like economic opportunities, jobs, or political freedom—that attract migrants.
What are Pull Factors?
Physical features like mountains, deserts, or large bodies of water that hinder travel, isolate societies, and limit trade.
What are Transportation Barriers?
To change human behavior, lifestyle, or technology in response to environmental conditions in order to survive and thrive.
What is Adapt? Or Human Adaptation
Routes—like rivers, highways, railways, or sea lanes—that allow people and goods to move, connecting societies for trade
What are Transportation Corridors?
This type of map focuses on human-made boundaries, such as state lines, country borders, and capital cities.
What is a Political Map?
The act of leaving one's home country or region to permanently settle somewhere else.
What is Emigration?
Natural events outside human control—such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and climate patterns—that shape the Earth's surface.
What are Physical Processes?
Characteristics of a place that have been created or modified by people, such as roads, cities, and political borders.
What are Human Features?
This term describes cities and densely populated areas where large numbers of people live and work in close proximity.
What is Urban?
The non-random way that people are spread out across a place or region, shaped by access to water, climate, and land.
What is a Population Pattern?
The movement of people arriving in a new country or region to settle permanently
What is immigration?
Physical features and characteristics of a place (like climate, landforms, and water access) that influence how human societies organize and build.
What are Geographic Factors?
The ways people use resources to produce goods and services and earn a living (e.g., agriculture, manufacturing, services).
What are Economic Activities?
Lack of services and limited job opportunities in countryside areas often serve as this type of migration driver.
What is a Rural Push Factor?