1. Everything else you need to know from Unit 1.

2.  Situation identifies a place by its location relative to other objects.  Situation helps us find an unfamiliar place by comparing its location with a familiar one and helps us understand the importance of a location, e.g. because it is accessible to other places.  Site identifies a place by its unique physical characteristics, e.g. climate, water resources, topography, soil, vegetation, latitude and elevation.

3.  Site: Lower Manhattan Island Site of lower Manhattan Island, New York City. There have been many changes to the area over the last 200 years.

4. Singapore is situated at a key location for international trade

5.  Spatial analysis is concerned with analyzing regularities achieved through interaction.  Regularities result in a distinctive distribution of a feature.  Distribution has three properties:  Density  Concentration  Pattern

6.  Arithmetic density – the total number of objects (or people) in an area (e.g. houses per acre)  Physiological density – the number of persons per unit of area suitable for agriculture  Agricultural density – the number of farmers per unit area of farmland

7.  Concentration – the extent to which a feature (or population) is spread over space  Clustered  Dispersed  Pattern – the geometric arrangement of objects (or population) in space

8.  The density, concentration, and pattern (of houses in this example) may vary in an area or landscape.

9.  The changing distribution of North American baseball teams illustrates the differences between density and concentration.

10.  The physical environment may limit some human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to their environment by choosing a course of action from among many alternatives in the physical environment.  Human-Environment Interaction

11.  Environmental Determinism – the environment determines the fate of its human population  Environmental Possibilism – the environment influences the possibilities of its human population

12.  Determinism states that the environment limits and controls humanity's actions and progressions.  Conversely, possibilism argues that man can control his surroundings through better time management and land-use.  As an intermediate theory, probabilism recognizes the limiting ability described with determinism yet allows for the modification and adaptation strengths noted by possibilism

13.  The idea that the environment has a causal effect on human culture; such beliefs prevailed up to the early 20th century  Environmental determinism could explain similarities across culture areas  Theorized by Friedrich Ratzel

14.  Also called cultural relativism  Environment was only important in limiting possibilities in a culture  Immediate cause of cultural features was other cultural features  Cultures choose from alternatives, with the environment determining the range of alternatives  Theorized by Franz Boas

16.  Spatial interaction – the interdependence among places established through the degree of movement of people, ideas and objects between regions  Diffusion – involves the movement of people, ideas and information between places, e.g. a “hearth” is an area where an innovation originates and then typically diffuses to another region

17.  Diffusion – the process by which a characteristic spreads across space from one place to another over time.  Interaction results from the diffusion of a feature.  Types of diffusion  Relocation diffusion (bodily movement)  Expansion diffusion (through snowballing)  Hierarchical diffusion (from a node)  Contagious diffusion (widespread)  Stimulus diffusion (underlying principles)

19.  Expansion Diffusion  Ideas spread throughout a population from area to area.  Creates a snowballing effect  Relocation Diffusion  Relocation diffusion occurs when individuals migrate to a new location carrying new ideas or practices with them  Religion is prime example

20.  Stimulus Diffusion  The spread of an underlying principle, even though the characteristic itself apparently fails to diffuse.  IBM/Windows-based computers outsell Apple computers worldwide.  But the Apple-initiated concepts of the mouse and the icon have become the standard of the industry.

21.  Ripples on a pond.  Acceptance of an innovation is strongest where it originated.  Acceptance weakens as it is diffused farther away.  Acceptance also weakens over time.

22. Space-time compression is the reduction in time it takes for something to reach another place.

24.  In the 1950s it took nearly 8 and a half hours to fly from New York to Los Angeles.  Today it takes less than 5.  In the 1840s it took 6 months to travel overland from St. Louis to Los Angeles.  Today you can make the trip in less than 24 hours

25.  Distance: there isn’t a unique concept of distance, because the real world presents a mixture of different types of distances (economic, physical, etc.)  Distance could be considered as the actual space travelled on a certain trip, and it could be expressed in time, in economical cost, in cultural terms, etc.

26.  Great Circle Routes. Shortest path between any two points on the surface of the Earth.  A great circle is a circle on a sphere's surface whose plane is passing exactly through the center of the sphere.  A great line follows the curvature of the Earth => it forms a curved line rather than a straight one. The line between New York and London as shown in the adjacent illustration lays on a great circle.

27.  Places are separated by absolute distance and by time.  With improvements in communication systems and methods of transport, this time-distance diminishes  The space/time convergence process investigates the changing relationship between space and time, and notably the impacts of transportation improvements on such a relationship.

28. 1500-1840 Average speed of wagon and sail ships: 16 km/hr 1850-1930 Average speed of trains: 100 km/hr. Average speed of steamships: 25 km/hr 1950 Average speed of airplanes: 480-640 km/hr 1970 Average speed of jet planes: 800-1120 km/hr 1990 Numeric transmission: instantaneous