Exam 1: Basic Concepts

The South is established as a vernacular region of the United States by

The state of Texas is best considered a formal region because

For each 15° change in longitude, time changes by one hour.

Natural disasters strike around the world and are certainly not limited to hurricanes. Discuss the environmental, economic, and cultural ramifications of a natural disaster (not a hurricane) that has recently been reported in the news media. How have geographic concepts helped people either prepare for such disasters or cope with the aftermath? How has a lack of geographic perspective harmed these efforts?

A mathematical process for transferring locations from a globe to a flat map is a(n)

An area distinguished by one or more unique characteristics is a(n)

If the scale of a map is 1:100,000, then 1 centimeter on the map represents ________ on Earth's surface.

The arrangement of a phenomenon across Earth's surface is

Discuss opposition to a major development project which has garnered attention in your area, or which you have learned about in the news media. Is most of the opposition primarily economic, ecological, or cultural in essence? Employing geographic concepts from this chapter, discuss the project and its opposition. Do you believe that the project should be completed? Why or why not?

Discuss the ethical or moral implications of dedicating geographical research to the diffusion of a large corporation such as McDonald's. If you could design such a research project, explain whether and how you might focus more on consumer behaviors, environmental impacts (including the global market for meat), health issues involved in eating fast food (and the U.S. obesity epidemic), or other ethical issues. How important should these issues be to geographers, and why?

Distortion is especially severe and apparent on

Examining maps of cancer death rates drawn at different scales reveals that

Name one or two changes that have recently occurred in your town, community, or college that could have been improved by attention to spatial perspectives or geographic studies. Refer to recent news stories, construction, transportation projects, or social concerns that you can apply to the discussions in this chapter.

Which of the following is most likely a functional region?

A computer system that stores, organizes, retrieves, analyzes, and displays geographic data is

The environmental determinist approach to cultural ecology still appears in casual conversation, as well as in news media and in scholarly studies. In your observations of home, work, school, and government actions, what evidence have you seen of the persistence of environmental determinism? In contrast, where or in what contexts have you seen evidence of possibilist approaches to cultural ecology?

If you flew south along the International Date Line you would reach the South Pole, and if you continued flying straight ahead (with unlimited fuel) you would eventually cross the equator along the prime meridian.

Without looking at a map, we might deduce that the coordinates 170 W longitude, 11 S latitude are likely

If NASA sends a space probe into orbit around Mars, and that probe transmits images of the Martian surface back to Earth, we could say that

Parallels converge at the North and South Poles.