General Geographical Terminology
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
I
L
N
P
Q
R
S
T
U
W
- Aerial photograph - Image taken from the air showing characteristics of an area. It may be at an oblique angle (slanting angle) or a vertical angle (straight down).
- Agricultural production - Using the land to produce food crops, non-food crops, industrial products and livestock.
- Agricultural yields - The agricultural output per hectare of land e.g. crop yields, milk yields.
- Altitude - Height of a feature above sea level.
- Annotations - Notes or comments added to a map, a diagram, a graph, a photo or a piece of text to expand on what is in the original work or explain something about the original.
- Anomalies - Data that does not fit in with the trend or pattern of the rest of the data. An inconsistency.
B
- Biodiversity - The variety of living organisms and the environments they form.
- Biome - A major terrestrial vegetation community e.g. a tropical forest, a temperate grassland or a desert.
- Biophysical processes - Interconnected sequences that form and transform natural environments in a cause-and-effect relationship e.g. erosion, deposition, soil formation, nutrient cycling.
C
- Cause and effect - A cause is why something happens. An effect is what happens as a result of the cause.
- Criteria - A standard used to judge something.
- Climate - The average types of weather, including seasonal variations, experienced by a place or region over a long period of time.
- Climate change - A long-term change in regional or global climate patterns e.g. annual precipitation, frequency of weather events.
- Climatic zones - Refers to areas of the Earth that have similar temperatures. The major zones are hot, temperate and polar and are generally demarcated by lines of latitude. Within each zone there are different climates, because of the effects of the distribution of continents and oceans and the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and oceans.
- Consequence diagram - A diagram which represents causes of particular events or actions and the effects or consequences of these actions.
- Cross section - A cross section is the outline of the surface on a graph, usually of a vertical section across and through a landscape, using contour data.
- Cultural groups - People belonging to or identifying with a nationality, ethnic group, religion or social group with a distinct culture.
- Culture - The customs, habits, beliefs, social organisation and ways of life that characterise different groups and communities.
- Custodial responsibility - The obligation that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples care for the Country/Place on which they live, even if they are not traditional owners of that Country/Place. Traditional owners have primary responsibility for Country/Place.
- Cycle - A series of events that are either repeated or follow a sequence in a period of time.
D
- Decision-making matrix - A matrix used to analyse (determine the relative strengths and weaknesses of) a set of options against a set of criteria, enabling an informed decision to be made. In Geography, three general criteria are used in a matrix — social, economic and environmental. Evaluates and prioritises a list of options by establishing a list of weighted criteria and then evaluating each option against those criteria.
- Demographics - Statistics that refer to the make up of a population. E.g. age, gender, income, marital status.
- Developed - A country that has a strong economy, people’s physical and emotional needs are met, and there is political stability and freedom.
- Developing - A country that is trying to become developed by improving economic, social and political factors.
- Development - The process of improvement from one state to a perceived better state.
- Diagram - A simplified drawing showing the main features of something.
- Disaster - When a hazard results in extensive damage to people, places and environments.
- Distribution - The way in which something is spread over an area.
- Distribution patterns - A pattern which highlights the spread of something over an area.
E
- Economic/ Economic factor - Relating to the production, development and management of wealth at a range of scales (individual to global). Refers to the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services, the distribution of wealth and use of income.
- Environment - The living and non-living elements of the Earth's surface and atmosphere. Where unqualified, it includes human changes to the Earth's surface eg croplands, planted forests, buildings and roads.
- Environmental factor - Relating to the natural world. Often further implies the impact of human activity on the condition of the natural world. Refers to the living and non-living elements of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, and the impact that human activity has on its condition.
- Environmental functions - Processes of an ecosystem that supports human life and economic activity.
- Environmental quality - The characteristics of an environment or place that affect people's physical and mental health and quality of life eg the extent of air and water pollution, noise, access to open space, traffic volumes, the visual effects of buildings and roads.
- Environmental resource - An environmental resource is anything from nature that is useful to humans. Sometimes called a natural resource.
- Environmental worldview - A person's view of the relationship between humans and nature e.g. human-centred worldview: humans are separate from nature and any environmental problems can be solved by technology; earth-centred worldview: humans are a part of, and dependent on, nature and have to work with nature to resolve environmental problems.
- Ethical protocols - The application of fundamental ethical principles when undertaking research and collecting information e.g. confidentiality, informed consent, citation and integrity of data.
F
- Field sketches - Annotated line drawings created to record features of an environment during fieldwork activities.
G
- Geographic Information Systems (GIS) - Systems for storing, managing, analysing and portraying spatial data.
- Geographical challenges - Issues and problems arising from interactions between people, places and environments that threaten sustainability e.g. biodiversity loss, food insecurity, inequality.
- Geographical data - Quantitative or qualitative information about people, places and environments.
- Geographical processes - The physical and human forces that work in combination to form and transform the world e.g. erosion, the water cycle, migration and urbanisation. Geographical processes can operate within and between places.
- Geographically significant question - A significant question to the geographic inquiry process and a question worth investigating.
- Geography - The study of places and spaces in the world over time. These occur both naturally and via human beings, for many reasons.
- Geomorphic processes - Natural processes that transform the lithosphere to create distinctive landscapes and landforms e.g. erosion, weathering, tectonic activity.
- Global Positioning Systems (GPS) - Navigation systems that provide location and time information anywhere there is a line of sight to GPS satellites.
I
- Infrastructure - The organisation of systems such as roads, transport and communication systems which serve an area, country or region.
L
- Liveability - An assessment of what a place is like to live in, using particular criteria such as environmental quality, safety, access to shops and services and cultural activities.
- Local - The local area is defined as the area around the student’s home or school that can be explored in a few hours. The local level of scale refers to all areas of similar size.
N
- Natural environment - All living and non-living things that occur naturally on the planet.
- Natural hazard - When the forces of nature combine to become destructive and have potential to damage the environment and endanger communities e.g. bushfires, tropical cyclones, floods, earthquakes.
- Natural resources - Resources provided by nature. Resources can be classified as renewable, non-renewable and continuous. Also known as environmental resources.
- Natural vegetation - The vegetation that has evolved in an area over time.
P
- Perception - People's assessment of places and environments.
- Physical factor - a geographical sub-field concerned with the features, processes and patterns that make up the natural environment. E.g. physical geography, water, resources, soil.
- Population density - The number of people in an area of land usually expressed as a number per square kilometre.
- Precipitation - Forms of water falling from the atmosphere to the Earth's surface e.g. rain, hail, snow, sleet.
- Primary data - Raw data that has been collected from a source that has not been modified, manipulated or analysed in any way. Original materials collected by someone e.g. field notes, measurements, responses to a survey or questionnaire.
- Primary sources - Original materials, data or information that has not been altered, modified or distorted in any way.
- Proposal - A plan of action.
Q
- Qualitative methods - Explanatory and interpretive methods e.g. participant observation, focus group discussion or interviews, which are used to gather qualitative data.
- Quantitative - Information or data based on quantities.
- Quantitative methods - Statistical and other methods used to analyse quantitative data.
R
- Relationships - The influence or impact of one factor upon another.
- Reliability of sources - The trustworthiness of a source — the extent to which it can be accepted as providing a true account of something. Establishing the suitability of sources using a range of categories such as domain type (for example: .gov, .edu), verifiability of sources (for example: other sources ‘back up’ claims made), methods of acquiring the information and qualifications of the author
- Remote - Places distant from major population and economic centres.
- Remote sensing - The collection of information about a geographical feature from a distance e.g. via aircraft or satellite.
- Research - Inquiry into a range of materials, such as documents and artefacts, used to establish facts and reach conclusions.
- Rural - An area of a country that is outside larger population areas and has low population density.
S
- Secondary data - Data collected by someone other than the user/party writing a document.
- Secondary sources - Sources that are usually published by a third party and which analyse primary sources. Sources of information that have been collected, processed, interpreted and published by others e.g. census data, newspaper articles, and images or information in a published report.
- Settlement pattern -The spatial distribution of different types of human settlement e.g. isolated houses, towns, cities.
- Social/ Social factor- Relating to people, culture, society and social organisation. Pertaining to human society and people’s connection with other people.
- Social connectedness - A measure of the number and strength of people's social relationships with other people in the same place, or in other places via face-to-face connections or electronic methods. The opposite of good social connections is social isolation, or loneliness.
- Socio-economic - Factors related to the interaction of social and economic considerations.
- Source - A place, person or other thing from which data, information, maps, graphs, etc, can be obtained.
- Spatial distribution - The way in which different geographical features (both natural and human) are spread over the Earth's surface. The location and arrangement of particular phenomena, features or activities across the surface of the Earth.
- Spatial variation - The difference or variation in natural and human features over an area of the Earth's surface e.g. water, population, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), life expectancy.
- Stimulus - Something that triggers an academic response, e.g. maps, photographs, articles.
- Sustainability - The concept of sustainability is about the capacity of the environment to continue to support human lives and the lives of other living creatures into the future. As a concept in the curriculum it is used to frame questions, evaluate the findings of investigations, guide decisions and plan actions about environments, places and communities.
- Subjective data - Measures in a study which have value because of perceptions or interpretations of people (e.g. a dog park in an area is valuable to those people who own dogs).
T
- Temporal - Relating to time
U
- Urban concentration - The proportion of a country or region's population living in urban areas.
- Urbanisation - The process of economic and social change in which an increasing proportion of the population of a country or region live in urban areas
W
- Weather - The condition of the atmosphere at a point in time e.g. temperature, humidity.