Geography: Vocabulary
Types of Maps:
- Aerial photographs – a photograph taken from an aircraft or satellite in flight.
- Cultural – (also known as cultural resource mapping or cultural landscape mapping) is the label organizations and peoples (including UNESCO) concerned about safeguarding cultural diversity give to a wide range of research techniques and tools used to "map" distinct peoples' tangible and intangible cultural assets within local landscapes around the world. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_mapping)
- Physical – a depiction of the identifiable landmarks on DNA, such as genes, and measured in base pairs; depict the physical features of its continents and geographical regions by means of colors, gradients and shades.
- Political – a representation of a country's territories, boundaries, and capital(s) on paper or other material.
- Topographical – depict the three-dimensional features of the earth on a two-dimensional surface. Topographical maps show the shape of the surface of the earth in mountains, hills, and valleys through the use of contour lines.
- Weather – a map or chart showing weather conditions over a wide area at a particular time, compiled from simultaneous observations at different places.
- Bay – a body of water forming an indentation of the shoreline, larger than a cove but smaller than a gulf; a recess of land, partly surrounded by hills.
- City – a large or important town; (in the U.S.) an incorporated municipality, usually governed by a mayor and a board of aldermen or councilmen; the inhabitants of a city collectively.
- Continent – one of the main landmasses of the globe, usually reckoned as seven in number (Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica); a comparable landmass on another planet; the mainland, as distinguished from islands or peninsulas.
- Country – a state or nation; the territory of a nation; the people of a district, state, or nation; the land of one's birth or citizenship.
- Desert – a region so arid because of little rainfall that it supports only sparse and widely spaced vegetation or no vegetation at all; any area in which few forms of life can exist because of lack of water, permanent frost, or absence of soil.
- Ecosystem – a system, or a group of interconnected elements, formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment; any system or network of interconnecting and interacting parts, as in a business.
- Equator – the great circle on a sphere or heavenly body whose plane is perpendicular to the axis, equidistant everywhere from the two poles of the sphere or heavenly body; the great circle of the earth that is equidistant from the North Pole and South Pole.
- Forest – a large tract of land covered with trees and underbrush; woodland; the trees on such a tract; to supply or cover with trees; convert into a forest.
- Global warming – an increase in the earth's average atmospheric temperature that causes corresponding changes in climate and that may result from the greenhouse effect.
- Grassland – an area, as a prairie, in which the natural vegetation consists largely of perennial grasses, characteristic of sub humid and semiarid climates; land with grass growing on it, especially farmland used for grazing or pasture.
- Ice cap – a thick cover of ice over an area, sloping in all directions from the center.
- International Dateline – an imaginary line on the surface of the Earth that runs from the North Pole to the South Pole and demarcates the change of one calendar day to the next. It passes through the middle of the Pacific Ocean, roughly following the 180° line of longitude but deviating to pass around some territories and island groups. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Date_Line)
- Island – a tract of land completely surrounded by water, and not large enough to be called a continent; something resembling an island, especially in being isolated or having little or no direct communication with others.
- Latitude – the angular distance north or south from the equator of a point on the earth's surface, measured on the meridian of the point; a place or region as marked by this distance.
- Legend – a table on a map, chart, or the like, listing and explaining the symbols used.
- Longitude –angular distance east or west on the earth's surface, measured by the angle contained between the meridian of a particular place and some prime meridian, as that of Greenwich, England, and expressed either in degrees or by some corresponding difference in time.
- Map projections – attempts to portray the surface of the earth or a portion of the earth on a flat surface. Some distortions of conformity, distance, direction, scale, and area always result from this process. (http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/mapproj/mapproj_f.html)
- Mineral – any of a class of substances occurring in nature, usually comprising inorganic substances, as quartz or feldspar, of definite chemical composition and usually of definite crystal structure, but sometimes also including rocks formed by these substances as well as certain natural products of organic origin, as asphalt or coal.
- Mountain ranges – a series of more or less connected mountains ranged in a line; a series of mountains, or of more or less parallel lines of mountains, closely related, as in origin; an area in which the greater part of the land surface is in considerable degree of slope, upland summits are small or narrow, and there are great differences in elevations within the area (commonly over 2000 feet, or 610 meters).
- Ocean – the vast body of salt water that covers almost three fourths of the earth's surface; any of the geographical divisions of this body, commonly given as the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Antarctic oceans.
- Plain – an area of land not significantly higher than adjacent areas and with relatively minor differences in elevation, commonly less than 500 feet (150 meters), within the area.
- Plateaus – a land area having a relatively level surface considerably raised above adjoining land on at least one side, and often cut by deep canyons; a period or state of little or no growth or decline.
- Pollution – the act of polluting or the state of being polluted; the introduction of harmful substances or products into the environment.
- Population density – the number of people living per unit of an area (e.g. per square mile); the number of people relative to the space occupied by them
- River – a natural stream of water of fairly large size flowing in a definite course or channel or series of diverging and converging channels; a similar stream of something other than water.
- Scale – a succession or progression of steps or degrees; graduated series; a series of marks laid down at determinate distances, as along a line, for purposes of measurement or computation; a graduated line, as on a map, representing proportionate size.
- Sea – the salt waters that cover the greater part of the earth's surface; a division of these waters, of considerable extent, more or less definitely marked off by land boundaries; one of the seven seas; ocean; a large lake or landlocked body of water.
- Tundra – one of the vast, nearly level, treeless plains of the arctic regions of Europe, Asia, and North America.
- Valley – an elongated depression between uplands, hills, or mountains, especially one following the course of a stream; an extensive, more or less flat, and relatively low region drained by a great river system; any depression or hollow resembling a valley.
All definitions found from www.dictionary.com unless stated otherwise.