- Acid Deposition: Sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides, emitted by burning fossil fuels, enter the atmosphere-where they combine with oxygen and water to form sulfuric acid and nitric acid and return to earth's surface.
- Acid Precipitation: Conversion of sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides to acids that return to earth as rain,snow, or fog.
- Active solar energy systems: Solar energy system that collects energy through the use of mechanical devices like photovoltaic cells or falt plate collectors.
- Agribusiness: Commercial agriculture characterized by integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, usually through ownership by large corportations
- Agricultural Density: The ratio of the number of farmers to the total amount of land suitable for agriculture
- Agricultural Revolution: The time when humans beings first domesticated palnts and animals and no longer relied entirely on hunting and gathering
- Agriculture: The deliberate effort to modify a portion of Earth's surface through the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock for sustenance or economic gain.
- Air Pollution: Concentration of trace substances, such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and solid particules, at a greater level that occurs in average air.
- Animate Power: Power supplied by people or animals.
- Animisn: Belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural evnts like thunderstorms and earthquakes, have a discrete spirit or conscious life
- Annexation: Legally adding land area to a city in the United States
- Apartheid: Laws (no longer in effect) in South Africa that physically separated different races into different geographic areas.
- Arithmetic Density: The total number of people divided by the total land area.
- Autonomous Religion: A relgion that does not have a central authority but shares ideas and cooperates informally.
- Balance of Power: Condition of roughly equal strength between opposing countries or alliances of countries.
- Balkanization: Process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among it.
- Balkanized: A small geographic area that could not successfully be organzied into one or more stable states because it was inhabited by ethnicities with complex long standing antagonism toward each other ethnicities.
- Basic Industries: Industries that sell their product or service primarily to consumers outside the settlement
- Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD): Amount of oxygen required by aquatic bacteria to decompose a given load of organic waste; a measure of water pollution.
- Biomass Fuel: Fuel that derives from plant material and animal waste.
- Blockbusting: A process by which real estate agents convince white property owners to sell their homes at low prices because of fear that black families will move into the neighborhood.
- Boundary: Invisibile line that marks the extent of a state's territory.
- Branch (of a religion): A large and fundamental division within a religion.
- Break-of-bulk point: A location where transfer is possible from one mode of transportation to another.
- Breeder Reactor: A nuclear power plant that creates its own fuel from plutonium.
- British Received Pronunciation (BRP): The dialect of English associated with upper-class Britons living in the London area now considered a standard in the UK.
- Bulk-gaining industry: An industry in which the final product weighs or comprises a greater volume than the input.
- Business Services: Services that primarily meet the needs of other businesses.
- Cartography: The science of making maps.
- Caste: The class or distinct hereditary order into which a Hindu is assigned according to religious law.
- Census: A complete enumeration of a population.
- Census Tract: An area delineated by the U.S. Bureau of hte Census for which statistics are published; in urbanized areas, census tracts correspond roughly to neighborhoods.
- Central Business District (CBD): The area of hte city where retail and office activities are clustered.
- Central Place Theory: A theory that explains the distribution of services, based on the fact that settlements serve as centers of market area for services; larger. Settlements are fewer and farther apart than smaller settlements and provide services for a larger number of people who are willing to travel farther.
Key Terms A-C (Gaby & Lindsey)