Unit 1 Human Geography

A political polling company wants to use census data to collect information on voters in a city by neighborhood. Based on the types of information collected in the survey form, which of the following could be mapped using census data?

• The number of voting-age residents per household

• The political party affiliation of the average resident

• How residents voted in the last election

• How voters might vote in the next national election

• How voters stand on current issues

Which of the following scales of analysis would provide demographic data that could be used to compare one urban neighborhood to other urban neighborhoods across a country?

• State or province

• Metropolitan area or urban region

• County or parish (in Quebec and Louisiana)

• City or municipality

• Census tract or enumeration area

In descriptions of interaction between people and the environment, the term “environmental determinism” implies that

• the physical environment exclusively shapes humans and their actions 

• humans by their actions and technologies alter the physical environment to suit their needs

• determination of environmental limitations is a primary task of geographers

• capitalist economies do not contribute to global environmental degradation 

• there exists no interacting relationship between people and their surrounding physical environment

Which of the following concepts could best be explained by the theory of possibilism?

• Regional differences between the internal structures of cities

• Changes in population growth rates over time

• Limitations on agricultural crops based on climate

• Political patterns seen in election maps

• Modification of landscapes by human cultures

Which of the following is most likely to be used by a marketing firm seeking to map patterns of lifestyle characteristics in the United States?

• States

• Zip codes

• Nonmetropolitan areas

• Congressional districts

• Counties

Which of the following is a limitation of the map of Hispanic population percentage?

• The small size of urban counties in the eastern United States masks the significance of the Hispanic population in most eastern cities

• Larger county sizes in the western United States mask the significance of the Hispanic population in most western counties.

• States with the largest total populations mask the significance of the Hispanic population in those states.

• States with the smallest total populations mask the significance of the Hispanic population in those states.

• The pattern shown is not different than the pattern of early Hispanic settlement during the era of colonization.

Which of the following is a characteristic of the Mercator projection?

• The size and shape of countries in the higher latitudes are greatly exaggerated.

• The size of all countries is accurate, but the shape is distorted.

• Countries near the Equator appear 50 percent larger than countries in the middle latitudes.

• The projection is designed to maintain undistorted outlines of landmasses.

• Distances on the Mercator projection are real and accurate

Which of the following statements about the Robinson projection is correct?

• It is more useful for long-distance navigation than the Mercator projection.

• It is better for making topographical maps than the Mercator projection.

• It is more accurate than the Mercator projection in showing the sizes of countries in higher latitudes.

• It is more useful for showing the distribution of human populations than the Mercator projection.

• It is better for estimating territorial waters in lower latitudes than the Mercator projection.

Every map projection has some degree of distortion because

• a curved surface cannot be represented on a flat surface without distortion

• parallels and meridians never cross at right angles on a globe

• the grid system is two-dimensional, while the real world is three-dimensional

• Earth is not a perfect sphere

• latitude lines are shorter than meridian lines

Which of the following describes the perspective of environmental determinism?

• A twentieth-century idea that human cultures are imprinted on the landscape in different forms of land use and architecture

• A contemporary ecological view that human activity is affecting the global environment toward a negative outcome

• A former scientific viewpoint stating that factors within the physical geography of a region shape the local population’s culture and behaviors

• A theory that humans hold the ability to modify Earth’s physical geography to meet the resource needs of a society

• A belief system based on an ideology that humans have dominion over Earth and its natural resources