HGeog Unit 3 Vocab

Mexican farmlands redistributed to peasant communities after the Revolution of 1910-1917.

The government holds title (ownership) to the land, but user rights are parceled out to village communities and then to individuals for cultivation.

• hacienda

• plantation

• maquiladoras

• ejidos

Money earned by emigrants that is sent back to family and friends in their home country, mostly in cash; forms an important part of the economy in poorer countries

• archipelago

• remittances

• indigenous

• mestizo

A country's largest city- ranking atop its urban hierarchy- most expressive of the national culture and usually (but not in every case) the capital city as well.

• megalopolis

• primate city

• cultural hearth

• world city

Aboriginal or native; an example would be the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas

• mestizo

• hacienda

• ejidos

• indigenous

The term given to modern industrial plants in Mexico's U.S. border zone. These foreign-owned factories assemble imported components and/or raw materials, and then export finished manufactures, mainly to the United States

• mestizo

• hacienda

• plantation

• maquiladoras

archipelago

• a ring-shaped island, including a coral rim that encircles a lagoon. There may be coral islands or cays on the rim

• an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without closed forests except near rivers and lakes

• a set of islands grouped closely together, usually elongated into a chain

• a landform that extends from a mainland and is surrounded by water on most, but not all of its borders

Vertical regions defined by physical-environmental zones at various elevations, particularly in the highlands of South and Middle America

• altitudinal zonation

• mountain regions

• vertical levels

• orographic effect

Tropical deforestation

• the most frequent pathway followed by tropical storms and hurricanes over the past 150 years in their generally westward movement across the Caribbean Basin.

• the clearing and destruction of tropical rainforests in order to make way for expanding settlement frontiers and the exploitation of new economic activities

• the treeless plain that ies along the Arctic shore in northernmost Russia and Canada, whose vegetation consists of mosses, lichens, and certain hardy grasses

• farmers who eke out a living on a small plot of land on which they are only able to grow enough food to support their families or at best a small community

Heartland, source area, or innovation center;

place of origin of a major culture

• cultural hearth

• culture node

• cultural axis

• aboriginal culture

mestizo

• a person of mixed European (white) and Amerindian ancestry in the Spanish American empire

• a Spaniard born in Spain residing in the New World (Spanish American empire)

• aboriginal or native; an example would be the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas

• resident of Spanish American empire brought against their will from Africa and who is forced to work for and obey another and is considered to be their property