Glossary
Geographer Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential geographer terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key geographer vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in geographer training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Buffer
- Zone around features.
- Census tract
- Small census area.
- Choropleth map
- Shaded area map.
- Geocoding
- Addresses to points.
- Hot spot analysis
- Finding clusters.
- Human geography
- Study of people and places.
- Land use
- How land is used.
- Overlay
- Combining layers.
- Physical geography
- Study of natural features.
- Projection
- Flattening the earth.
- Raster
- Pixel data.
- Remote sensing
- Data from satellites.
- Scale
- Map size ratio.
- Spatial analysis
- Analysis of location data.
- Vector
- Points, lines and polygons.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Geographer practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Geographer training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.