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demarcation — English
The establishment and description of the borders or limits of an area. It literally means “marking off”. It entails the determining of the horizontal and/or vertical extent of an area in which a particular variable (feature, condition, characteristic, phenomenon) occurs, and the description of the limits of its occurrence (or distribution) on a map. The variable could be anything from a population who speak a certain dialect of a language, to a rare plant species or a certain mineral resource. It is an extremely important concept in Geography. Geographers study the spatial distribution patterns of variables and conditions. The limits of the area in which something occurs are established and indicated on a map. In this way, the spatial distribution of a phenomenon is described and the localities or areas of occurrence are demarcated. Innumerable examples can be named, but only a few are given: countries are demarcated by international boundaries; dry regions are demarcated by rainfall isohyets; rich regions are demarcated by per capita income or gross domestic product (GDP); biomes are demarcated on grounds of the types of plants and animals that occur in them; crime-prone areas in a city are demarcated by the number of criminal incidents reported over a specific period. Note that all the spatial distributions mentioned above, can be described by means of maps. Thus geographers demarcate areas which describe spatial distributions. Nowadays, such data is often stored in geographic information systems (GISs). (See “regions”.)
