Unit 1 The Country.docVIP

Unit 1 The Country 1. Physical Features The forty-eight contiguous states lie between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Canada and Mexico. Alaska and Hawaii are located in the far northwest corner of the continent and the middle of the Pacific Ocean, respectively. The interior lowland is the heart of what American politicians would like to call “middle America.” The region is drained by the Mississippi River and its great tributaries. The Appalachians on the east stretch almost unbroken from Alabama to the Canadian border and beyond. They are much-eroded old mountains and are set back from the Atlantic by a broad belt of coastal lowland. To the west of the interior basin lies the mighty system of mountains that Spanish explorers named “Cordillera”—a collective term for all the high rough country of the western third of the United States. 2. The Humid East Throughout the whole region drought is a rare occurrence. The region stretches along the Atlantic in broad swaths in three climatic categories: continental, subtropical and tropical. 3. The Arid West Although the west is known to be dry and arid, there are important regional differences within the arid west. There is the desert that lies in the rain-shadow of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges and stretches north from Mexico across Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada into southern Oregon. ?4. The Humid-Arid Transition Between the humid east and the arid West, there is the great zone of transition, known as the humid-arid transition. This great stretch of land, often called the “Barn of America”, offers fine farmland. 5. The Humid Pacific Coast The only substantial humid region in the western United States is a narrow strip between the Pacific coast and the Sierra-Cascade ridge line, containing two climatic categories: maritime and Mediterranean. 6. The Northeast Stretching from Maine south through Maryland and west to the border of Ohio, the whole section is known to be densely populated and highly urban,