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Regional Land Characteristics - Coggle Diagram
Regional Land Characteristics
Coastal Range
West of the Rockies
Marked by valleys and mountains
Stretches from California through Canada
Check out these
Redwoods
Check out the Olympic National
Park
Canadian Shield
The horseshoe shape around the Hudson Bay.
Hundreds (literally) of lakes throughout this region
Marked by lakes, but also deeply eroded hills (it's roughly 2.5 billion years old, so those hills were once higher than the Rockies).
Coastal Plain
Located along the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico
Generally broad lowlands with excellent, natural harbors.
Main cities include NYC, Houston, Boston, Corpus Christi...
Charlston Harbor
Annapolis Harbor
Houston (I hope you recognized it!)
Key West Harbor
The Everglades are full of weird
things.
Great Plains
East of the Rockies, west of the Interior Lowlands (Plains)
Vast grasslands that begin to rise toward moutains.
Most of central Texas, western portions of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Kansas
The ecosystem is slowly migrating north, due to climate change, wildfire suppression and invasive tree population
Rocky Mountains
West of the Great Plains, east of the Coastal Range and the Basin and Range region
Marked by the highest elevations in North America, stretching from Alaska nearly to Mexico.
Once marked by not only high peaks and rocky terrain but also over a hundred northern glaciers, glaciers are now endangered by
climate change
.
Bryce Canyon
Appalachian Highlands
East of the Coastal Plain region
Stretch from western Alabama to Eastern Canada
Old, eroded mountain range that is the oldest in North America (480 million years, to the Rockies 50-80 million years)
Their age leads to natural resources that take millennia to create: coal, petroleum, oil, natural gas.
The Appalachian Mountain Range
Shenandoah National Park
Interior Lowlands
East of the Great Plains, west of Appalachians.
Marked by rolling flatlands, many lakes and rivers.
North Eastern Texas, up through the Great Lakes, extending north through Canada
Sediments left by the glacial movements 2.6 million years ago have left the plains fertile, with rich, soil stabilizing grasses
Basin and Range
Pretty much the entire state of Nevada
Characterized by dramatic changes in elevation
Dry, arid valleys and steep, sharp mountains (not often ranges)
East of the Sierra Nevadas, west of the Rockies
Big Bend is characteristic of Basin and Range topography.
Big Bend
Created by:
tension as the land is being pulled apart during uplift
Parallel normal faults are a signature for basin-range extension
The plate stretches, fractures, and thins
Mountains rise, valleys drop during faulting
Basin and Range Plate Animation
