1. The Land
Identify and describe the landform regions of the United States.
Locate the landforms of North America on a map.
Robert
Louis
Stevenson
How does the nation’s geography differ as you travel across the 50 states?
A landform region is a region that has similar landforms throughout. Landforms are physical features such as plains, mountains, plateaus, hills, and valleys.
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3. The Coastal Plain - is an area of flat land along a sea or ocean.
The Coastal Plain of the eastern United States is a wide band of lowland that lies between New York state and southern Texas.
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4. The Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains are over 480 million years old. They were once as big as the Rocky Mountains, and were worn down by glaciers by erosion.
They divide the Coastal plain and the Interior Plains.
Piedmont = “at the base of a mountain”
A mountain range is a group of connected mountains.
How are the Appalachian Mountains different from the Coastal Plain?
The Appalachians are made up of mountains, ridges, and valleys instead of being flat.
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5. The Interior Plains
These plains stretch across the middle of the country, from the Appalachians to the Rocky Mountains
Stevenson saw that the environment, or the surroundings in which people, plants, and animals live, was yet again different.
A prairie is an area of flat or rolling land covered mostly by grasses.
The Great Plains is a large flat area with few rivers and almost no trees.
How do you think the Interior Plains got their name?
What features caused Stevenson to say the country was “far from dull”?
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6. The Rocky Mountains and Beyond
The Rockies:
are the country’s largest and longest mountain range.
are made of smaller mountain ranges.
are younger than the Appalachian Mountains.
Have jagged peaks, because they have not been eroded for a long time.
are so high, many peaks are covered in snow.
Between the Rocky Mountains is a large area of mostly flat dry land. It is often called the Intermountain Range or Great Basin
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7. The Great Basin
A basin is a low, bowl-shaped land with higher land all around it.
How do the Rocky Mountains differ from the Intermountain Region?
The Intermountain Region contains low and dry land. The Rocky Mountains are high and have snow and rain.
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8. The Sierra Nevada The Pacific Coast
Sierra Nevada is Spanish for ‘snowy mountain range’
The Pacific Coast
Summary
Geographers sometimes divide The United States into different landform regions. Each region is unique because of its landforms and climate.
How is the Pacific Coast different from the Atlantic Coast?
The Pacific Coast is rocky and have little flat land.
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