Landforms and Resources:

North America

North America. Its here:

Right now, were just concerned with the United States

and Canada
These are the Anglo American parts and have a similar
culture as opposed to Mexico which is Latin American
because it has Spanish colonial influences instead of
English.

Varied landforms
North America has a wide variety of landforms. It has
mountains, plains, deserts, tundra, etc. Lets look at a
few.

The Eastern Lowlands

Flat level land by the eastern and Gulf coastal areas.

The brown
area along the
coast is
lowlands.

Appalachian Highlands
Mountain chain that runs along the eastern U.S.

 The Appalachians (people who live in the Appalachians

pronounce it differently than we do) are relatively old.
Because theyve been around for a long while,
theyve worn down and arent all that tall: they
average 3,000 feet and the tallest peak, Mt. Mitchell
in North Carolina is just 6,684 feet tall.
That would make Coloradans yawn.

The interior lowlands

Covers most of North America
Relatively level
May have been hilly at one point, but glaciers leveled it
out during the last ice age
Also carved out rolling hills and lakes
Includes the Great Plains

 Also includes the Canadian Shield in Canada

Huge area around Hudson Bay

Rocky Mountains
Large western mountain chain.
78 peaks of 12,000 feet or more above sea level

This is me at the top of Mt. Crested Butte (12,162 feet).

View from the bottom.

 The Rockies are young scamps that havent faced the

extra 320 million years of erosion that the Appalachians
have suffered and so are much taller.

 The rain runoff and annual snowmelt from the Rockies

also supply nearly of the U.S. with fresh water.

Winter

Summer

 Cold reflective mountain

reservoirs. Makes you
want to go there, doesnt
it?

Continental Divide
All rivers flow either east or west. The continental
divide is the line at which they go one way or the other.

Islands
Canada has a nice assortment to the north in the Arctic
Ocean.

 Theres also the Aleutian Islands tailing off of Alaska

Did you know that

during WWII, two
small Aleutian islands
at the tail end were
captured and held by
the Japanese?
It was the last
time a U.S. enemy
invaded and held
American soil.

 There are also the Hawaiian islands, but while they are
part of the United States, they are not part of North
America.
All the same, theyre beautiful and I will use this
excuse to put up some beautiful pictures of the
islands.

Jurassic Park falls

Sigh I want to go back.

So what were we talking about? Oh yes

Resources
North America is blessed with lots of natural resources.
Among them:
Water
Its got oceans or seas on four sides (Arctic, Atlantic,
the Gulf, and Pacific) which is good for fishing and
trade
Its got plenty of lakes including the

 Great Lakes

On a trivia item, note that Lake Michigan is the

only great Lake thats entirely within U.S.
boundaries. The rest are shared with Canada.

 Nearly 20% of the earths fresh surface water is

in the Great Lakes.
Its about 6 quadrillion gallons. Thats
6,000,000,000,000,000.
Its enough to cover the lower 48 states with
9.5 feet of water.
Thats a lot of water.

And they look pretty from space.

 Rivers
North America has a very large river system in the
Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio
The Missouri and Ohio rivers flow into the
Mississippi, thus making them tributaries of the
Mississippi

 Theres also the MacKenzie River in Canada

 North America also has lots of forests for timbers, lots

of minerals, oil, natural gas, and a ridiculous amount of
coal.
The oil sands of Alberta are estimated to hold up to 180
billion barrels of oil, second only to Saudi Arabias 259
billion barrels.
The trick is profitably getting the oil out of the
sands.
As for coal, the U.S. has so much that its estimated
that even with increased demand, theres enough to
last us another 300-400 years.