Landforms and Resources:North America

North America. Its here:

Right now, were just concerned with the United States and CanadaThese 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 landformsNorth America has a wide variety of landforms. It has mountains, plains, deserts, tundra, etc. Lets look at a few.

The Eastern LowlandsFlat level land by the eastern and Gulf coastal areas.The brown area along the coast is lowlands.

Appalachian HighlandsMountain 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 lowlandsCovers most of North AmericaRelatively levelMay have been hilly at one point, but glaciers leveled it out during the last ice ageAlso carved out rolling hills and lakesIncludes the Great Plains

Also includes the Canadian Shield in CanadaHuge area around Hudson Bay

Rocky MountainsLarge western mountain chain.78 peaks of 12,000 feet or more above sea levelThis 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.WinterSummer

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

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

IslandsCanada has a nice assortment to the north in the Arctic Ocean.

Theres also the Aleutian Islands tailing off of AlaskaDid 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

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

Great LakesOn 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.

RiversNorth America has a very large river system in the Mississippi-Missouri-OhioThe 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.