Geography of the United States

The USA is a vast country of different landscapes and climates.Mountain McKinley (the other name – Mt Denali) in Alaska is the highest peak in the USA, 6,194 m high, while part of Death Valley in California is 89 m below sea level.

In the east and south-east along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico is situated a coastal plain, a narrow stretch of land widening near the Mississippi River. In the south-east the peninsula of Florida extends into the sea. The land there is so little above sea level that it is swampy.

Hawaii, the 50th state, consists of eight main islands and other small ones in the Pacific Ocean.

The mountain ranges of the United States stretch from north to south and afford no protection against the cold northerly winds.

In the east of the continent are old the Appalachian Mountains about 2,000m. They include plateaus and a number of mountain ranges.The names of some of the mountain ranges of Appalachia are: the White Mountains in Maine, the Green Mountains in Vermont, the Blue Ridge in Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Farther west are the Rocky Mountains, the backbone of the continent. They rank among the greatest of the world mountain ranges. They are high (over 4,000 m), sharp and rugged.

Between the Appalachians in the east and the Rockies in the west is a vast area of lowland that includes the Central Lowland and the Great Plains. Most of the Great Plains is a plateau covered with short grass prairies. In the state of South Dakota, the Black Hills rise abruptly above surrounding plains. Mount Rushmore National memorial is situated there. Mountain Rushmore is famous for the very large heads of four US Presidents carved in the rock: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

Between the Rockies and the Pacific mountain area lies a region of high plateaus and deserts, canyons and salt lakes. The Grand Canyon in northern Arizona is a major tourist attraction. It was created by the Colorado River and is about 1.6 km deep and 320 km long.

The Pacific coast is quite mountainous. The Sierra Nevada is a mountain range in California. The Cascades is a range that runs from northern California to the Canadian border. There are great forests in the Cascades and large gold deposits in the Sierra Nevada.

The USA is rich in lakes and rivers. The biggest and mighty Mississippi together with its tributaries the Missouri, the Ohio, the Arkansas River, the Red River and others form the biggest water system. The Mississippi travels through several states. In the South the river becomes larger and more powerful. People living on its banks have many bitter struggles with its floods. The Missouri River, the longest river in the USA, is the principal western branch of the Mississippi. There are also many short rivers that rise east of the Appalachian Mountains — the Delaware, the Potomac, the Hudson.

In the west the rivers of primary importance are the Columbia and the Colorado.

The Rio Grande, about 3,200 km long, is the most important river of the Southwest. It forms a natural boundary between Mexico and the United States.

The Great Lakes are a very important waterway connected to the Mississippi by canals. The total area of the Great Lakes (over 245,000 square km) is equal to that of Great Britain. Only Lake Michigan is wholly on American territory. The other four: the Superior, the Huron, the Erie, the Ontario are shared with Canada. Great Lakes are connected with the Atlantic Ocean.

Another group of lakes is to the west of the Rocky Mountains. Some of these lakes are high in the mountains, in the crater pits of inactive volcanoes. Others spread out as shallow sheets of salty water across the western desert plains. The most famous of these salty lakes are the Great Salt Lake, in Utah, and the Salton Sea, which lies some 80 m below sea level in Southern California. The Great Salt Lake contains six thousand million tons of salt.

The Niagara Falls, spectacular and beautiful, are situated between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-30