1.
Badlands National Park
–
The park is managed by the National Park Service. Authorized as Badlands National Monument on March 4,1929, it was not established until January 25,1939 and it was redesignated a national park on November 10,1978. Under the Mission 66 plan, the Ben Reifel Visitor Center was constructed for the monument in 1957–58, the park also administers the nearby Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. Long before the Lakota were the little-studied paleo-Indians, followed by the Arikara people and their descendants live today in North Dakota as a part of the Three Affiliated Tribes. Archaeological records combined with oral traditions indicate that these people camped in secluded valleys where fresh water and game were available year round. Eroding out of the stream banks today are the rocks and charcoal of their campfires, as well as the arrowheads and tools used to butcher bison, rabbits. From the top of the Badlands Wall, they could scan the area for enemies, if hunting was good, they might hang on into winter, before retracing their way to their villages along the Missouri River. By one hundred and fifty years ago, the Great Sioux Nation consisting of seven including the Oglala Lakota, had displaced the other tribes from the northern prairie. The next great change came toward the end of the 19th century as homesteaders moved into South Dakota, the U. S. government stripped Native Americans of much of their territory and forced them to live on reservations. In the fall and early winter of 1890, thousands of Native American followers, including many Oglala Sioux and his vision called for the native people to dance the Ghost Dance and wear Ghost shirts, which would be impervious to bullets. Wovoka had predicted that the man would vanish and their hunting grounds would be restored. One of the last known Ghost Dances was conducted on Stronghold Table in the South Unit of Badlands National Park, as winter closed in, the ghost dancers returned to Pine Ridge Agency. The climax of the came in late December,1890. Headed south from the Cheyenne River, a band of Minneconjou Sioux crossed a pass in the Badlands Wall, pursued by units of the U. S. Army, they were seeking refuge in the Pine Ridge Reservation. The band, led by Chief Spotted Elk, was overtaken by the soldiers near Wounded Knee Creek in the Reservation. The troops attempted to disarm Big Foots band the next morning, before it was over, nearly three hundred Indians and thirty soldiers lay dead. Wounded Knee is not within the boundaries of Badlands National Park and it is located approximately 45 miles south of the park on Pine Ridge Reservation. The U. S. government and the Oglala Lakota Nation have agreed that this is a story to be told by the Oglala of Pine Ridge, the interpretation of the site and its tragic events are held as the primary responsibility of these survivors
2.
South Dakota
–
South Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, South Dakota is the 17th most expansive, but the 5th least populous and the 5th least densely populated of the 50 United States. Once the southern portion of the Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2,1889, Pierre is the state capital and Sioux Falls, with a population of about 171,000, is South Dakotas largest city. South Dakota is bordered by the states of North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, the state is bisected by the Missouri River, dividing South Dakota into two geographically and socially distinct halves, known to residents as East River and West River. Eastern South Dakota is home to most of the states population, West of the Missouri, ranching is the predominant agricultural activity, and the economy is more dependent on tourism and defense spending. Most of the Native American reservations are located in West River, the Black Hills, a group of low pine-covered mountains sacred to the Sioux, are located in the southwest part of the state. Mount Rushmore, a major tourist destination, is located there, South Dakota experiences a temperate continental climate, with four distinct seasons and precipitation ranging from moderate in the east to semi-arid in the west. The ecology of the state features species typical of a North American grassland biome, humans have inhabited the area for several millennia, with the Sioux becoming dominant by the early 19th century. In the late 19th century, European-American settlement intensified after a rush in the Black Hills. Encroaching miners and settlers triggered a number of Indian wars, ending with the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, historically dominated by an agricultural economy and a rural lifestyle, South Dakota has recently sought to diversify its economy in areas to attract and retain residents. South Dakotas history and rural character still strongly influence the culture of the state, South Dakota is situated in the north-central United States, and is considered a part of the Midwest by the U. S. Census Bureau, it is also part of the Great Plains region. The culture, economy, and geography of western South Dakota have more in common with the West than the Midwest, South Dakota has a total area of 77,116 square miles, making the state the 17th largest in the Union. Black Elk Peak, formerly named Harney Peak, with an elevation of 7,242 ft, is the states highest point, while the shoreline of Big Stone Lake is the lowest, with an elevation of 966 ft. South Dakota is bordered to the north by North Dakota, to the south by Nebraska, to the east by Iowa and Minnesota, the geographical center of the U. S. is 17 miles west of Castle Rock in Butte County. The North American continental pole of inaccessibility is located between Allen and Kyle,1,024 mi from the nearest coastline, the Missouri River is the largest and longest river in the state. Other major South Dakota rivers include the Cheyenne, James, Big Sioux, Eastern South Dakota has many natural lakes, mostly created by periods of glaciation. Additionally, dams on the Missouri River create four large reservoirs, Lake Oahe, Lake Sharpe, Lake Francis Case, South Dakota can generally be divided into three regions, eastern South Dakota, western South Dakota, and the Black Hills. The Missouri River serves as a boundary in terms of geographic, social, at times the Black Hills are combined with the rest of western South Dakota, and people often refer to the resulting two regions divided by the Missouri River as West River and East River
3.
Tall grass prairie
–
The tallgrass prairie is an ecosystem native to central North America. They were characteristically found in the central forest-grasslands transition, the tall grasslands, the upper Midwest forest-savanna transition. They flourished in areas with loess soils and moderate rainfall around 30 to 35 inches per year. To the east were the eastern savannas. In the northeast, where fire was infrequent and periodic windthrow represented the source of disturbance. In contrast, shortgrass prairie was typical in the western Great Plains, due to expansive agricultural land use, very little tallgrass prairie remains. Retreating glaciers deposited the parent material for soil in the form of till, i. e. unsorted sediment, wind-dropped loess and organic matter accumulated, resulting in deep levels of topsoil. Animals such as bison, elk, deer, and rabbits added nitrogen to the soil through urine, Prairie dogs, a ground squirrel-like rodent considered to be a keystone species, dug tunnels that aerated the soil and channeled water several feet below the surface. For 5,000 to 8,000 years, more than 240 million acres of prairie grasslands were a feature of the landscape. Between 1800 and 1930, the vast majority was destroyed, settlers transformed what they named the Great American Desert or The Inland Sea into farmland. Further, extensive tile drainage has changed the water content and hydrodynamics. Tallgrass prairie is capable of supporting significant biodiversity, parts of the ecoregion among the top ten ecoregions for reptiles, birds, butterflies, and tree species. Tallgrass species are found in the understory layer, oak and hickory tree species occur in some areas, but generally in moderate densities. The tallgrass prairie biome depends on fires, a form of wildfire. Tree seedlings and intrusive alien species without fire tolerance are eliminated by periodic fires, such fires may either be set by humans or started naturally by lightning. Technically, prairies have less than 5–11% tree cover, a grass-dominated plant community with 10–49% tree cover is a savanna. After the steel plow was invented by John Deere, this fertile soil became one of Americas most important resources, over 95% of the original tallgrass prairie is now farmland. In Oklahoma, the tallgrass prairie has been maintained by ranchers and they have reintroduced plains bison to the vast expanses of grass
4.
Short grass prairie
–
The shortgrass prairie is an ecosystem located in the Great Plains of North America. The prairie includes lands to the west as far as the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and extends east as far as Nebraska. The prairie stretches through parts of Alberta, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Kansas, and passes south through the plains of Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas. The prairie was formerly maintained by grazing pressure of American bison, the two most dominant grasses in the shortgrass prairie are blue grama and buffalograss, the two less dominant grasses in the prairie are greasegrass and sideoats grama. Due to its climate, the shortgrass prairie receives on average less precipitation than that of the tall. The shortgrass prairie has a human history. The Kiowa, Comanche, and Arapahoe peoples occupied the land, hunting bison, seasonally, these tribes would stage hunts in the adjacent mountains such as the Rocky Mountains. To manage the prairie these tribes and their predecessors likely used fire and they would create fuel breaks, a gap in vegetation or other combustible material that acts as a barrier to slow or stop the progress of a brushfire or wildfire. A firebreak may occur naturally in areas without vegetation or other fuel, such as a river and these fuel breaks would also entice large herbivores to patches of fresh new growth. European explorers, trappers, and fur traders began to settle the shortgrass prairie and they developed an extractive economy that led to the later growth and industrialization of the prairie. In the mid- and late 19th century the railroads expanded transportation channels, helping to increase settlement, predominantly in rural, while more people began to settle in the prairie, large-scale cattle and sheep ranching increased as well. This later led to the development of gold, silver, in the 1920s, El Niño played a big role in the success of crop growing in the short grass plains. El Niño caused more precipitation throughout the prairie, promoting plant growth, the success encouraged farmers to buy more efficient farming equipment. With the new equipment, farmers turned up the native land, by the time the 1930s came around, it was too late to protect the soil with grass. The unprotected soil contributed to the Dust Bowl by being blown around, the Food Security Act of 1985 allowed for lower commodity prices and income supports. This Act also laid the foundation for the dairy herd buyout program, the Act made changes to several other USDA programs. Today much of the prairie is grazed by domestic livestock. However, energy and mining exploration have increased, the shortgrass prairie is a long thin stretch of territory that starts at the top of the country and makes its way to the bottom
5.
Biome
–
A biome /ˈbaɪoʊm/ is a community of plants and animals that have common characteristics for the environment they exist in, and can be found over a range of continents. Spanning continents, biomes are distinct biological communities that have formed in response to a shared physical climate, biome is a broader term than habitat, any biome can comprise a variety of habitats. While a biome can cover large ares, a microbiome is a mix of organisms that coexist in a space as well. For example, the microbiome is the collection of bacteria, viruses. The biotas of the Earth make up the biosphere, the term was suggested in 1916 by Clements, originally as a synonym for biotic community of Möbius. In 1935, Tansley added the climatic and soil aspects to the idea, the International Biological Program projects popularized the concept of biome. However, in contexts, the term biome is used in a different manner. Both includes many biomes in fact and their boundaries must therefore be drawn arbitrarily and their characterization made according to the average conditions that predominate in them. A1978 study on North American grasslands found a positive correlation between evapotranspiration in mm/yr and above-ground net primary production in g/m2/yr. These findings help explain the categories used in Holdridge’s bioclassification scheme, Holdridge uses the four axes to define 30 so-called humidity provinces, which are clearly visible in his diagram. While this scheme largely ignores soil and sun exposure, Holdridge acknowledged that these were important and his scheme can be seen as a simplification of Holdridges, more readily accessible, but missing Holdridges greater specificity. Whittaker based his approach on theoretical assertions and empirical sampling and he was in a unique position to make such a holistic assertion because he had previously compiled a review of biome classifications. Physiognomy, the apparent characteristics, outward features, or appearance of communities or species. Biome, a grouping of terrestrial ecosystems on a continent that are similar in vegetation structure, physiognomy, features of the environment. Formation, a kind of community of plants on a given continent. Biome-type, grouping of convergent biomes or formations of different continents, whittakers distinction between biome and formation can be simplified, formation is used when applied to plant communities only, while biome is used when concerned with both plants and animals. Whittakers convention of biome-type or formation-type is simply a method to categorize similar communities. Whittaker considered four main ecoclines in the terrestrial realm, changes in physiognomic complexity vary with how favorable of an environment exists
6.
Pampa
–
A multi-well microtitre plate is used for the donor and a membrane/acceptor compartment is placed on top, the whole assembly is commonly referred to as a “sandwich”. At the beginning of the test, the drug is added to the compartment. After an incubation period which may include stirring, the sandwich is separated, mass balance allows calculation of drug that remains in the membrane. The donor and/or acceptor compartments may contain solubilizing agents, or additives that bind the drugs as they permeate. To improve the in vitro - in vivo correlation and performance of the PAMPA method, although active transport is not modeled by the artificial PAMPA membrane, up to 95% of known drugs are absorbed by passive transport. Some experts support a lower figure, so the amount is open to some interpretation, microtiter plates with 96 wells can be used for the assay which increases the speed and lowers the per sample cost. Since the first publication by Kansy and coworkers, several companies developed their own versions of the assay and this has proved very useful as various operational activities have been outsourced to other countries
7.
Argentina
–
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a federal republic in the southern half of South America. With a mainland area of 2,780,400 km2, Argentina is the eighth-largest country in the world, the second largest in Latin America, and the largest Spanish-speaking one. The country is subdivided into provinces and one autonomous city, Buenos Aires. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system, Argentina claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The earliest recorded presence in the area of modern-day Argentina dates back to the Paleolithic period. The country has its roots in Spanish colonization of the region during the 16th century, Argentina rose as the successor state of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, a Spanish overseas viceroyalty founded in 1776. The country thereafter enjoyed relative peace and stability, with waves of European immigration radically reshaping its cultural. The almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity led to Argentina becoming the seventh wealthiest developed nation in the world by the early 20th century, Argentina retains its historic status as a middle power in international affairs, and is a prominent regional power in the Southern Cone and Latin America. Argentina has the second largest economy in South America, the third-largest in Latin America and is a member of the G-15 and it is the country with the second highest Human Development Index in Latin America with a rating of very high. Because of its stability, market size and growing high-tech sector, the description of the country by the word Argentina has to be found on a Venice map in 1536. In English the name Argentina probably comes from the Spanish language, however the naming itself is not Spanish, Argentina means in Italian of silver, silver coloured, probably borrowed from the Old French adjective argentine of silver > silver coloured already mentioned in the 12th century. The French word argentine is the form of argentin and derives of argent silver with the suffix -in. The Italian naming Argentina for the country implies Argentina Terra land of silver or Argentina costa coast of silver, in Italian, the adjective or the proper noun is often used in an autonomous way as a substantive and replaces it and it is said lArgentina. The name Argentina was probably first given by the Venitian and Genoese navigators, in Spanish and Portuguese, the words for silver are respectively plata and prata and of silver is said plateado and prateado. Argentina was first associated with the silver mountains legend, widespread among the first European explorers of the La Plata Basin. The first written use of the name in Spanish can be traced to La Argentina, a 1602 poem by Martín del Barco Centenera describing the region, the 1826 constitution included the first use of the name Argentine Republic in legal documents. The name Argentine Confederation was also used and was formalized in the Argentine Constitution of 1853. In 1860 a presidential decree settled the name as Argentine Republic
8.
Brazil
–
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. As the worlds fifth-largest country by area and population, it is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to wildlife, a variety of ecological systems. This unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, Brazil was inhabited by numerous tribal nations prior to the landing in 1500 of explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, who claimed the area for the Portuguese Empire. Brazil remained a Portuguese colony until 1808, when the capital of the empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, in 1815, the colony was elevated to the rank of kingdom upon the formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Independence was achieved in 1822 with the creation of the Empire of Brazil, a state governed under a constitutional monarchy. The ratification of the first constitution in 1824 led to the formation of a bicameral legislature, the country became a presidential republic in 1889 following a military coup détat. An authoritarian military junta came to power in 1964 and ruled until 1985, Brazils current constitution, formulated in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic. The federation is composed of the union of the Federal District, the 26 states, Brazils economy is the worlds ninth-largest by nominal GDP and seventh-largest by GDP as of 2015. A member of the BRICS group, Brazil until 2010 had one of the worlds fastest growing economies, with its economic reforms giving the country new international recognition. Brazils national development bank plays an important role for the economic growth. Brazil is a member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, Unasul, Mercosul, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, CPLP. Brazil is a power in Latin America and a middle power in international affairs. One of the worlds major breadbaskets, Brazil has been the largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years and it is likely that the word Brazil comes from the Portuguese word for brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology red like an ember, formed from Latin brasa and the suffix -il. As brazilwood produces a red dye, it was highly valued by the European cloth industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. The popular appellation eclipsed and eventually supplanted the official Portuguese name, early sailors sometimes also called it the Land of Parrots. In the Guarani language, a language of Paraguay, Brazil is called Pindorama
9.
Uruguay
–
Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in the southeastern region of South America. It borders Argentina to its west and Brazil to its north and east, with the Río de la Plata to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast. Uruguay is home to an estimated 3.42 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the area of its capital and largest city. With an area of approximately 176,000 square kilometres, Uruguay is geographically the second-smallest nation in South America, only larger in size than Suriname. Uruguay was inhabited by the Charrúa people for approximately 4000 years before the Portuguese established Colonia del Sacramento, one of the oldest European settlements in the region, in 1680. Montevideo was founded as a stronghold by the Spanish in the early 18th century. Uruguay won its independence between 1811 and 1828, following a struggle between Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Brazil. It remained subject to influence and intervention throughout the 19th century. Modern Uruguay is a constitutional republic, with a president who serves as both head of state and head of government. Uruguay is ranked first in Latin America in democracy, peace, lack of corruption, e-government, on a per-capita basis, Uruguay contributes more troops to United Nations peace-keeping missions than any other country. It ranks second in the region on economic freedom, income equality, per-capita income, Uruguay is the third-best country on the continent in terms of HDI, GDP growth, innovation and infrastructure. It is regarded as a country by the UN. Uruguay is also the third-best ranked in the world in e-Participation, Uruguay is an important global exporter of combed wool, rice, soybeans, frozen beef, malt and milk. Nearly 95% of Uruguays electricity comes from energy, mostly hydroelectric facilities. The Economist named Uruguay country of the year in 2013, acknowledging the innovative policy of legalizing the production, sale, the name of the namesake river comes from the Spanish pronunciation of the regional Guarani word for it. There are several interpretations, including bird-river, the name could also refer to a river snail called uruguá that was plentiful in the water. The only documented inhabitants of Uruguay before European colonization of the area were the Charrúa, the Portuguese discovered the region of present-day Uruguay in 1512. The Spanish arrived in present-day Uruguay in 1516, the indigenous peoples fierce resistance to conquest, combined with the absence of gold and silver, limited their settlement in the region during the 16th and 17th centuries
10.
Steppe
–
In South Africa they are referred to as Veld. The prairie is an example of a steppe, though it is not usually called such and it may be semi-desert, or covered with grass or shrubs or both, depending on the season and latitude. The term is used to denote the climate encountered in regions too dry to support a forest. The soil is typically of chernozem type, steppes are usually characterized by a semi-arid and continental climate. Extremes can be recorded in the summer of up to 45 °C and in winter, besides this huge difference between summer and winter, the differences between day and night are also very great. In the highlands of Mongolia,30 °C can be reached during the day with sub-zero °C readings at night, the mid-latitude steppes can be summarized by hot summers and cold winters, averaging 250–510 mm of precipitation per year. Precipitation level alone is not what defines a steppe climate, potential evapotranspiration must also be taken into account, the Eurasian Grass-Steppe of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands had a role in the spread of the horse, the wheel, and the Indo-European languages. The Indo-European expansion and diverse invasions of horse archer civilizations of the steppe eventually led to, the Pannonian Plain is another steppe region in eastern Europe, primarily Hungary. Another large steppe area is located in the central United States, western Canada, the shortgrass prairie steppe is the westernmost part of the Great Plains region. The Channeled Scablands in Southern British Columbia and Washington State is an example of a region in North America outside of the Great Plains. In South America, cold steppe can be found in Patagonia, relatively small steppe areas can be found in the interior of the South Island of New Zealand. In Asia, a subtropical steppe can be found in semi-arid lands that fringe the Thar Desert of the Indian subcontinent, in Australia, subtropical steppe can be found in a belt surrounding the most severe deserts of the continent and around the Musgrave Ranges. Ecology and Conservation of Steppe-land Birds by Manuel B. Morales, Santi Mañosa, Jordi Camprodón, international Symposium on Ecology and Conservation of steppe-land birds
11.
Eurasia
–
Eurasia /jʊˈreɪʒə/ is a combined continental landmass of Europe and Asia. The term is a portmanteau of its constituent continents, in geology, Eurasia is often considered as a single rigid megablock. However, the rigidity of Eurasia is debated based on the paleomagnet data, Eurasia covers around 55,000,000 square kilometres, or around 36. 2% of the Earths total land area. The landmass contains around 5.0 billion people, equating to approximately 70% of the human population, humans first settled in Eurasia between 60,000 and 125,000 years ago. Physiographically, Eurasia is a single continent, the concepts of Europe and Asia as distinct continents date back to antiquity and their borders are geologically arbitrary. Eurasia is connected to Africa at the Suez Canal, and Eurasia is sometimes combined with Africa as the largest contiguous landmass on Earth called Afro-Eurasia. Eurasia formed 375 to 325 million years ago with the merging of Siberia, Kazakhstania, and Baltica, chinese cratons collided with Siberias southern coast. Eurasia has been the host of ancient civilizations, including those based in Mesopotamia. In the Axial Age, a belt of civilizations stretched through the Eurasian subtropical zone from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This belt became the mainstream of world history for two millennia, originally, “Eurasia” is a geographical notion, in this sense, it is simply the biggest continent, the combined landmass of Europe and Asia. However, geopolitically, the word has different meanings, reflecting the specific geopolitical interests of each nation. “Eurasia” is one of the most important geopolitical concepts, as Zbigniew Brzezinski observed, how America manages Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates “Eurasia” would control two of the three most advanced and economically productive regions. About 75 per cent of the people live in “Eurasia”. “Eurasia” accounts for about three-fourths of the known energy resources. ”At the moment one of the most prominent projects of the European Union is the Russia - EU Four Common Spaces Initiative. A political and economic union of former Soviet states named the Eurasian Economic Union was established in 2015, the Russian concept of “Eurasia” corresponded initially more or less to the land area of Imperial Russia in 1914, including parts of Eastern Europe. One of Russias main geopolitical interests lies in ever closer integration with those countries that it considers part of “Eurasia. ”Every two years since 1996 a meeting of most Asian and European countries is organised as the Asia-Europe Meeting. In ancient times, the Greeks classified Europe and Asia as separate lands, where to draw the dividing line between the two regions is still a matter of discussion
12.
North America
–
North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16. 5% of the land area. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 565 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7. 5% of the worlds population, North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge. The so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago, the Classic stage spans roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era ended with the migrations and the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect different kind of interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants, European influences are strongest in the northern parts of the continent while indigenous and African influences are relatively stronger in the south. Because of the history of colonialism, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, the Americas are usually accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass previously unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a map, in which he placed the word America on the continent of South America. He explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio, for Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespuccis name, but in its feminine form America, following the examples of Europa, Asia and Africa. Later, other mapmakers extended the name America to the continent, In 1538. Some argue that the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries except in the case of royalty, a minutely explored belief that has been advanced is that America was named for a Spanish sailor bearing the ancient Visigothic name of Amairick. Another is that the name is rooted in a Native American language, the term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with location and context. In Canadian English, North America may be used to refer to the United States, alternatively, usage sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands
13.
Geography of North America
–
The central and southern portions of the continent are represented by the United States, Mexico, and numerous smaller states primarily in Central America and in the Caribbean. The continent is delimited on the southeast by most geographers at the Darién watershed along the Colombia-Panama border, alternatively, a less common view would end North America at the man-made Panama Canal. Islands generally associated with North America include Greenland, the worlds largest island, the north hosts an abundance of glacial lakes formed during the last glacial period, including the Great Lakes. North Americas major continental divide is the Great Divide, which runs north and south down through Rocky Mountains, the major watersheds all drain to the east, The Mississippi/Missouri and Rio Grande into the Gulf of Mexico, and St. Lawrence into the Atlantic. Climate is determined to an extent by the latitude, ranging from Arctic cold in the north to tropical heat in the south. The continental crust started to form 4 billion years ago, and this core has been enlarged by plate tectonics, most notably between 1.8 and 1.65 Ga when a piece currently stretching from Arizona to Missouri fused with the south and west portion of the craton. The craton started to rift about 1.1 Ga, periodic flooding by inland seas, most recently the Western Interior Seaway during the Cretaceous, caused the layer of sedimentary rock over the remainder of the craton. The Laurentia craton is the center of the Proterozoic supercontinent Rodinia in most models, and was part of the later Laurussia, Pangea. Glaciers descended the slopes of the Rocky Mountains and those of the Pacific Margin, extensive glacial lakes, such as Glacial Lake Missoula, Bonneville, Lahontan, Agassiz, and Algonquin, formed by glacial melt water. Remnants of them are visible in the Great Basin and along the edge of the Canadian Shield in the form of the Great Salt Lake, the Great Lakes. Appalachian Mountains The Appalachians are an old and eroded system that formed about 300 Ma, Atlantic Coastal Plain The plain is a belt of lowlands widening to the south that extends from south New England to Mexico. North American Cordillera The cordillera is a belt of mountains and associated plateaus and basins some of which were formed as recently as 100–65 Ma. The vast majority of North America is located on the North American Plate, parts of California and western Mexico form the partial edge of the Pacific Plate, the two plates meet along the San Andreas Fault. The southern portion of the Caribbean and parts of Central America compose the much smaller Caribbean Plate. The western mountains have split in the middle, into the range of the Rockies and the Coast Ranges in California, Oregon, Washington. The highest peak is Mount McKinley/Denali in Alaska, three countries make up most of North Americas land mass, they share the continent with 34 other island countries in the Caribbean and south of Mexico. The Great Plains is the expanse of prairie and steppe which lies east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States. The narrow plains in the Mexican coast and the savannas of the Mississippi are analogous to, respectively, the Patagonian steppes and the pampas of the Piranha, Paraguay, thus the Appalachians and the mountain chains of Brazil are regarded as creating similar interruptions to the plains community
14.
United States
–
Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
15.
Great Plains
–
The region is known for supporting extensive cattle ranching and dry farming. The Canadian portion of the Plains is known as the Prairies, some geographers include some territory of northern Mexico in the Plains, but many stop at the Rio Grande. The term Great Plains is used in the United States to describe a sub-section of the even more vast Interior Plains physiographic division and it also has currency as a region of human geography, referring to the Plains Indians or the Plains States. There is no region referred to as the Great Plains in The Atlas of Canada, in terms of human geography, the term prairie is more commonly used in Canada, and the region is known as the Prairie Provinces or simply the Prairies. The region is about 500 mi east to west and 2,000 mi north to south, much of the region was home to American bison herds until they were hunted to near extinction during the mid/late 19th century. It has an area of approximately 500,000 sq mi, current thinking regarding the geographic boundaries of the Great Plains is shown by this map at the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The term Great Plains, for the region west of about the 96th or 98th meridian, nevin Fennemans 1916 study, Physiographic Subdivision of the United States, brought the term Great Plains into more widespread usage. Before that the region was almost invariably called the High Plains, today the term High Plains is used for a subregion of the Great Plains. The Great Plains are the westernmost portion of the vast North American Interior Plains, during the Cretaceous Period, the Great Plains were covered by a shallow inland sea called the Western Interior Seaway. However, during the Late Cretaceous to the Paleocene, the seaway had begun to recede, leaving thick marine deposits. During the Cenozoic era, specifically about 25 million years ago during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, existing forest biomes declined and grasslands became much more widespread. The grasslands provided a new niche for mammals, including many ungulates and glires, traditionally, the spread of grasslands and the development of grazers have been strongly linked. The vast majority of animals became extinct in North America at the end of the Pleistocene. In general, the Great Plains have a variety of weather through the year, with very cold and harsh winters and very hot. Wind speeds are very high, especially in winter. Grasslands are among the least protected biomes, humans have converted much of the prairies for agricultural purposes or to create pastures. The Great Plains have dust storms mostly every year or so, the 100th meridian roughly corresponds with the line that divides the Great Plains into an area that receive 20 in or more of rainfall per year and an area that receives less than 20 in. The region is subjected to extended periods of drought, high winds in the region may then generate devastating dust storms
16.
North Dakota
–
North Dakota is the 39th state of the United States, having been admitted to the union on November 2,1889. The state capital is Bismarck, and the largest city is Fargo, North Dakota is the 19th most extensive but the 4th least populous and the 4th least densely populated of the 50 United States. The development has driven strong job and population growth, and low unemployment, North Dakota is located in the U. S. region known as the Great Plains. The state shares the Red River of the North with Minnesota on the east, South Dakota is to the south, Montana is to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba are to the north. North Dakota is situated near the middle of North America with a marker in Rugby. With an area of 70,762 square miles, North Dakota is the 19th largest state, the western half of the state consists of the hilly Great Plains as well as the northern part of the Badlands, which are to the west of the Missouri River. The states high point, White Butte at 3,506 feet, the region is abundant in fossil fuels including natural gas, crude oil and lignite coal. The Missouri River forms Lake Sakakawea, the third largest man-made lake in the United States, the central region of the state is divided into the Drift Prairie and the Missouri Plateau. The eastern part of the consists of the flat Red River Valley. Its fertile soil, drained by the meandering Red River flowing northward into Lake Winnipeg, Devils Lake, the largest natural lake in the state, is also found in the east. Eastern North Dakota is overall flat, however, there are significant hills, most of the state is covered in grassland, crops cover most of eastern North Dakota but become increasingly sparse in the center and farther west. This diverse terrain supports nearly 2,000 species of plants, the state of North Dakota is home to the geographical center of North America located near Rugby, North Dakota North Dakota has a continental climate with hot summers and cold winters. The temperature differences are rather extreme because of its far inland position and being in the center of the Northern Hemisphere, with equal distances to the North Pole. As such, summers are almost subtropical in nature, but winters are cold enough to plant hardiness is very low. Native American peoples lived in what is now North Dakota for thousands of years before the coming of Europeans and their tribes included the Mandan people, the Dakota people and the Yanktonai, the latter two from the Lakota peoples. The first European to reach the area was the French-Canadian trader Pierre Gaultier, sieur de La Vérendrye, in 1762 the region became part of Spanish Louisiana until 1802. Dakota Territory was settled sparsely by European Americans until the late 19th century, with the advantage of grants of land, they vigorously marketed their properties, extolling the region as ideal for agriculture. An omnibus bill for statehood for North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and his successor, Benjamin Harrison, signed the proclamations formally admitting North Dakota and South Dakota to the Union on November 2,1889
17.
Nebraska
–
Nebraska /nᵻˈbræskə/ is a state that lies in both the Great Plains and the Midwestern United States. Its area is just over 77,220 sq mi with almost 1.9 million people and its largest city is Omaha, which is on the Missouri River. The state is crossed by many trails and was explored by the Lewis. Nebraska was admitted as the 37th state of the United States in 1867 and it is the only state in the United States whose legislature is unicameral and officially nonpartisan. Nebraska is composed of two major regions, the Dissected Till Plains and the Great Plains. The Dissected Till Plains is a region of rolling hills. The Great Plains occupy most of western Nebraska, characterized by treeless prairie, the state has a large agriculture sector and is a major producer of beef, pork, corn, and soybeans. Two major climatic zones are represented in Nebraska, the half of the state has a humid continental climate, and the western half. Indigenous peoples lived in the region of present-day Nebraska for thousands of years before European exploration. The historic tribes in the state included the Omaha, Missouria, Ponca, Pawnee, Otoe, when European exploration, trade, and settlement began, both Spain and France sought to control the region. In the 1690s, Spain established trade connections with the Apaches, by 1703, France had developed a regular trade with the native peoples along the Missouri River in Nebraska, and by 1719 had signed treaties with several of these peoples. After war broke out between the two countries, Spain dispatched an expedition to Nebraska under Lieutenant General Pedro de Villasur in 1720. The party was attacked and destroyed near present-day Columbus by a force of Pawnees and Otoes. The massacre of the Villasur expedition effectively put an end to Spanish exploration of Nebraska for the remainder of the 18th century, in 1762, during the Seven Years War, France ceded the Louisiana territory to Spain. Frances withdrawal from the area left Britain and Spain competing for dominance along the Mississippi, by 1773, later that year, Mackays party built a trading post, dubbed Fort Carlos IV, near present-day Homer. In 1819, the United States established Fort Atkinson as the first U. S. Army post west of the Missouri River, the army abandoned the fort in 1827 as migration moved further west. European-American settlement did not begin in any numbers until after 1848, on May 30,1854, the US Congress created the Kansas and the Nebraska territories, divided by the Parallel 40° North, under the Kansas–Nebraska Act. The Nebraska Territory included parts of the current states of Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, the territorial capital of Nebraska was Omaha
18.
Kansas
–
Kansas /ˈkænzəs/ is a U. S. state located in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka and its largest city is Wichita, Kansas is named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribes name is said to mean people of the wind or people of the south wind. For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous, tribes in the eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison. When it was opened to settlement by the U. S. Thus, the area was a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days as these forces collided. The abolitionists eventually prevailed, and on January 29,1861, after the Civil War, the population of Kansas grew rapidly when waves of immigrants turned the prairie into farmland. By 2015, Kansas was one of the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, corn, sorghum, and soybeans. Kansas, which has an area of 82,278 square miles is the 15th largest state by area and is the 34th most populous of the 50 United States with a population of 2,911,641, residents of Kansas are called Kansans, officially. Mount Sunflower is Kansass highest point at 4,041 feet, for a millennia, the land that is currently Kansas was inhabited by Native Americans. The first European to set foot in present-day Kansas was Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, in 1803, most of modern Kansas was secured by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Southwest Kansas, however, was still a part of Spain, Mexico, from 1812 to 1821, Kansas was part of the Missouri Territory. The Santa Fe Trail traversed Kansas from 1821 to 1880, transporting manufactured goods from Missouri and silver and furs from Santa Fe, wagon ruts from the trail are still visible in the prairie today. In 1827, Fort Leavenworth became the first permanent settlement of white Americans in the future state, the Kansas–Nebraska Act became law on May 30,1854, establishing the U. S. territories of Nebraska and Kansas, and opening the area to broader settlement by whites. Kansas Territory stretched all the way to the Continental Divide and included the sites of present-day Denver, Colorado Springs, Missouri and Arkansas sent settlers into Kansas all along its eastern border. These settlers attempted to sway votes in favor of slavery, the secondary settlement of Americans in Kansas Territory were abolitionists from Massachusetts and other Free-Staters, who attempted to stop the spread of slavery from neighboring Missouri. Directly presaging the American Civil War, these forces collided, entering into skirmishes that earned the territory the name of Bleeding Kansas, Kansas was admitted to the United States as a free state on January 29,1861, making it the 34th state to enter the Union. He was roundly condemned by both the conventional Confederate military and the partisan rangers commissioned by the Missouri legislature and his application to that body for a commission was flatly rejected due to his pre-war criminal record
19.
Oklahoma
–
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central United States. Oklahoma is the 20th-most extensive and the 28th-most populous of the 50 United States, the states name is derived from the Choctaw words okla and humma, meaning red people. The name was settled upon statehood, Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory were merged, on November 16,1907, Oklahoma became the 46th state to enter the union. Its residents are known as Oklahomans, or informally Okies, and its capital, a major producer of natural gas, oil, and agricultural products, Oklahoma relies on an economic base of aviation, energy, telecommunications, and biotechnology. In 2007, it had one of the economies in the United States, ranking among the top states in per capita income growth. Oklahoma City and Tulsa serve as Oklahomas primary economic anchors, with nearly two-thirds of Oklahomans living within their metropolitan statistical areas. With small mountain ranges, prairie, mesas, and eastern forests, most of Oklahoma lies in the Great Plains, Cross Timbers, interior Highlands—a region especially prone to severe weather. The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw phrase okla humma, literally meaning red people, equivalent to the English word Indian, okla humma was a phrase in the Choctaw language used to describe Native American people as a whole. Oklahoma later became the de facto name for Oklahoma Territory, and it was approved in 1890. Oklahoma is the 20th-largest state in the United States, covering an area of 69,898 square miles and it is one of six states on the Frontier Strip and lies partly in the Great Plains near the geographical center of the 48 contiguous states. It is bounded on the east by Arkansas and Missouri, on the north by Kansas, on the northwest by Colorado, on the far west by New Mexico, much of its border with Texas lies along the Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen, a failed continental rift. The geologic figure defines the placement of the Red River, the Oklahoma panhandles Western edge is out of alignment with its Texas border. The Oklahoma/New Mexico border is actually 2.1 to 2.2 miles east of the Texas line, the border between Texas and New Mexico was set first as a result of a survey by Spain in 1819. It was then set along the 103rd Meridian, in the 1890s, when Oklahoma was formally surveyed using more accurate surveying equipment and techniques, it was discovered the Texas line was not set along the 103rd Meridian. Surveying techniques were not as accurate in 1819, and the actual 103rd Meridian was approximately 2.2 miles to the east and it was much easier to leave the mistake than for Texas to cede land to New Mexico to correct the surveying error. The placement of the Oklahoma/New Mexico border represents the true 103rd Meridian, cimarron County in Oklahomas panhandle is the only county in the United States that touches four other states, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and Kansas. Its highest and lowest points follow this trend, with its highest peak, Black Mesa, at 4,973 feet above sea level, situated near its far northwest corner in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The states lowest point is on the Little River near its far southeastern boundary near the town of Idabel, Oklahoma, which dips to 289 feet above sea level
20.
Montana
–
Montana /mɒnˈtænə/ is a state in the Western region of the United States. The states name is derived from the Spanish word montaña, Montana has several nicknames, although none official, including Big Sky Country and The Treasure State, and slogans that include Land of the Shining Mountains and more recently The Last Best Place. Montana has a 545-mile border with three Canadian provinces, British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, the state to do so. It also borders North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, Montana is ranked 4th in size, but 44th in population and 48th in population density of the 50 United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges, smaller island ranges are found throughout the state. In total,77 named ranges are part of the Rocky Mountains, the eastern half of Montana is characterized by western prairie terrain and badlands. The economy is based on agriculture, including ranching and cereal grain farming. Other significant economic activities include oil, gas, coal and hard rock mining, lumber, the health care, service, and government sectors also are significant to the states economy. Millions of tourists annually visit Glacier National Park, the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, the name Montana comes from the Spanish word Montaña and the Latin word Montana, meaning mountain, or more broadly, mountainous country. Montaña del Norte was the name given by early Spanish explorers to the mountainous region of the west. The name was changed by Representatives Henry Wilson and Benjamin F. Harding, when Ashley presented a bill to establish a temporary government in 1864 for a new territory to be carved out of Idaho, he again chose Montana Territory. This time Rep. Samuel Cox, also of Ohio, objected to the name, Cox complained that the name was a misnomer given most of the territory was not mountainous and that a Native American name would be more appropriate than a Spanish one. Other names such as Shoshone were suggested, but it was decided that the Committee on Territories could name it whatever they wanted, with an area of 147,040 square miles, Montana is slightly larger than Japan. It is the fourth largest state in the United States after Alaska, Texas, and California, the largest landlocked U. S. state, and the worlds 56th largest national state/province subdivision. To the north, Montana shares a 545-mile border with three Canadian provinces, British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, the state to do so. It borders North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, the states topography is roughly defined by the Continental Divide, which splits much of the state into distinct eastern and western regions. Most of Montanas 100 or more named mountain ranges are in the western half. The Absaroka and Beartooth ranges in the states south-central part are part of the Central Rocky Mountains
21.
Wyoming
–
Wyoming /waɪˈoʊmɪŋ/ is a state in the mountain region of the western United States. The state is the tenth largest by area, the least populous, Wyoming is bordered on the north by Montana, on the east by South Dakota and Nebraska, on the south by Colorado, on the southwest by Utah, and on the west by Idaho. Cheyenne is the capital and the most populous city in Wyoming, the state population was estimated at 586,107 in 2015, which is less than the population of 31 of the largest U. S. cities. The Crow, Arapaho, Lakota, and Shoshone were some of the inhabitants of the region. Southwestern Wyoming was included in the Spanish Empire and then Mexican territory until it was ceded to the United States in 1848 at the end of the Mexican–American War. The region acquired the name Wyoming when a bill was introduced to Congress in 1865 to provide a government for the territory of Wyoming. The territory was named after the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, with the name ultimately being derived from the Munsee word xwé, wamənk, the mineral extraction industry—especially coal, oil, natural gas, and trona—along with the travel and tourism sector are the main drivers behind Wyomings economy. Agriculture has historically been an important component of the economy with the main commodities being livestock, hay, sugar beets, grain. The climate is generally semi-arid and continental, being drier and windier in comparison to the rest of the United States, except for the 1964 election, Wyoming has been a politically conservative state since the 1950s, with the Republican party winning every presidential election. Wyoming is one of three states to have borders along only straight latitudinal and longitudinal lines, rather than being defined by natural landmarks. Wyoming is bordered on the north by Montana, on the east by South Dakota and Nebraska, on the south by Colorado, on the southwest by Utah, and on the west by Idaho. It is the tenth largest state in the United States in total area, from the north border to the south border it is 276 miles, and from the east to the west border is 365 miles at its south end and 342 miles at the north end. The Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming, the state is a great plateau broken by many mountain ranges. Surface elevations range from the summit of Gannett Peak in the Wind River Mountain Range, at 13,804 feet, to the Belle Fourche River valley in the states northeast corner, at 3,125 feet. In the northwest are the Absaroka, Owl Creek, Gros Ventre, Wind River, in the north central are the Big Horn Mountains, in the northeast, the Black Hills, and in the southern region the Laramie, Snowy and Sierra Madre ranges. The Snowy Range in the central part of the state is an extension of the Colorado Rockies in both geology and appearance. The Wind River Range in the west central part of the state is remote and includes more than 40 mountain peaks in excess of 13,000 ft tall in addition to Gannett Peak, the highest peak in the state. The Big Horn Mountains in the central portion are somewhat isolated from the bulk of the Rocky Mountains
22.
Colorado
–
Colorado is a state in the United States encompassing most of the Southern Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is part of the Western United States, the Southwestern United States, Colorado is the 8th most extensive and the 21st most populous of the 50 United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Colorado was 5,540,545 on July 1,2016, the state was named for the Colorado River, which Spanish travelers named the Río Colorado for the ruddy silt the river carried from the mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28,1861, Colorado is nicknamed the Centennial State because it became a state in the same year as the centennial of the United States Declaration of Independence. Colorado is noted for its landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers. Denver is the capital and the most populous city of Colorado, residents of the state are properly known as Coloradans, although the term Coloradoan has been used archaically and lives on in the title of Fort Collins newspaper, the Coloradoan. Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are the states which have boundaries defined solely by lines of latitude and longitude. The summit of Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet elevation in Lake County is the highest point in Colorado, Colorado is the only U. S. state that lies entirely above 1,000 meters elevation. The point where the Arikaree River flows out of Yuma County, Colorado and this point, which holds the distinction of being the highest low elevation point of any state, is higher than the high elevation points of 18 states and the District of Columbia. A little less than one half of the area of Colorado is flat, East of the Rocky Mountains are the Colorado Eastern Plains of the High Plains, the section of the Great Plains within Nebraska at elevations ranging from roughly 3,350 to 7,500 feet. The Colorado plains were mostly prairies, but they have many patches of forests, buttes. Eastern Colorado is presently covered in farmland and rangeland, along with small farming villages. Precipitation is fair, averaging from 15 to 25 inches annually, corn, wheat, hay, soybeans, and oats are all typical crops, and most of the villages and towns in this region boast both a water tower and a grain elevator. Irrigation water is available from the South Platte, the Arkansas River, and a few other streams, however, heavy use of ground water from wells for irrigation has caused underground water reserves to decline. As well as agriculture, eastern Colorado hosts considerable livestock, such as cattle ranches. Roughly 70% of Colorados population resides along the edge of the Rocky Mountains in the Front Range Urban Corridor between Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Pueblo, Colorado. This region is protected from prevailing storms that blow in from the Pacific Ocean region by the high Rockies in the middle of Colorado. The Front Range includes Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Loveland, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Greeley and other townships, on the other side of the Rockies, the significant population centers in Western Colorado are the cities of Grand Junction, Durango, and Montrose
23.
New Mexico
–
New Mexico is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States of America. It was admitted to the Union as the 47th state on January 6,1912 and it is usually considered one of the Mountain States. New Mexico is fifth by area, the 36th-most populous, inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years before European exploration, New Mexico was colonized by the Spanish in 1598 Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain. Later, it was part of independent Mexico before becoming a U. S. territory and eventually a U. S. state as a result of the Mexican–American War. Among U. S. states, New Mexico has the highest percentage of Hispanics, the major Native American nations in the state are Navajo, Pueblo, and Apache peoples. The demography and culture of the state are shaped by these strong Hispanic and Native American influences and its scarlet and gold colors are taken from the royal standards of Spain, along with the ancient sun symbol of the Zia, a Pueblo-related tribe. New Mexico, or Nuevo México in Spanish, is incorrectly believed to have taken its name from the nation of Mexico. The name simply stuck, even though the area had no connection to Mexico or the Mexica Indian tribes, Mexico, formerly a part of New Spain, adopted its name centuries later in 1821, after winning independence from Spanish rule. New Mexico was a part of the independent Mexican Empire and Federal Republic of Mexico for 27 years,1821 through 1848, New Mexico and Mexico developed as neighboring Spanish-speaking communities under Spanish rule, with relatively independent histories. The states total area is 121,412 square miles, the eastern border of New Mexico lies along 103° W longitude with the state of Oklahoma, and 2.2 miles west of 103° W longitude with Texas. On the southern border, Texas makes up the eastern two-thirds, while the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora make up the western third, the western border with Arizona runs along the 109°03 W longitude. The southwestern corner of the state is known as the Bootheel, the 37° N latitude parallel forms the northern boundary with Colorado. The states New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah come together at the Four Corners in the corner of New Mexico. New Mexico, although a state, has very little water. Its surface water area is about 250 square miles, the New Mexican landscape ranges from wide, rose-colored deserts to broken mesas to high, snow-capped peaks. Despite New Mexicos arid image, heavily forested mountain wildernesses cover a significant portion of the state, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the southernmost part of the Rocky Mountains, run roughly north-south along the east side of the Rio Grande in the rugged, pastoral north. The most important of New Mexicos rivers are the Rio Grande, Pecos, Canadian, San Juan, the Rio Grande is tied for the fourth-longest river in the United States. Tourists visiting these sites bring significant money to the state, other areas of geographical and scenic interest include Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument and the Gila Wilderness in the southwest of the state
24.
Texas
–
Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Other major cities include Austin, the second most populous state capital in the U. S. Texas is nicknamed the Lone Star State to signify its former status as an independent republic, and as a reminder of the states struggle for independence from Mexico. The Lone Star can be found on the Texan state flag, the origin of Texass name is from the word Tejas, which means friends in the Caddo language. Due to its size and geologic features such as the Balcones Fault, although Texas is popularly associated with the U. S. southwestern deserts, less than 10 percent of Texas land area is desert. Most of the centers are located in areas of former prairies, grasslands, forests. Traveling from east to west, one can observe terrain that ranges from coastal swamps and piney woods, to rolling plains and rugged hills, the term six flags over Texas refers to several nations that have ruled over the territory. Spain was the first European country to claim the area of Texas, Mexico controlled the territory until 1836 when Texas won its independence, becoming an independent Republic. In 1845, Texas joined the United States as the 28th state, the states annexation set off a chain of events that caused the Mexican–American War in 1846. A slave state before the American Civil War, Texas declared its secession from the U. S. in early 1861, after the Civil War and the restoration of its representation in the federal government, Texas entered a long period of economic stagnation. One Texan industry that thrived after the Civil War was cattle, due to its long history as a center of the industry, Texas is associated with the image of the cowboy. The states economic fortunes changed in the early 20th century, when oil discoveries initiated a boom in the state. With strong investments in universities, Texas developed a diversified economy, as of 2010 it shares the top of the list of the most Fortune 500 companies with California at 57. With a growing base of industry, the leads in many industries, including agriculture, petrochemicals, energy, computers and electronics, aerospace. Texas has led the nation in export revenue since 2002 and has the second-highest gross state product. The name Texas, based on the Caddo word tejas meaning friends or allies, was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves, during Spanish colonial rule, the area was officially known as the Nuevo Reino de Filipinas, La Provincia de Texas. Texas is the second largest U. S. state, behind Alaska, though 10 percent larger than France and almost twice as large as Germany or Japan, it ranks only 27th worldwide amongst country subdivisions by size. If it were an independent country, Texas would be the 40th largest behind Chile, Texas is in the south central part of the United States of America. Three of its borders are defined by rivers, the Rio Grande forms a natural border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south
25.
Missouri
–
Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, achieving statehood in 1821. With over six million residents, it is the eighteenth most populous state, the largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Columbia. The capitol is in Jefferson City on the Missouri River, the state is the twenty-first most extensive by area and is geographically diverse. The Northern Plains were once covered by glaciers, then tallgrass prairie, in the South are the Ozarks, a forested highland, providing timber, minerals, and recreation. The Mississippi River forms the border of the state, eventually flowing into the swampy Missouri Bootheel. Humans have inhabited what we now call Missouri for at least 12,000 years, the Mississippian culture built cities and mounds, before declining in the 1300s. When European explorers arrived in the 1600s they encountered the Osage, the French established Louisiana, a part of New France, and founded Ste. Genevieve in 1735 and St. Louis in 1764, after a brief period of Spanish rule, the United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Americans from the Upland South, including enslaved African Americans, rushed into the new Missouri Territory, many from Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee settled in the Boonslick area of Mid-Missouri. Soon after, heavy German immigration formed the Missouri Rhineland, Missouri played a central role in the westward expansion of the United States, as memorialized by the Gateway Arch. The Pony Express, Oregon Trail, Santa Fe Trail, as a border state, Missouris role in the American Civil War was complex and there were many conflicts within. After the war, both Greater St. Louis and the Kansas City metropolitan area became centers of industrialization and business, today, the state is divided into 114 counties and the independent city of St. Louis. Missouris culture blends elements from the Midwestern and Southern United States, the musical styles of ragtime, Kansas City jazz, and St. Louis Blues, developed in Missouri. The well-known Kansas City-style barbecue, and lesser known St. Louis-style barbecue can be found across the state, St. Louis is also a major center of beer brewing, Anheuser-Busch is the largest producer in the world. Missouri wine is produced in the nearby Missouri Rhineland and Ozarks, Missouris alcohol laws are among the most permissive in the United States. Outside of the large cities popular tourist destinations include the Lake of the Ozarks, U. S. President Harry S. Truman is from Missouri. Other well known Missourians include Mark Twain, Walt Disney, Chuck Berry, some of the largest companies based in the state include Express Scripts, Monsanto, Emerson Electric, Edward Jones, and OReilly Auto Parts. Missouri has been called the Mother of the West and the Cave State, however, Missouris most famous nickname is the Show Me State, the state is named for the Missouri River, which was named after the indigenous Missouri Indians, a Siouan-language tribe
26.
Iowa
–
Iowa is a U. S. state in the Midwestern United States, bordered by the Mississippi River on the east and the Missouri River and the Big Sioux River on the west. Surrounding states include Wisconsin and Illinois to the east, Missouri to the south, Nebraska and South Dakota to the west, in colonial times, Iowa was a part of French Louisiana and Spanish Louisiana, its state flag is patterned after the flag of France. After the Louisiana Purchase, people laid the foundation for an economy in the heart of the Corn Belt. Iowa is the 26th most extensive in area and the 30th most populous of the 50 United States. Its capital and largest city by population is Des Moines, Iowa has been listed as one of the safest states in which to live. Its nickname is the Hawkeye State, Iowa derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many Native American tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa is bordered by the Mississippi River on the east, the Missouri River and the Big Sioux River on the west, Iowa is the only state whose east and west borders are formed entirely by rivers. Iowa has 99 counties, but 100 county seats because Lee County has two, the state capital, Des Moines, is in Polk County. Iowas bedrock geology generally increases in age from west to east, in northwest Iowa, Cretaceous bedrock can be 74 million years old, in eastern Iowa Cambrian bedrock dates to c.500 million years ago. Iowa is generally not flat, most of the consists of rolling hills. Iowa can be divided into eight landforms based on glaciation, soils, topography, Loess hills lie along the western border of the state, some of which are several hundred feet thick. Northeast Iowa along the Mississippi River is part of the Driftless Zone, consisting of steep hills, several natural lakes exist, most notably Spirit Lake, West Okoboji Lake, and East Okoboji Lake in northwest Iowa. To the east lies Clear Lake, man-made lakes include Lake Odessa, Saylorville Lake, Lake Red Rock, Coralville Lake, Lake MacBride, and Rathbun Lake. The states northwest area has remnants of the once common wetlands. Iowas natural vegetation is tallgrass prairie and savanna in areas, with dense forest and wetlands in flood plains and protected river valleys. Most of Iowa is used for agriculture, crops cover 60% of the state, grasslands cover 30%, as of 2005 Iowa ranked 49th of U. S. states in public land holdings. Endangered or threatened plants include western prairie fringed orchid, eastern prairie fringed orchid, Meads milkweed, prairie bush clover, the explosion in the number of high-density livestock facilities in Iowa has led to increased rural water contamination and a decline in air quality. Iowa has a continental climate throughout the state
27.
Illinois
–
Illinois is a state in the midwestern region of the United States, achieving statehood in 1818. It is the 6th most populous state and 25th largest state in terms of land area, the word Illinois comes from a French rendering of a native Algonquin word. For decades, OHare International Airport has been ranked as one of the worlds busiest airports, Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics. With the War of 1812 Illinois growth slowed as both Native Americans and Canadian forces often raided the American Frontier, mineral finds and timber stands also had spurred immigration—by the 1810s, the Eastern U. S. Railroads arose and matured in the 1840s, and soon carried immigrants to new homes in Illinois, as well as being a resource to ship their commodity crops out to markets. Railroads freed most of the land of Illinois and other states from the tyranny of water transport. By 1900, the growth of jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted a new group of immigrants. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars, the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in Chicago, who created the citys famous jazz and blues cultures. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was the only U. S. president born and raised in Illinois. Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official slogan, Land of Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is located in the capital of Springfield. Illinois is the spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers name for the Illinois Native Americans. American scholars previously thought the name Illinois meant man or men in the Miami-Illinois language and this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for man is ireniwa and plural men is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has also said to mean tribe of superior men. The name Illinois derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa he speaks the regular way and this was taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ilinwe·. The French borrowed these forms, changing the ending to spell it as -ois. The current spelling form, Illinois, began to appear in the early 1670s, the Illinois name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, the Koster Site has been excavated and demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation
28.
Indiana
–
Indiana /ɪndiˈænə/ is a U. S. state located in the midwestern and Great Lakes regions of North America. Indiana is the 38th largest by area and the 16th most populous of the 50 United States and its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th U. S. state on December 11,1816, before becoming a territory, varying cultures of indigenous peoples and historic Native Americans inhabited Indiana for thousands of years. Indiana has an economy with a gross state product of $298 billion in 2012. Indiana has several areas with populations greater than 100,000. The states name means Land of the Indians, or simply Indian Land and it also stems from Indianas territorial history. On May 7,1800, the United States Congress passed legislation to divide the Northwest Territory into two areas and named the section the Indiana Territory. In 1816, when Congress passed an Enabling Act to begin the process of establishing statehood for Indiana, a resident of Indiana is officially known as a Hoosier. The first inhabitants in what is now Indiana were the Paleo-Indians, divided into small groups, the Paleo-Indians were nomads who hunted large game such as mastodons. They created stone tools made out of chert by chipping, knapping and flaking, the Archaic period, which began between 5000 and 4000 BC, covered the next phase of indigenous culture. The people developed new tools as well as techniques to cook food, such new tools included different types of spear points and knives, with various forms of notches. They made ground-stone tools such as axes, woodworking tools. During the latter part of the period, they built mounds and middens. The Archaic period ended at about 1500 BC, although some Archaic people lived until 700 BC, afterward, the Woodland period took place in Indiana, where various new cultural attributes appeared. During this period, the people created ceramics and pottery, an early Woodland period group named the Adena people had elegant burial rituals, featuring log tombs beneath earth mounds. In the middle portion of the Woodland period, the Hopewell people began developing long-range trade of goods, nearing the end of the stage, the people developed highly productive cultivation and adaptation of agriculture, growing such crops as corn and squash. The Woodland period ended around 1000 AD, the Mississippian culture emerged, lasting from 1000 until the 15th century, shortly before the arrival of Europeans. During this stage, the people created large urban settlements designed according to their cosmology, with mounds and plazas defining ceremonial
29.
Wisconsin
–
Wisconsin is a U. S. state located in the north-central United States, in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, Wisconsin is the 23rd largest state by total area and the 20th most populous. The state capital is Madison, and its largest city is Milwaukee, the state is divided into 72 counties. Wisconsin is second to Michigan in the length of its Great Lakes coastline, Wisconsin is known as Americas Dairyland because it is one of the nations leading dairy producers, particularly famous for its cheese. Manufacturing, especially paper products, information technology, and tourism are major contributors to the states economy. The word Wisconsin originates from the given to the Wisconsin River by one of the Algonquian-speaking Native American groups living in the region at the time of European contact. French explorer Jacques Marquette was the first European to reach the Wisconsin River, arriving in 1673, subsequent French writers changed the spelling from Meskousing to Ouisconsin, and over time this became the name for both the Wisconsin River and the surrounding lands. English speakers anglicized the spelling from Ouisconsin to Wisconsin when they began to arrive in numbers during the early 19th century. The legislature of Wisconsin Territory made the current spelling official in 1845, the Algonquin word for Wisconsin and its original meaning have both grown obscure. Interpretations vary, but most implicate the river and the red sandstone that lines its banks, other theories include claims that the name originated from one of a variety of Ojibwa words meaning red stone place, where the waters gather, or great rock. Wisconsin has been home to a variety of cultures over the past 12,000 years. The first people arrived around 10,000 BCE during the Wisconsin Glaciation and these early inhabitants, called Paleo-Indians, hunted now-extinct ice age animals such as the Boaz mastodon, a prehistoric mastodon skeleton unearthed along with spear points in southwest Wisconsin. After the ice age ended around 8000 BCE, people in the subsequent Archaic period lived by hunting, fishing, agricultural societies emerged gradually over the Woodland period between 1000 BCE to 1000 CE. Toward the end of period, Wisconsin was the heartland of the Effigy Mound culture. Later, between 1000 and 1500 CE, the Mississippian and Oneota cultures built substantial settlements including the village at Aztalan in southeast Wisconsin. The Oneota may be the ancestors of the modern Ioway and Ho-Chunk tribes who shared the Wisconsin region with the Menominee at the time of European contact, the first European to visit what became Wisconsin was probably the French explorer Jean Nicolet. He canoed west from Georgian Bay through the Great Lakes in 1634, pierre Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers visited Green Bay again in 1654–1666 and Chequamegon Bay in 1659–1660, where they traded for fur with local Native Americans. In 1673, Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet became the first to record a journey on the Fox-Wisconsin Waterway all the way to the Mississippi River near Prairie du Chien
30.
Minnesota
–
Minnesota is a state in the midwestern and northern regions of the United States. Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U. S. state on May 11,1858, the state has a large number of lakes, and is known by the slogan Land of 10,000 Lakes. Its official motto is LÉtoile du Nord, Minnesota is the 12th largest in area and the 21st most populous of the U. S. Minnesota is known for its progressive political orientation and its high rate of civic participation and voter turnout. Until European settlement, Minnesota was inhabited by the Dakota and Ojibwe/Anishinaabe, in recent decades, immigration from Asia, the Horn of Africa, and Latin America has broadened its historic demographic and cultural composition. Minnesotas standard of living index is among the highest in the United States, Native Americans demonstrated the name to early settlers by dropping milk into water and calling it mnisota. Many places in the state have similar names, such as Minnehaha Falls, Minneiska, Minneota, Minnetonka, Minnetrista, and Minneapolis, a combination of mni and polis, Minnesota is the second northernmost U. S. state. Its isolated Northwest Angle in Lake of the Woods county is the part of the 48 contiguous states lying north of the 49th parallel. The state is part of the U. S. region known as the Upper Midwest and it shares a Lake Superior water border with Michigan and a land and water border with Wisconsin to the east. Iowa is to the south, North Dakota and South Dakota are to the west, with 86,943 square miles, or approximately 2.25 percent of the United States, Minnesota is the 12th-largest state. Minnesota has some of the Earths oldest rocks, gneisses that are about 3.6 billion years old. About 2.7 billion years ago, basaltic lava poured out of cracks in the floor of the primordial ocean, the roots of these volcanic mountains and the action of Precambrian seas formed the Iron Range of northern Minnesota. Following a period of volcanism 1, in more recent times, massive ice sheets at least one kilometer thick ravaged the landscape of the state and sculpted its terrain. The Wisconsin glaciation left 12,000 years ago and these glaciers covered all of Minnesota except the far southeast, an area characterized by steep hills and streams that cut into the bedrock. This area is known as the Driftless Zone for its absence of glacial drift, much of the remainder of the state outside the northeast has 50 feet or more of glacial till left behind as the last glaciers retreated. Gigantic Lake Agassiz formed in the northwest 13,000 years ago and its bed created the fertile Red River valley, and its outflow, glacial River Warren, carved the valley of the Minnesota River and the Upper Mississippi downstream from Fort Snelling. Minnesota is geologically quiet today, it experiences earthquakes infrequently, the states high point is Eagle Mountain at 2,301 feet, which is only 13 miles away from the low of 601 feet at the shore of Lake Superior. Notwithstanding dramatic local differences in elevation, much of the state is a rolling peneplain. Two major drainage divides meet in Minnesotas northeast in rural Hibbing, forming a triple watershed, precipitation can follow the Mississippi River south to the Gulf of Mexico, the Saint Lawrence Seaway east to the Atlantic Ocean, or the Hudson Bay watershed to the Arctic Ocean
31.
Central Valley (California)
–
Californias Central Valley is a large, flat valley that dominates the geographical center of the U. S. state of California. It is 40 to 60 miles wide and stretches approximately 450 miles from north-northwest to south-southeast, inland from and it covers approximately 18,000 square miles, about 11% of Californias total land area. More than 7 million acres of the valley are irrigated via a system of reservoirs. The valley also has many cities, including the state capital Sacramento, as well as Redding, Stockton, Modesto, Fresno. The Central Valley watershed comprises 60,000 square miles, or over a third of California, the delta empties into the San Francisco Bay, and then ultimately flows into the Pacific. The Central Valley is commonly known to simply as the Valley. Older names include the Great Valley, a name often seen in scientific references, and Golden Empire. The Central Valley is outlined by the Cascade, Sierra Nevada, and Tehachapi mountain ranges on the east, the broad valley floor is carpeted by vast agricultural regions, and dotted with numerous population centers. While there are many large and small between these cities, these four cities act as hubs for regional commerce and transportation. About 6.5 million people live in the Central Valley today, there are 12 Metropolitan Statistical Areas and 1 Micropolitan Statistical Area in the Central Valley. Below, they are listed by MSA and μSA population, the largest city is Fresno, followed by the state capital, Sacramento. The valley is thought to have originated below sea level as an offshore area depressed by subduction of the Farallon Plate into a trench further offshore, the San Joaquin Fault is a notable seismic feature of the Central Valley. The valley was later enclosed by the uplift of the Coast Ranges, faulting moved the Coast Ranges, and a new outlet developed near what is now San Francisco Bay. The one notable exception to the valley floor is Sutter Buttes. Another significant geologic feature of the Central Valley lies hidden beneath the delta, the Stockton Arch is an upwarping of the crust beneath the valley sediments which extends southwest to northeast across the valley. However, much of the Central Valley environment has been removed or altered by human activity including the introduction of exotic plants, the oak woodlands and chaparral that fringe the valley have been categorized as the California interior chaparral and woodlands ecoregion. The wetlands have been the target of operations to restore areas nearly destroyed by agriculture. The dominant grass of the valley was Nassella pulchra mixed with other species, grassland flowers include California poppy, lupins, and purple owls clover which can still be seen, especially in Antelope Valley in the Tehachapi hills
32.
California
–
California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
33.
Canadian Prairies
–
The Canadian Prairies is a region in western Canada, which may correspond to several different definitions, natural or political. Notably, the Prairie provinces or simply the Prairies comprise the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, in a more restricted sense, the term may also refer only to the areas of those provinces covered by prairie, their portions of the physiographic region known as the Interior Plains. Prairie also covers portions of northeastern British Columbia, though that province is not included in the region in a political sense. Northern short grasslands in southeastern Alberta and southwestern Saskatchewan, northern tall grasslands in southern Manitoba, and Aspen parkland, which covers central Alberta, central Saskatchewan, and southern Manitoba. The Prairie starts from north of Edmonton, it covers the three provinces east to the Manitoba-Minnesota border, the Canadian prairies typically experience about 12 to 15 in of annual precipitation in the semi-arid areas while they experience 16 to 20 in in the continental regions. Manitoba is generally the coldest and most humid of the three prairie provinces, the area is also prone to thunderstorms in the spring and summer. Some of these storms, especially further south, are enough for tornadoes. The plains comprise both prairies and forests while, with the exception of Arctic tundra along the Hudson Bay, three main grassland types occur in the Canadian prairies, tallgrass prairie, mixed grass prairie, and fescue prairie. Each has a geographic distribution and characteristic mix of plant species. All but a fraction of one percent of the tallgrass prairie has been converted to cropland, what remains occurs on the 6,000 km2 plain centred in the Red River Valley in Manitoba. Mixed prairie is more common and is part of the dry plains that extend from Canada south to the U. S. state of Texas. More than half of the native grassland in the Canadian prairies is mixed. Though widespread in southern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta, because of extensive cattle grazing, fescue prairie occurs in the moister regions, occupying the northern extent of the prairies in central and southwestern Alberta and west-central Saskatchewan. The southwestern Canadian prairies, supporting brown and black soil types, are semi-arid and highly prone to frequent, the zones around the cities of Regina and immediately east of Calgary are also very dry. Most heavy precipitation quickly dissipates by the time it passes Cheadle on its way heading east, in an average year, southern Saskatchewan receives between 30–51 cm of precipitation, with the majority falling between April and June. Frost from October to April limits the growing season for certain crops, the eastern section of the Canadian prairies in Manitoba is well watered with several large lakes such as Lake Winnipeg and several large rivers. The area also gets reasonable amounts of precipitation, the middle sections of Alberta and Saskatchewan are also wetter than the south and have better farmland, despite having a shorter frost-free season. The areas around Edmonton and Saskatoon are especially notable as good farmland, both lie in the northern area of the Pallisers Triangle, and are within aspen parkland a transitional prairie ecozone
34.
Manitoba
–
Manitoba is a province at the longitudinal centre of Canada. It is one of the three provinces and Canadas fifth-most populous province with its estimated 1.3 million people. Manitoba covers 649,950 square kilometres with a varied landscape. Aboriginal peoples have inhabited what is now Manitoba for thousands of years, in the late 17th century, fur traders arrived in the area when it was part of Ruperts Land and owned by the Hudsons Bay Company. In 1869, negotiations for the creation of the province of Manitoba led to an uprising of the Métis people against the Government of Canada. The rebellions resolution led to the Parliament of Canada passing the Manitoba Act in 1870 that created the province, Manitobas capital and largest city, Winnipeg, is Canadas eighth-largest census metropolitan area. Winnipeg is the seat of government, home to the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, four of the provinces five universities and all four of its professional sports teams are in Winnipeg. The name Manitoba is believed to be derived from the Cree, the name derives from Cree manitou-wapow or Ojibwa manidoobaa, both meaning straits of Manitou, the Great Spirit, a place referring to what are now called The Narrows in the centre of Lake Manitoba. It may also be from the Assiniboine for Lake of the Prairie, the lake was known to French explorers as Lac des Prairies. Thomas Spence chose the name to refer to a new republic he proposed for the south of the lake. Métis leader Louis Riel also chose the name, and it was accepted in Ottawa under the Manitoba Act of 1870 and it adjoins Hudson Bay to the northeast, and is the only prairie province to have a saltwater coastline. The Port of Churchill is Canadas only Arctic deep-water port and the shortest shipping route between North America and Asia, Lake Winnipeg is the tenth-largest freshwater lake in the world. Hudson Bay is the worlds second-largest bay, Manitoba is at the heart of the giant Hudson Bay watershed, once known as Ruperts Land. It was a area of the Hudsons Bay Company, with many rivers. The province has a saltwater coastline bordering Hudson Bay and more than 110,000 lakes, Manitobas major lakes are Lake Manitoba, Lake Winnipegosis, and Lake Winnipeg, the tenth-largest freshwater lake in the world. Some traditional Native lands and boreal forest on Lake Winnipegs east side are a proposed UNESCO World Heritage Site. Manitoba is at the centre of the Hudson Bay drainage basin, with a volume of the water draining into Lake Winnipeg. This basins rivers reach far west to the mountains, far south into the United States, major watercourses include the Red, Assiniboine, Nelson, Winnipeg, Hayes, Whiteshell and Churchill rivers
35.
Saskatchewan
–
Saskatchewan is a prairie and boreal province in west-central Canada, the only province without natural borders. It has an area of 651,900 square kilometres, nearly 10 percent of which is water, composed mostly of rivers, reservoirs. As of December 2013, Saskatchewans population was estimated at 1,114,170, residents primarily live in the southern prairie half of the province, while the northern boreal half is mostly forested and sparsely populated. Of the total population, roughly half live in the provinces largest city, Saskatoon, or the provincial capital, other notable cities include Prince Albert, Moose Jaw, Yorkton, Swift Current, North Battleford, and the border city Lloydminster. Saskatchewan is a province with large distances to moderating bodies of waters. As a result, its climate is continental, rendering severe winters throughout the province. Southern areas have very warm or hot summers, Midale and Yellow Grass near the U. S. border are tied for the highest ever recorded temperatures in Canada with 45 °C observed at both locations on July 5,1937. In winter, temperatures below −45 °C are possible even in the south during extreme cold snaps, Saskatchewan has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups, and first explored by Europeans in 1690 and settled in 1774. It became a province in 1905, carved out from the vast North-West Territories, in the early 20th century the province became known as a stronghold for Canadian social democracy, North Americas first social-democratic government was elected in 1944. The provinces economy is based on agriculture, mining, and energy, Saskatchewans current premier is Brad Wall and its lieutenant-governor is Vaughn Solomon Schofield. In 1992, the federal and provincial governments signed a land claim agreement with First Nations in Saskatchewan. The First Nations received compensation and were permitted to buy land on the market for the tribes, they have acquired about 3,079 square kilometres. Some First Nations have used their settlement to invest in urban areas and its name derived from the Saskatchewan River. The river was known as kisiskāciwani-sīpiy in the Cree language, as Saskatchewans borders largely follow the geographic coordinates of longitude and latitude, the province is roughly a quadrilateral, or a shape with four sides. However the 49th parallel boundary and the 60th northern border appear curved on globes, additionally, the eastern boundary of the province is partially crooked rather than following a line of longitude, as correction lines were devised by surveyors prior to the homestead program. S. States of Montana and North Dakota, Saskatchewan has the distinction of being the only Canadian province for which no borders correspond to physical geographic features. Along with Alberta, Saskatchewan is one of only two land-locked provinces, the overwhelming majority of Saskatchewans population is located in the southern third of the province, south of the 53rd parallel. Saskatchewan contains two natural regions, the Canadian Shield in the north and the Interior Plains in the south
36.
Alberta
–
Alberta is a western province of Canada. With an estimated population of 4,196,457 as of July 1,2015, it is Canadas fourth-most populous province and its area is about 660,000 square kilometres. Alberta and its neighbour Saskatchewan were districts of the Northwest Territories until they were established as provinces on September 1,1905, the premier has been Rachel Notley since May 2015. Alberta is bounded by the provinces of British Columbia to the west and Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories to the north, and the U. S. state of Montana to the south. Alberta is one of three Canadian provinces and territories to only a single U. S. state and one of only two landlocked provinces. About 290 km south of the capital is Calgary, the largest city in Alberta, Calgary and Edmonton centre Albertas two census metropolitan areas, both of which have populations exceeding one million, while the province has 16 census agglomerations. Tourist destinations in the province include Banff, Canmore, Drumheller, Jasper, Alberta is named after Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the fourth daughter of Victoria, Queen of Canada, and Albert, Prince Consort. Princess Louise was the wife of John Campbell, Marquess of Lorne, Lake Louise and Mount Alberta were also named in her honour. Alberta, with an area of 661,848 km2, is the fourth largest province after Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia. To the south, the borders on the 49th parallel north, separating it from the US state of Montana. The province extends 1,223 km north to south and 660 km east to west at its maximum width, with the exception of the semi-arid steppe of the south-eastern section, the province has adequate water resources. There are numerous rivers and lakes used for swimming, fishing, there are three large lakes, Lake Claire in Wood Buffalo National Park, Lesser Slave Lake, and Lake Athabasca which lies in both Alberta and Saskatchewan. The longest river in the province is the Athabasca River which travels 1,538 km from the Columbia Icefield in the Rocky Mountains to Lake Athabasca, the largest river is the Peace River with an average flow of 2161 m3/s. The Peace River originates in the Rocky Mountains of northern British Columbia and flows through northern Alberta and into the Slave River, Albertas capital city, Edmonton, is located approximately in the geographic centre of the province. It is the most northerly city in Canada, and serves as a gateway. The region, with its proximity to Canadas largest oil fields, has most of western Canadas oil refinery capacity, Calgary is located approximately 280 km south of Edmonton and 240 km north of Montana, surrounded by extensive ranching country. Almost 75% of the population lives in the Calgary–Edmonton Corridor. The land grant policy to the served as a means to populate the province in its early years
37.
Shortgrass prairie
–
The shortgrass prairie is an ecosystem located in the Great Plains of North America. The prairie includes lands to the west as far as the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and extends east as far as Nebraska. The prairie stretches through parts of Alberta, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Kansas, and passes south through the plains of Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas. The prairie was formerly maintained by grazing pressure of American bison, the two most dominant grasses in the shortgrass prairie are blue grama and buffalograss, the two less dominant grasses in the prairie are greasegrass and sideoats grama. Due to its climate, the shortgrass prairie receives on average less precipitation than that of the tall. The shortgrass prairie has a human history. The Kiowa, Comanche, and Arapahoe peoples occupied the land, hunting bison, seasonally, these tribes would stage hunts in the adjacent mountains such as the Rocky Mountains. To manage the prairie these tribes and their predecessors likely used fire and they would create fuel breaks, a gap in vegetation or other combustible material that acts as a barrier to slow or stop the progress of a brushfire or wildfire. A firebreak may occur naturally in areas without vegetation or other fuel, such as a river and these fuel breaks would also entice large herbivores to patches of fresh new growth. European explorers, trappers, and fur traders began to settle the shortgrass prairie and they developed an extractive economy that led to the later growth and industrialization of the prairie. In the mid- and late 19th century the railroads expanded transportation channels, helping to increase settlement, predominantly in rural, while more people began to settle in the prairie, large-scale cattle and sheep ranching increased as well. This later led to the development of gold, silver, in the 1920s, El Niño played a big role in the success of crop growing in the short grass plains. El Niño caused more precipitation throughout the prairie, promoting plant growth, the success encouraged farmers to buy more efficient farming equipment. With the new equipment, farmers turned up the native land, by the time the 1930s came around, it was too late to protect the soil with grass. The unprotected soil contributed to the Dust Bowl by being blown around, the Food Security Act of 1985 allowed for lower commodity prices and income supports. This Act also laid the foundation for the dairy herd buyout program, the Act made changes to several other USDA programs. Today much of the prairie is grazed by domestic livestock. However, energy and mining exploration have increased, the shortgrass prairie is a long thin stretch of territory that starts at the top of the country and makes its way to the bottom
38.
Tallgrass prairie
–
The tallgrass prairie is an ecosystem native to central North America. They were characteristically found in the central forest-grasslands transition, the tall grasslands, the upper Midwest forest-savanna transition. They flourished in areas with loess soils and moderate rainfall around 30 to 35 inches per year. To the east were the eastern savannas. In the northeast, where fire was infrequent and periodic windthrow represented the source of disturbance. In contrast, shortgrass prairie was typical in the western Great Plains, due to expansive agricultural land use, very little tallgrass prairie remains. Retreating glaciers deposited the parent material for soil in the form of till, i. e. unsorted sediment, wind-dropped loess and organic matter accumulated, resulting in deep levels of topsoil. Animals such as bison, elk, deer, and rabbits added nitrogen to the soil through urine, Prairie dogs, a ground squirrel-like rodent considered to be a keystone species, dug tunnels that aerated the soil and channeled water several feet below the surface. For 5,000 to 8,000 years, more than 240 million acres of prairie grasslands were a feature of the landscape. Between 1800 and 1930, the vast majority was destroyed, settlers transformed what they named the Great American Desert or The Inland Sea into farmland. Further, extensive tile drainage has changed the water content and hydrodynamics. Tallgrass prairie is capable of supporting significant biodiversity, parts of the ecoregion among the top ten ecoregions for reptiles, birds, butterflies, and tree species. Tallgrass species are found in the understory layer, oak and hickory tree species occur in some areas, but generally in moderate densities. The tallgrass prairie biome depends on fires, a form of wildfire. Tree seedlings and intrusive alien species without fire tolerance are eliminated by periodic fires, such fires may either be set by humans or started naturally by lightning. Technically, prairies have less than 5–11% tree cover, a grass-dominated plant community with 10–49% tree cover is a savanna. After the steel plow was invented by John Deere, this fertile soil became one of Americas most important resources, over 95% of the original tallgrass prairie is now farmland. In Oklahoma, the tallgrass prairie has been maintained by ranchers and they have reintroduced plains bison to the vast expanses of grass
39.
Theodore Roosevelt
–
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was an American statesman, author, explorer, soldier, naturalist, and reformer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. As a leader of the Republican Party during this time, he became a force for the Progressive Era in the United States in the early 20th century. Born a sickly child with debilitating asthma, Roosevelt successfully overcame his health problems by embracing a strenuous lifestyle and he integrated his exuberant personality, vast range of interests, and world-famous achievements into a cowboy persona defined by robust masculinity. Home-schooled, he began a lifelong naturalist avocation before attending Harvard College and his first of many books, The Naval War of 1812, established his reputation as both a learned historian and as a popular writer. Upon entering politics, he became the leader of the faction of Republicans in New Yorks state legislature. Returning a war hero, he was elected governor of New York in 1898, the state party leadership distrusted him, so they took the lead in moving him to the prestigious but powerless role of vice presidential candidate as McKinleys running mate in the election of 1900. Roosevelt campaigned vigorously across the country, helping McKinleys re-election in a victory based on a platform of peace, prosperity. Following the assassination of President McKinley in September 1901, Roosevelt succeeded to the office at age 42, making conservation a top priority, he established a myriad of new national parks, forests, and monuments intended to preserve the nations natural resources. In foreign policy, he focused on Central America, where he began construction of the Panama Canal and he greatly expanded the United States Navy and sent the Great White Fleet on a world tour to project the United States naval power around the globe. His successful efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War won him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, elected in 1904 to a full term, Roosevelt continued to promote progressive policies, but many of his efforts and much of his legislative agenda were eventually blocked in Congress. Roosevelt successfully groomed his close friend, William Howard Taft, to succeed him in the presidency, after leaving office, Roosevelt went on safari in Africa and toured Europe. Returning to the United States, he became frustrated with Tafts approach, failing to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1912, Roosevelt founded his own party, the Progressive, so-called Bull Moose Party, and called for wide-ranging progressive reforms. The split among Republicans enabled the Democrats to win both the White House and a majority in the Congress in 1912, Republicans aligned with Taft nationally would control the Republican Party for decades. Frustrated at home, Roosevelt led an expedition to the Amazon basin. During World War I, he opposed President Woodrow Wilson for keeping the country out of the war, and offered his military services, although planning to run again for president in 1920, Roosevelt suffered deteriorating health and died in early 1919. Roosevelt has consistently ranked by scholars as one of the greatest American presidents. Historians admire Roosevelt for rooting out corruption in his administration, but are critical of his 1909 libel lawsuits against the World and his face was carved into Mount Rushmore, alongside those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was born on October 27,1858, at East 20th Street in New York City and he was the second of four children born to socialite Martha Stewart Mittie Bulloch and glass businessman and philanthropist Theodore Roosevelt Sr
40.
Midwest
–
It was officially named the North Central region by the Census Bureau until 1984. Illinois is the most populous of the states and North Dakota the least, a 2012 report from the United States Census put the population of the Midwest at 65,377,684. The Midwest is divided by the Census Bureau into two divisions, the East North Central Division includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, all of which are also part of the Great Lakes region. Major rivers in the include, from east to west, the Ohio River, the Upper Mississippi River. Chicago is the most populated city in the American Midwest and the third most populous in the entire country, other large Midwest cities include, Indianapolis, Columbus, Detroit, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Omaha, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Wichita and St. Louis. Chicago and its suburbs form the largest metropolitan area with 9.8 million people, followed by Metro Detroit. Paul, Greater St. Louis, Greater Cleveland, Greater Cincinnati, Kansas City metro area, the term Midwestern has been in use since the 1880s to refer to portions of the central United States. A variant term, Middle West, has used since the 19th century. Another term sometimes applied to the general region is the heartland. Other designations for the region have fallen out of use, such as the Northwest or Old Northwest, the Northwest Territory was one of the earliest territories of the United States, stretching northwest from the Ohio River to northern Minnesota and upper-Mississippi. The upper-Mississippi watershed including the Missouri and Illinois Rivers was the setting for the earlier French settlements of the Illinois Country, economically the region is balanced between heavy industry and agriculture, with finance and services such as medicine and education becoming increasingly important. Its central location makes it a crossroads for river boats, railroads, autos, trucks. Politically the region swings back and forth between the parties, and thus is heavily contested and often decisive in elections, after the sociological study Middletown, which was based on Muncie, Indiana, commentators used Midwestern cities as typical of the nation. The region has a higher ratio than the Northeast, the West. Traditional definitions of the Midwest include the Northwest Ordinance Old Northwest states, the states of the Old Northwest are also known as Great Lakes states and are east-north central in the United States. The Ohio River runs along the section while the Mississippi River runs north to south near the center. Many of the Louisiana Purchase states in the west-north central United States, are known as Great Plains states. The Midwest lies north of the 36°30′ parallel that the 1820 Missouri Compromise established as the line between future slave and non-slave states
41.
Meadow
–
A meadow is a field habitat vegetated by grass and other non-woody plants. Meadows are of importance because they are open, sunny areas that attract and support flora. Meadows may be naturally occurring or artificially created from cleared shrub or woodland and they often host a multitude of wildlife, providing areas for courtship displays, nesting, food gathering and sometimes sheltering if the vegetation is high enough. Many meadows support an array of wildflowers, which makes them of utmost importance to insects like bees and other pollinating insects. In agriculture, a meadow is grassland which is not regularly grazed by domestic livestock, especially in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the term meadow is commonly used in its original sense to mean a hay meadow, signifying grassland mown annually in the summer for making hay. Agricultural meadows are typically lowland or upland fields upon which hay or pasture grasses grow from self-sown or hand-sown seed, traditional hay meadows were once common in rural Britain, but are now in decline. Ecologist Professor John Rodwell states that over the past century, England, fewer than 15.000 hectares of lowland meadows remain in the UK and most sites are relatively small and fragmented. 25% of the UKs meadows are found in Worcestershire, with Fosters Green Meadow managed by the Worcestershire Wildlife Trust being a major site. A similar concept to the hay meadow is the pasture, which differs from the meadow in that it is grazed through the summer, rather than being allowed to grow out, the term, grassland, is used to describe both hay meadows and grass pastures. The specific agricultural practices in relation to the meadow can take on various expressions, as mentioned, this could be hay production or providing food for grazing cattle and livestock but also to give room for orchards or honey production. A transitional state can be artificially-maintained through a system, in which cultivated soil. For example, some of todays meadows originated thousands of years ago, types of perpetual meadows may include, Alpine meadows occur at high elevations above the tree line and maintained by harsh climatic conditions. Coastal meadows maintained by salt sprays, desert meadows restricted by low precipitation or lack of nutrients and humus. Prairies maintained by periods of drought or subject to wildfires. Wet meadows saturated with water much of the year. Apart from the meadows, meadows are often conceived of as artificial or cultural habitats, since they have emerged from and continually require human intervention to persist. It can be argued however, that meadows are really semi-cultural habitats, the reason is, that in many places the natural, pristine populations of free roaming large grazers are either extinct or very limited due to human activities. This reduces or removes their natural influence on the surrounding ecology, mankind has influenced the ecology and the landscape for millennia in many parts of the world, so it can sometimes be difficult to discern what is natural and what is cultural
42.
French language
–
French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
43.
Latin
–
Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
44.
Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie
–
The Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie is a tallgrass prairie reserve and United States National Grassland operated by the United States Forest Service. The first national tallgrass prairie ever designated in the U. S, the tallgrass prairie reserve is in the central forest-grasslands transition ecoregion of the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome. Midewin remains the only tallgrass prairie preserve east of the Mississippi River. The pre-European settlement vegetation map of Midewin shows most of the site was prairie prior to the arrival of European settlers, the northwestern corner of the site along Jackson Creek was forest. Another small, forested area existed in the extreme southwest corner of Midewin along the Kankakee River and these include the Wetlands Initiative, Openlands. and the Illinois chapter of The Nature Conservancy and several other members of the Chicago Wilderness collaborative. The name Midewin is a Potowatomi Native American word referring to the tribes healers, the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie was established by federal law in 1996. Major proponents of the establishment and restoration included World War II flying ace William J. Cullerton. To provide opportunities for scientific, environmental, and land use education, to allow the continuation of existing agricultural uses of lands within Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie for the next 20 years, or for compatible resource management uses thereafter. To provide recreational opportunities that are compatible with the above purposes, the first land transfer from the Army to the Forest Service took place on March 10,1997, and included 15,080 acres of land that was believed to be free from contamination. Subsequent land acquisitions place the current size of Midewin at about 20,000 acres, in 2015, the prairie approved the use of 1,200 acres to establish a conservation herd of American Bison. The 20-year plan will study the relationship between the large grazing animal, which almost became extinct, and prairie restoration and health. In October, a herd of 27 bison were introduced and this is the first U. S. Forest Service project of its kind. After a period of restoration, part of the prairie opened to visitors in 2004. Today, over 7,000 acres acres of the reserve are open, the MNTP headquarters entrance is located on Illinois Route 53, near the center of the preserve
45.
Rocky Mountains
–
The Rocky Mountains, commonly known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than 3,000 miles from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the Southwestern United States. Within the North American Cordillera, the Rockies are somewhat distinct from the Pacific Coast Ranges, the Rocky Mountains were initially formed from 80 million to 55 million years ago during the Laramide orogeny, in which a number of plates began to slide underneath the North American plate. The angle of subduction was shallow, resulting in a belt of mountains running down western North America. Since then, further tectonic activity and erosion by glaciers have sculpted the Rockies into dramatic peaks, at the end of the last ice age, humans started to inhabit the mountain range. The first mention of their present name by a European was in the journal of Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre in 1752, the Rocky Mountains are commonly defined as stretching from the Liard River in British Columbia south to the Rio Grande in New Mexico. The United States definition of the Rockies includes the Cabinet and Salish Mountains of Idaho and their counterparts north of the Kootenai River, the Columbia Mountains, are considered a separate system in Canada, lying to the west of the huge Rocky Mountain Trench. This runs the length of British Columbia from its beginnings in the middle Flathead River valley in western Montana to the bank of the Liard River. The Rockies vary in width from 70 to 300 miles, also west of the Rocky Mountain Trench, farther north and facing the Muskwa Range across the trench, are the Stikine Ranges and Omineca Mountains of the Interior Mountains system of British Columbia. A small area east of Prince George, British Columbia on the side of the Trench. In Canada geographers define three main groups of ranges, the Continental Ranges, Hart Ranges and Muskwa Ranges, the Muskwa and Hart Ranges together comprise what is known as the Northern Rockies. The western edge of the Rockies includes ranges such as the Wasatch near Salt Lake City, the Great Basin and Columbia River Plateau separate these sub-ranges from distinct ranges further to the west, most prominent among which are the Sierra Nevada, Cascade Range and Coast Mountains. The Rocky Mountain System within the United States is a United States physiographic region, the Rocky Mountains are notable for containing the highest peaks in central North America. The ranges highest peak is Mount Elbert located in Colorado at 14,440 feet above sea level, Mount Robson in British Columbia, at 12,972 feet, is the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. The Continental Divide of the Americas is located in the Rocky Mountains, triple Divide Peak in Glacier National Park is so named because water that falls on the mountain reaches not only the Atlantic and Pacific, but Hudson Bay as well. Farther north in Alberta, the Athabasca and other rivers feed the basin of the Mackenzie River, see Rivers of the Rocky Mountains for a list of rivers. Human population is not very dense in the Rocky Mountains, with an average of four people per square kilometer, however, the human population grew rapidly in the Rocky Mountain states between 1950 and 1990. The 40-year statewide increases in range from 35% in Montana to about 150% in Utah
46.
Great plains
–
The region is known for supporting extensive cattle ranching and dry farming. The Canadian portion of the Plains is known as the Prairies, some geographers include some territory of northern Mexico in the Plains, but many stop at the Rio Grande. The term Great Plains is used in the United States to describe a sub-section of the even more vast Interior Plains physiographic division and it also has currency as a region of human geography, referring to the Plains Indians or the Plains States. There is no region referred to as the Great Plains in The Atlas of Canada, in terms of human geography, the term prairie is more commonly used in Canada, and the region is known as the Prairie Provinces or simply the Prairies. The region is about 500 mi east to west and 2,000 mi north to south, much of the region was home to American bison herds until they were hunted to near extinction during the mid/late 19th century. It has an area of approximately 500,000 sq mi, current thinking regarding the geographic boundaries of the Great Plains is shown by this map at the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The term Great Plains, for the region west of about the 96th or 98th meridian, nevin Fennemans 1916 study, Physiographic Subdivision of the United States, brought the term Great Plains into more widespread usage. Before that the region was almost invariably called the High Plains, today the term High Plains is used for a subregion of the Great Plains. The Great Plains are the westernmost portion of the vast North American Interior Plains, during the Cretaceous Period, the Great Plains were covered by a shallow inland sea called the Western Interior Seaway. However, during the Late Cretaceous to the Paleocene, the seaway had begun to recede, leaving thick marine deposits. During the Cenozoic era, specifically about 25 million years ago during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, existing forest biomes declined and grasslands became much more widespread. The grasslands provided a new niche for mammals, including many ungulates and glires, traditionally, the spread of grasslands and the development of grazers have been strongly linked. The vast majority of animals became extinct in North America at the end of the Pleistocene. In general, the Great Plains have a variety of weather through the year, with very cold and harsh winters and very hot. Wind speeds are very high, especially in winter. Grasslands are among the least protected biomes, humans have converted much of the prairies for agricultural purposes or to create pastures. The Great Plains have dust storms mostly every year or so, the 100th meridian roughly corresponds with the line that divides the Great Plains into an area that receive 20 in or more of rainfall per year and an area that receives less than 20 in. The region is subjected to extended periods of drought, high winds in the region may then generate devastating dust storms
