Essential Geography Facts and Regional Characteristics

North American Geography and Culture

• Within the Alaska Range, we find Mount McKinley, the highest peak in the United States and Canada at about 20,000 feet.
• The New England culture core began as a patchwork of small, subsistence-oriented farms surrounding small villages.
• Georgia enjoys a humid subtropical climate, while Wisconsin enjoys a humid continental climate.
• The northernmost Great Lake is Lake Superior.
• The Appalachian Plateau is found on the western side of the Appalachian Highlands system.
• Northern Quebec enjoys a subarctic climate.
• In 1940, manufacturing accounted for about 33.9 percent of U.S. employment.

Latin American Landscapes and Civilizations

• The driest desert on Earth is the Atacama.
• The lowest in elevation of Latin America's altitudinal life zones is the tierra caliente, while the highest is the tierra helada.
• The three largest civilizations thriving in Latin America when the Spanish and later Portuguese arrived were the Aztecs, Mayas, and the Inca.
• The Uruguay River originates in Brazil.
• Tropical wet and dry climates are found in areas of Brazil and all of these regions.
• Most of the highways of South America are concentrated on the coast and connect large cities.
• The Orinoco River flows through Colombia and Venezuela on its way to the Atlantic.
• The San Francisco River flows from Brazil into the Atlantic.
• A Mediterranean climate is found in areas of Chile.
• Ecuador ships out fresh flowers from its international airport to Miami and a few European cities.
• Haiti has significant resources of bauxite, copper, and coal.

Global Climate and Regional Studies

• Aridity is the dominant climate feature of the Middle East and North Africa.
• Countries that border the Mediterranean Sea include Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt.
• Iran is not located on the Arabian Peninsula.
• Zimbabwe, in southern Africa, falls into the highlands landform region.
• Kenya is located in East Africa.

Australian Geography and History

• A great stimulus to development and immigration in Australia was the Gold Rush of the 1850s.
• The Great Dividing Range runs along Australia's eastern coast.
• Between New Zealand and Australia lies the Tasman Sea.
• The Kimberly Plateau is found in northern Australia.

Economic and Geographic Terminology

• The term milkshed refers to a city's adjacent milk-producing region; cities everywhere, not just in the Dairy Belt, have them.
• Continentality is a term that describes the more extreme heating and cooling characteristics of land compared to water.
• Export Processing Zones (EPZs) are enclaves in countries where materials are imported, processed, and re-exported as finished products, usually to Europe and the United States.
• The Southern Common Market is also called Mercosur.
• ISI stands for Import Substitution Industrialization.