Region of the Northeast US Geography

It's time. We better hurry. The adventure begins here. Wait for me. First, our explorers must check into the PJ putterman library. Today's explorers are Eric. McKenna Louis. Christian. After checking in our explorers will make their way to the exploration station. With the little help from technology and some instructions from me, professor putterman, the school founder and world explorer. Dale explore the places, the environment in every corner of our great country. Today we'll explore the northeast. Yeah, the exploration station closes at 6 o'clock. I'll be home at 6 30. Bye, mom. Hey you guys. Look at the mask. Looks like the northeastern part of the United States. This must be the area for our explorer assignment today. But what is the assignment? I don't know how to find out. Maybe professor patterning can help us out. Professor, are you out there? I don't think he is. Explorers. Hi, I'm glad you made it today. Where are you? Come on, wear the map said I'd be. In the northeastern United States. But why? Well, I'm studying the environment and the variety here makes it very, very interesting. This, this is New England. It's beautiful, don't you think? And. Here I am in the coastal area of the mid Atlantic region. You know, there's nothing quite so invigorating and stealing the ocean breeze in your face. So this is what we're going to explore today. I've always wanted to go there. Some of my family lives in New England. Well, you know, Eric. There's no better time than the present. I'm ready. Okay, then. We don't. Of the 5 regions in the United States. The northeast region has the smallest area of land. The northeast region is divided into two areas called New England, and the mid Atlantic. The states that make up New England are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The mid Atlantic states include New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. You know what? I always got New England for the state. Not an area. Well, people often make that mistake mechanic, but the fact of the matter is that New England is made up of 6 states. Professor. Can you get him back there? I don't know. I'll try changing frequencies. Ah, there you are. We didn't go anywhere professor. You did. And now you're on a mountain. And. Yes, of course. There's mountains everywhere in the northeast region. Just look. Mountains make up a large part of the northeast region. The appalachians run through almost every state in the region. The appalachians are called a mountain chain, because they are made up of several smaller mountain ranges, all in a row. The Allegheny mountain range runs through western Pennsylvania and Maryland. The green mountains of Vermont form New England's western boundary. The white mountains lie in Maine and New Hampshire. The Pocono mountains are located in eastern Pennsylvania. The adirondack and catskill mountains can be found in eastern New York. All of these mountain ranges are part of the Appalachian mountain chain. Within this great chain lies Appalachian trail. This trail runs from mount katahdin in Maine. All the way to Springer mountain in Georgia in the southeast region of the United States. This trail is one of the longest footpaths in the world. The Appalachian mountain chain is not only vast, but it is also the oldest group of mountains in North America. The Appalachian Mountains were formed over 250 million years ago. When the earth's crust shifted and buckled. This pushed the mountains high above the surface of the earth. After the appalachians were formed, the earth's climate became very cold. Glaciers, large, slow moving pieces of ice, covered most of the land, including the northeast region. These glaciers eroded the mountains, wearing them down to the size they are today. Another important part of the northeast region is the Atlantic Ocean. This ocean is a great natural resource for the region. Coastal towns have access to the food, fishing provides. The ocean also provides resources for other businesses, like lobster. Early settlers to the mid Atlantic built their towns near the ocean to make trading with their European homelands easier. You see, trading with coastal businesses was easier for merchants than having to travel over rugged lands to buy goods. Also, along the northeast region, there are great number of bays and harbors. Large ships can move in and out of these bodies of water easily for trade. The largest of these bodies of water is the Chesapeake Bay. There is quite a variety of seafood to catch there. The Chesapeake was once filled with catfish, clams, beals, oyster, and other sea animals. But overfishing and pollution have greatly reduced these natural resources. Sometimes when people think of the northeastern shore, they think only of rocky beaches. But farther south, the rocky shores give way to the flat coastal plain. This strip of land along the edge of the Atlantic Ocean offers plenty of room to build. So you can see how important the ocean was and still is to the people of the northeastern region. McKenna, I almost forgot. Here is a taste of the Atlantic Ocean. Okay. Or smell. Thanks a lot, professor. Professor, professor, where'd you go? Just to looking for clues, explorers. To what? To our next season. The northeast has a varied climate. It can be extremely cold in the winter, and quite hot in the summer. As the weather gets colder in autumn, the leaves and the trees stop producing chlorophyll, the green pigment that makes food for the tree. With less green in the leaves, you can see the other colors inside the leaves, like red, gold, and purple. Thousands of tourists come each year for this spectacular color show. Rain falls during every season in the northeast, making it a great home for many forests. Two different types of trees fill these forests. Broadleaf trees drop their leaves in the winter. Some broadleaf trees in the northeast include maples, oaks, willows, and hickories. Need a leaf trees also called evergreens, grow in many northeast forests. These trees have thin, needle like leaves that stay green all year long. Needle leaf trees include pines, furs, and spruce. So the trees can pretty much tell us, but season it is, right? Or whether or not we need a jacket. So, we've seen how different and beautiful the northeast environment is. But what's missing? How about people that's right? People. A lot of people. Now, did you know that the northeast has the third largest population of all 5 regions of the United States, and yet it's got the smallest land mass? Why is that? Consider this. People came from all over the world to settle here. And then they had children, and then their children had children, and their children had children, and then more people came in, and then in the population just kept growing. Yes. And then the cities got larger. And the people who stayed in the cities weren't they had to live closer together. So what are these northeast cities like? I'm glad you asked. Although there still some rule or country areas in the northeast, such as northern Maine or the adirondack mountains. Most of the population of the northeast region live in large urban areas or cities. The population of New York City alone is over 7 million people. From the earliest days, cities in the northeast have been centers for trade because of their location near a river or bay. These cities grew up around industries like fishing, shipbuilding, and trade. Many people moved to cities to be a part of these new industries. Immigrants moving to the United States settled in cities to find jobs. Big cities like New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore continue to be centers for trade, services, and manufacturing. Industries with factories, printing plants, and machine shops eventually joined the older industries to produce urban growth. Nearly every large city in the northeast has smaller cities and suburbs around it, like New York City and its surrounding cities and suburbs. These areas, together, are called a metropolitan area. There used to be a lot of open land between big cities in the northeast. But now they run together so that it's hard to tell where one city ends and another begins. When two or more metropolitan areas grow together, a megalopolis is formed. These large populations create big problems in traffic. City streets are often narrow because they were originally built for carriages, not cars. But today, people commute are travel into their workplaces in the cities by airplane, multi lane highways, and commuter train. If you think about it, these cities really grew a lot. In a very short time. I can see that. But what do they get to food to feed so many people? Right. And all this stuff they need to make things in the factories. Natural resources, of course. Let's travel outside the megalopolis and find out. Away from the cities, much of the land is used for farming. Few crops and livestock can survive in the poor rocky soil of the New England states. Still, Massachusetts is a leading grower of cranberries. Maine is famous for potatoes. People in New England take the SAP from sugar maple trees and boil it down to make their world famous maple syrup. Blueberries, apples, corn, and oats are other successful New England crops. In the mid Atlantic states, a larger variety of produce grows well. Fruits and vegetables grow well in the coastal plains rich sandy soil. Inland from the coastal plain is a region called the Piedmont. The rich fertile soil here produces fine crops of apples. The land in southeastern Pennsylvania is some of the richest in the world. Even the smaller farms in this area can produce a large amount of corn or wheat. Pasture grasses grow easily in this climate, so many farmers raise dairy cattle. These dairy cattle produce milk, butter, and cheese. Pennsylvania alone produces over 1 billion gallons of milk per year. The dairy industry is one of the largest businesses in the northeastern states. The rocky soil of the New England states may make farming a challenge, but some people make a living from the rocks themselves. New Hampshire and Vermont have a lot of marble in granite. These rocks are mined and quarries. A quarry is a large open pit cut into the ground to mine stone. New Hampshire and Vermont have another important industry. Logging. Logging is even more important in Maine. Almost 90% of Maine's land is covered by forest. When the industrial revolution came to the northeast region, power driven tools replaced hand tools, and more could be done with all of these natural resources. By the late 1700s, people were building small factories to make cloth from cotton. These were called mills. Males used the power of running water to operate machines. During the 1800s, these males grew larger and employed more people. One of the first large males was located in Lowell, Massachusetts. With the onset of the industrial revolution, more cities and new industries were springing up all across the country. The steel industry began in western Pennsylvania. This area has three resources that are needed to make steel. Iron, coal, and limestone. Bringing these resources together was easier with three major waterways close by in Pittsburgh. Steel became an important resource not only to the northeast, but to all the United States. It was used for building railroad tracks, bridges, buildings, and many machines. Today, the power source is used, and the products manufactured in the northeast have changed. Now, only a handful of factories use rivers for power. And competition from lower cost manufacturers outside the United States has closed many U.S. steel mills. Still, with new sources of power and new industries, the northeast remains a center for manufacturing. It's really kind of amazing that the people of the northeastern region were able to use just about every resource around them. Yeah, even rocks. Don't forget that all these resources help those cities and towns grow. Yeah, don't forget rocks. I explorers think about it. If you're going to help a city's economy grow, you're going to have to send the resources to where they're the most needed. They're going to have to have transportation. During the industrial revolution, transportation improved, so factories could move more of their products for trade. But transporting goods over land was slow and expensive. Moving goods over water could lower the cost of transportation and improve delivery speed. The Atlantic Ocean, the rivers across the northeast region, and two of the Great Lakes have always been important to the growth of the northeast. But these waterways were not always connected. The Great Lakes Erie and Ontario lie along the western edge of New York. Lake Erie also borders the northwestern edge of Pennsylvania. Although navigable rivers existed between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes, the appellation mountains stood in between the two bodies of water. Only the saint Lawrence river flowed all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, but it was rocky and shallow in some areas, and had large drops in fast moving waters in others. In 1817, New York governor dewitt Clinton began the project that would solve that problem. It began building the eerie canal. It was finally completed in 1825. The 350 mile long Erie canal connected the cities of Albany, New York, and buffalo, New York, by waterway. Ships would come into the New York harbor, up the Hudson River to Albany, and then by Erie canal to the Great Lakes. Instead of taking 6 weeks to get from New York City to buffalo, it now took only ten days. Eventually other waterways were built, including the New York State barge canal system. The saint Lawrence seaway, a larger and newer waterway is used most often now. Built by the U.S. and Canada together, this seaway extends 450 miles from eastern Lake Erie to Montreal, Canada. The seaways canals increase in decrease in elevation along the route. So they use locks that flood to raise, and drain to lower the water level, as the ships move from one elevation to another. Ships can now transport natural resources between cities along the Great Lakes, and beyond, to world markets. In fact, this load is heading for another part of the world, Hawaii. That's in the United States too. Yes. What region is that in? The library will be closing in 5 minutes. Apparently, a subject for another day explorers. Until then, take all your materials. Thank you for exploring. The northeast. That was a great lesson. I know I learned so much. I can't wait for them. No, wonder what we learned about. 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