Speak about the USA geography, will you?

The United States of America is the fourth largest country after Russia, China and Canada. It occupies the part of North America and stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. It also includes Alaska in the north and Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The total area of the country is about nine and a half million square kilometers.

Alaska is the largest of America’s 50 states and it is 400 times the size of Rhode Island which is the smallest. The country is so large that a coast-to-coast trip by plane will take five and a half hours, by train three days and by car from five to six days.

Newport, Rhode Island

The USA borders on Canada in the north and on Mexico in the south. The south-eastern coast of the country is washed by the Gulf of Mexico and the US also has coasts on the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The USA has a seaborder with Russia.

The USA is made up of 50 states and the District of Columbia where the capital of the country, Washington, is situated. The population of the country is about 250 million people. Some states are more densely populated that the others, for example, Alaska has half of the Rhode Island’s population.

The Appalachian Mountains

Many citizens of the USA live in rural areas. It is not surprising that most of the people of the United States live in the eastern half of the country although California on the West Coast is the most populous state. It is the East Coast the first settlers from Europe came when they crossed the Atlantic. They were attracted by the fertile lands of the Atlantic coast in the southeast and inland beyond the eastern Appalachian Mountains. This part of the country gets enough rainfall for crops, has valuable forests and most of the country’s riches in iron and coal deposits.

As America expanded westward, so did its farmers and ranchers, cultivating the grasslands of the Great Plains and finally the fertile valleys of the Pacific Coast.

Pacific Coast, Oregon

Today American farmers plant spring wheat on the cold western plains, raise corn, wheat and fine beef cattle in the Midwest, and rice in the damp heat of Louisiana. Florida and California are famous for their vegetable and fruit production, and the cool, rainy northwest states are known for apples, berries and vegetables.

The land varies from heavy forests covering 2,104 mln hectares, to barren deserts, from high-peaked mountains (the highest peak is Mount McKinley (6, 194m) in Alaska) to deep canyons (Death Valley in California is 1,064 meters below sea level). The highest mountains in the USA are the Cordilleras that run along the west coast and include the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada.

Mount McKinley

America’s largest rivers are the Mississippi with its tributary Missouri, the Rio Grande, the Ohio and the Columbia. The broad Mississippi River system runs 5,969 kilometers from Canada into the Gulf of Mexico and is the world’s third longest river after the Nile and the Amazon. The USA is famous for its five Great Lakes: Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, Lake Huron, Lake Superior and the Michigan. The first four lakes are on the border with Canada and are the largest and deepest in the USA. There are also a lot of small lakes and the northern state of Minnesota, for example, is known as the land of 10,000 lakes.

The USA is rich in mineral resources; their wealth provides a solid base for American industry. It has major deposits of oil and gas in Texas and Alaska, coal in Virginia and Ohio, gold in Alaska and California, silver in Nevada, non-ferrous metals in Arkansas and Colorado.

The largest cities in the USA are New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and some others.

New York City

The Climate of the USA

The territory of the USA is so large that it lies in different climatic zones. The greater portion of the country is situated between 30 and 49 degrees Northern Latitude and its climate is moderate continental.

The climate of Alaska is arctic and that of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico is subtropical. Hot winds blowing from the Gulf of Mexico often bring typhoons.

Florida Gulf Coast

Along the western coast the climate is warm, because the land there is protected from cold winds by the Rocky Mountains and is open to the influence of the warm winds of the Pacific Ocean.

The South-West region is very hot and dry, the soil is arid, the rains are rare and droughts are frequent. In contrast to this, there is much rainfall in the northern section of the Pacific coastline and along the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean.

Utah, Capitol Reef

The central plains have moderate rainfall and wide-range temperatures between summer and winter.

I hope you found enough information to speak about USA geography.