Landscapes & NY State Flashcards
Three types of landscapes:
- Mountains (highlands)
- Plateaus (uplands)
- Plains (lowlands)
What forms landscapes?
- Uplifting forces
- Constructive: mountain building,continental accretion (converging plates, island arcs)
- Leveling forces/destructive: weathering, erosion, deposition cycle
If forces are in balance then…
- Landscape is in equilibrium (no change)
- Rarely happens because one force is usually dominant over the other
What force is dominant in Westchester?
Erosion
Climate & landscape:
- If dry: arid, jagged, angular, dry looking
- If wet: humid, rolling, low slope, grassy
Old & new landscape:
- Old: gentle rolling hills, worn-away, oxbow lakes
- New: jagged mountains, more angular, steep slopes
Cliffs/Escarpments:
- Cliffs result from rock that varies in rock resistance
- Resistant rock juts out in a series of rock layers due to its composition, it resists weathering
What are landscape characteristics influenced by?
- Forces of crustal movement
- People
- Climate
- Underlying bedrock
St. Lawrence Lowlands:
- Low plain
- Layers of sedimentary rock
- Slopes away from adirondacks
Appalachian Uplands:
- Largest region
- Sedimentary rock formed from shallow sinking ocean basin mya
- Uplifted
- Over 1km above sea level
- Finger lakes: formed from last ice age
- Allegheny plateau, catskills and tug hill plateau
Erie-Ontario Lowlands:
- Plains
- Consist of unsorted glacial till
- Good soils from last continental ice age have made this a good farming area
Adirondack Mountains:
- Only true mountains in NY
- Consists of metamorphic and igneous rock
- Mt. Marcy is the highest point in NY
- Many glacial deposits found in this region
- Dome mountain (igneous intrusion)
Tug Hill Plateau:
- Uplifted region of poor drainage
- Heavy snows due to lake effect
- Not heavily populated
Hudson Mohawk Lowlands:
- Soft rock
- Transport route into many cities in NY
New England Highlands:
- Metamorphic rock
- 2 branches or prongs (fork): Hudson and Manhattan prong
Atlantic Coastal Plain:
- Staten Island and Long Island
- Glacial deposit: terminal moraine or furthest extension of Laurentide ice sheet
Drainage patterns:
- Dendritic
- Radial
- Rectangular
- Annular
- Parallel
- Trellised
Dendritic:
Flat lowlands
-Uniform
Radial:
- Mountains
- Dome volcanoe
Rectangular:
- Found on faulted, tilted, folded or uplifted layers of sedimentary rock
- Plateaus
Annular:
-Found around dome with upturned layers
Parallel:
- Plateau
- Plains
Trellised:
-Plateau
Watershed:
Geographic area that drains into a stream (land around a stream)
