physical dividing lines

Question 1

the sahel

Answer 1

the transition zone between humid, equitorial Africa and arid north Africa. Where agriculture and pastoralism come together. Where Christianity and Islam comet together.

Question 2

the giordano line

Answer 2

A line running from about Rostov-on-Don to about St. Petersburg. To the west there are 43 states. To the east there is one. They might not have meant to base the Euro coin design on it, but they did. While it is not obviously a physical line, it might be.

Question 3

The Hu Line

Answer 3

To the west of the line, there is not enough rainfall to support agriculture. To the east there is. Historically the west side was populated by mostly non-agricultural peoples, the west by agricultural. Currently the west side has 2/3 of China’s area and 6% of its population. The east side has 1/3 of the area and 94% of the population.

Question 4

100th Meridian

Answer 4

Boundary between the humid eastern U.S., where there is more precipitation than evaporation, and the arid western U.S., where there is more evaporation than precipitation.

Question 5

Fall line

Answer 5

An ‘area where an upland region and a coastal plain meet and is typically prominent where rivers cross it, with resulting rapids or waterfalls…. Before navigation improvements such as locks, the fall line was often the head of navigation on rivers due to rapids and waterfalls, such as the Little Falls of the Potomac River. Numerous cities were founded at the intersection of rivers and the fall line (Wiki).’ The one we are interested in is the one shown at right.

Question 6

Black Soil Line

Answer 6

physical geography term referring to a roughly crescent-shaped geological formation of dark fertile soil in the Southern United States. It is about 300 miles (480 km) long and up to 25 miles (40 km) wide in ca. east-west orientation, mostly in central Alabama and northeast Mississippi (wiki).’ From Booker T. Washinton’s Up From Slavery: “The part of the country possessing this thick, dark and naturally rich soil was, of course, the part of the South where the slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers.”