Geography of Pennsylvania
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The geography of Pennsylvania varies from sea level marine estuary to mountainous plateau. The state is known for its natural resources, ports, and the leading role it played in the nation's founding and history.
Major features
Pennsylvania's nickname, the Keystone State, derives from the fact that the state forms a geographic bridge both between the Northeastern United States and the Southern United States between the Atlantic seaboard and Midwest. The state's western toehold extends to the Great Lakes at Erie.
Pennsylvania is bordered on the north and northeast by New York; on the east by New Jersey; on the south by Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia; on the west by Ohio; and on the northwest by Lake Erie. It has a small border on Lake Erie with Canada. The Delaware, Susquehanna, Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio rivers are the state's major rivers. The Lehigh River in the state's east and Oil Creek in its west are smaller waterways that played vital roles in Pennsylvania's early industrial development. Pennsylvania is one of 13 original colonies that share a border with Canada.
Pennsylvania is 180 miles (290 km) north to south and 310 miles (500 km) east to west. The total land area is 44,817 square miles (116,080 km2)—739,200 acres (2,991 km2) of which are bodies of water. It is the 33rd largest state in the United States. The state's highest point is 3,213 feet (979 m) above sea level at Mount Davis. Its lowest point is at sea level on the Delaware River.
Regions
Pennsylvania Dutch region
The
Despite the name, the Pennsylvania Dutch are from various parts of southwest Germany, Alsace, and Switzerland, not the Netherlands. The word Dutch is left over from the original meaning of the English word Dutch, which once referred to the entire West Germanic dialect continuum.[1]
Western Pennsylvania
The mountains
Pennsylvania is bisected in an S-curve, or roughly diagonally, by the
The Allegheny Plateau is dissected by valleys formed by small streams and springs with elevation differences between valley floors and hilltop peaks differences that usually vary by a few hundred feet. The plateau is underlain by sedimentary rocks of Mississippian and Pennsylvanian age, which bear abundant fossils, mineral deposits such as iron, as well as natural gas, coal and petroleum. These regions fostered 17th-19th century industries locally, even into the 1930s days of mass production. To the south and east of the escarpment/plateau region, the folded mountains and alternating valleys are known as the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians. These extend from the South of the Appalachians to northern New England except where it is cut by water gaps. In Northeastern Pennsylvania east of Harrisburg on the Susquehanna River, these ridge and valley features contain the richest and most widespread deposits of high energy clean burning anthracite coal in the world—the Coal Region—without which the American Industrial Revolution likely would have been delayed or not possible.
In 1859,
During the most recent
The shores
Pennsylvania has 57 miles (92 km) of
Pennsylvania also has a narrow inland
.In the west, the Port of Pittsburgh is large and even exceeds Philadelphia in rank by annual tonnage because of the large volume of bulk coal shipped by barge down the Ohio River.
Ecological disasters
Pennsylvania has had several ecological disasters since the 19th century, including:
- In 1889, the South Fork Dam, impounding a recreational mountain lake for sportsmen, burst after a heavy rain and destroyed the downstream factory town of Johnstown, killing over 2,200 inhabitants in the notorious Johnstown Flood (the town was later rebuilt and is a reasonably large community today in the central mountains).
- In 1948, an air inversion over Donora trapped pollution from nearby metal processing plants, killing 20 and causing health complications for many more.
- In 1961, an exposed seam of coal at Centralia caught fire and eventually forced almost the entire community to abandon the area; the underground coal fire is still burning today, and it is estimated that it can burn for another 250 years.
- In 1979, the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Incident near the state capital of Harrisburg, while not as destructive to the community, nevertheless cost close to $1 billion to clean up and changed the national public perception of nuclear power to a much less favorable viewpoint.
Climate
Pennsylvania has three general climate regions, which are determined by altitude more than latitude or distance from the oceans. Most of the state falls in the humid continental climate zone. The lower elevations, including most of the major cities, has a moderate continental climate Köppen climate classification (Dfa), with cool to cold winters and hot, humid summers. Highland areas have a more severe continental climate (Köppen Dfb) with warm, humid summers and cold, more severe and snowy winters. Extreme southeastern Pennsylvania, around Philadelphia borders a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa), with milder winters and hot, humid summers.
Precipitation is abundant throughout the state with the primary climatic influences being the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and Arctic influences that cross over the Great Lakes.
See also
References
- ^ "Wiktionary Entry for Dutch". 4 December 2022.
- ^ "Titusville, Pennsylvania, 1896". World Digital Library. 1896. Retrieved 2013-07-16.
- ^ NOAA Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management: My State: Pennsylvania