The Appalachian Mountains are a mountain range North America. They are partly in Canada, but mostly in the United States. It ranges from 100 to 300 miles wide and runs 1,500 miles from the island of Newfoundland in Canada to central Alabama in the United States. The individual mountains average around 3,000 ft (900 m) in height. The highest is Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina (6,684 ft/2,037m). Mt. Mitchell is also the highest point in the United States east of the Mississippi River as well as the highest point in eastern North America.
The Appalachians in AutumnMt. Mitchell in North Carolina
The whole range can be broadly divided into three sections: the northern section, the central section, and the southern section. The northern section extends from Newfoundland and Labrador province in Canada to Hudson River in New York. The central section extends from the Hudson Valley to the New River. And lastly, the southern section extends from the New River to Maine.
In Canada, the population of the Appalachians is around 2.3 million. Which isn’t a lot of people for such a large area, but in total the region has a population of 25 million
The Appalachian Mountains are the oldest mountain chain in North America, and are the worn-down remains of a once huge mountain chain. The birth of the Appalachian ranges was 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. It was the first of several mountain building plate collisions which made the supercontinent Pangaea. The Appalachians were at the center of the newly formed Pangaea.
North America and Africa were connected, and the Appalachians were part of the same mountain chain as the “Anti-Atlas” or Little Atlas Mountains in Morocco. This mountain range, known as the Central Pangean Mountains, extended into Scotland, from the North America/Europe collision.
Pictures of Appalachian Mountains; then called the Central Pangean Mountains.
They once were as high as the Alps and the Rocky Mountains. The Appalachians are much older than the Rockies, North America’s other mountain range. Due to this, they have eroded over time and are now much shorter on average than the Rockies.
Diego Gutiérrez’s 1562 map of the Western Hemisphere, showing the first known use of a variation of the place name “Appalachia” (“Apalchen”)
The Appalachian Trail is about 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) long public footpath that traverses the scenic, wooded, pastoral, wild, and culturally resonant lands of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Appalachian Mountains contain major deposits of coal. Some parts of this mountain range are known to have metallic mineral deposits such as iron and zinc.
The 1859 discovery of petroleum in the Appalachian mountains in western Pennsylvania kick-started the modern United States petroleum industry. Recent discoveries of natural gas deposits have refocused oil industry attention on the Appalachian Basin.
The Appalachian Region’s economy used to be highly dependent on mining, forestry, agriculture, chemical industries, and heavy industry, but has become more diverse, and now includes manufacturing and professional service industries. Appalachia has come a long way in the past five decades: its poverty rate, 31 percent in 1960, was 16.7 percent over the 2012–2016 period. The number of high-poverty counties in the Region (those with poverty rates more than 1.5 times the U.S. average) declined from 295 in 1960 to 93 over the 2012–2016 period.
But despite progress, Appalachia still is not on the same economic level as the rest of the nation. Central Appalachia in particular still battles economic problems, with concentrated areas of high poverty, unemployment, poor health, and severe educational disparities. And recent economic data show that the Region has fared far worse in the recent recession than the rest of the nation.
The climate is affected by 2 ocean currents: The Labrador Current, and the Gulf Stream. The Labrador carries cold water from the Arctic, and freezes during the winter months. The Gulf Stream brings warm water from the Caribbean, and south coast of North America.
The northern Appalachians bring cold winters and mild summers, while the south has hot summers and warmer winters. Both parts of the region bring in good amounts of precipitation, more so in the winter months.
Flora
The Appalachians are heavily forested with mixed coniferous and deciduous trees.
These trees could survive in the poor mountain soil, and flourish on the plateaus & in river valleys, where the soil is more productive.
Trees living beside rivers and bodies of water are in much richer soil, benefiting their health and durability.
The primary habitat of this region is mainly made up of temperate forests. The secondary habitat is made up of mixed-deciduous and boreal forests. The list of tree species found in the Appalachians includes trees like mountain ash, red spruce, black spruce, white pine, yellow birch, eastern hemlock, Balsam fir, Fraser fir, etc.
Fauna
The wildlife in the Appalachian Mountains includes a wide variety of animals:
Mountaintop removal mining is a large threat to the ecosystem. This is where companies looking for coal blow the tops off of mountains to get to the coal seams. It is a very dangerous job and has many bad effects on the environment, and the people around the mountains
Mountaintop-removal mines in Appalachia are estimated to produce just 5 to 10 percent of total U.S. coal production and generate less than 4 percent of our electricity—an amount that could be eliminated from the energy supply with small gains in energy efficiency and conservation. This highly destructive form of surface mining is disfiguring an entire region, the coalfield areas of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, because of one reason: profit.
Although President Trump and many in his administration and in the current Congress of the US say they can “bring coal back,” most experts agree the market has finally bottomed out. Still, many federal policymakers could take actions to weaken environmental and health standards in an attempt to scrape out the last corporate profits from the area.
A controlled explosion in the Appalachians
Mountaintop removal mining has already destroyed more than 500 mountains, which is more than 1 million acres of Central and Southern Appalachia.
After the coal companies blow up the mountaintops, they dump the rubble into neighboring valleys, where there are many streams and rivers, like the Kanawha, Clinch, and Big Sandy. The exposed rock leaches heavy metals and other toxins that pose enormous health threats to the region’s plants and animals — and people.
A before and after of the same stream
According to the World Wildlife Fund, Appalachia contains “one of the most diverse assemblages of plants and animals found in the world’s temperate deciduous forests.” Mountaintop removal mining is poisoning their habitats and killing off animal species at an alarming rate.
This method of coal mining leaves the affected area prone to landslides & flooding, loss of biodiversity, and also several health impacts
Several studies have concluded that residents who live near sites of mountaintop removal mining are at risk of suffering a 50% increase in cancer rates and a 42% increase in birth defects
The Appalachians 