North America: Climate, Natural Vegetation, Wildlife; Mineral and Power Resources
ICSE Class 6 · Geography · Chapter 9
What this chapter covers
- Climate of North America
- Natural vegetation
- Wildlife
- Mineral and power resources
- Case study: lumbering in Canada
Key definitions
Weather is the condition of the air at a place for a short time, such as a day or a week.
Climate is the usual weather of a place, taken over many years.
The tundra is a cold, treeless region in the far north where the ground stays frozen for most of the year.
The interior plains are far from any sea.
Natural vegetation is the plant life that grows in a place on its own, without being planted by people.
Coniferous trees are trees that carry their seeds in cones and usually have needle-shaped leaves.
Wildlife means the animals, birds and other creatures that live freely in nature, without being looked after by people.
Petroleum is a thick, dark, oily liquid found deep under the ground, from which petrol, diesel and kerosene are made.
Power resources are the sources of energy that people use to run machines, light homes and work factories.
Lumbering is the work of cutting down trees, sawing them into logs and taking them to mills where they are made into timber, paper and other products.
Afforestation is the planting of new trees to replace those that have been cut or to create a new forest.
Key points
- North America has almost every kind of climate, from the frozen tundra to the hot tropics.
- Distance from the Equator, distance from the sea, the north-south Rockies, and winds decide its climate.
- The west coast is rainy, while the land behind the mountains lies in a rain shadow and is dry.
- The Chinook is a warm wind of the plains; hurricanes strike the south-east and the Caribbean.
- Vegetation changes from tundra mosses to coniferous forests, deciduous forests, grasslands, deserts and tropical forests.
- Wildlife includes the polar bear and caribou in the north, the moose and beaver in the forests, and the bison on the Prairies.
- National parks such as Yellowstone protect wildlife.
- The Canadian Shield has iron ore, nickel and gold; the Appalachians have coal; Mexico leads in silver.
- The USA, Canada and Mexico produce petroleum and natural gas.
- Canada gets more than half its electricity from water power.
- Lumbering in Canada depends on vast softwood forests, rivers and cheap power.
- Logs become timber at sawmills and paper at pulp mills; new trees are planted to replace those cut.