Chapter 12: The Great Plains and Prairies

The European settlers had encountered several environmental surprises on the Great Plains. One negative thing about the Great Plains is that they have the coldest winters and hottest summers. The weather is very extreme.

Contrary to many peoples' belief of the land being flat, the Great Plains has a varied landscape.  Another misconception about the Great Plains is that the people all share the same ethnic background. However, the Great Plains actually has many different cultures which make is so diverse.

The strongest images of a place are portrayed in the songs, folktales, and literature. I did not realized that the land influences the work of authors so much as it does.

 The agriculture in the Great Plains is large scale. Instead of having man labor work the fields they have intensive machinery use. The most important crop grown in the region by far is wheat.

Chapter 11: The Agricultural Core

 The agricultural core is defined by its aura of small-town, rural America. The cultural tones underlying it are strong and indisputably agrarian. The people are politically and socially conservative, independent and often friendly to strangers. Unlike Arizona, most of the agricultural core's residents are white descendants of waves of foreign-born migrants. Most people in Arizona are of white descendants but just not foreign. In Lake Havasu City specifically, there are mainly elder Caucasians. There is not as many people with diverse backgrounds in Arizona as there is in California.

Just like the people in the agricultural core, the people in Arizona are also politically and socially conservative, independent and often friendly to strangers. This is one of the main things that attract my fiance and I to Arizona.  California can be filled with stuck up people at times. It is nice to be around genuinely nice people who are laid bacck.

The agricultural core's landscape rolls gently with a few areas of flat or hilly terrain. The persistently rolling landscape permits good soil drainage and restricts swamps to small areas. Their soil falls into two basic groups- alfisols and mollisol. Alfisols form under conditions of moderate moisture and usually associated with coniferous or mixed forests. Mollisols are suited for grain production and are most fertile soil group in the agricultural core.

Chapter 10: The Southern Coastlands- On the Subtropical Margin

    Unlike the Southern Coastlands, Arizona is a desert with dry, hot weather. The Southern Coastlands are a subtropical place that is very humid. One of the main things I love about Arizona is that it is a dry heat (being a girl and all I like that I can go outside and my hair won't get frizzy from the humidity). However, because of their humid weather, they are able to grow crops that most other places cannot. The region's most important specialty crops are citrus fruits, rice, and sugarcane. Only few places can successfully grow sugarcane, it's growing conditions are very specific. The leading cash crop in Arizona isn't even a food it is cotton. Due to their hot weather, they are limited to what they can farm. Cotton seems to be the most successful, which makes sense.
      Quite similar to Lake Havasu City, Florida is a tourist attraction, and a prime place for people to retire. The one bad thing about the Southern Coastlands' subtropical weather is the inevitable mid-winter frost reaches southern Florida. They also have more sporadic, dramatic, and destructive hurricanes than in North America. Hurricanes are created by intense solar heating over large bodies of warm water . Then a massive low-pressure atmospheric pocket forms, drawing in warm, moist air. The deeper the pocket, the faster the wind flows and the more destructive the storm's potential.

The ability to reach inland sources of exchange is more important in creating trade than physical facilities. Rail connections strengthened each harbor's access to North America's major inland markets. However, the city was well established before highway connections reinforced its growth.

The two of the three leading petroleum-producing states are Texas and Louisiana (Alaska being the third). Arizona currently has no oil refineries and only two pipelines which transport almost all of Arizona’s gasoline from Texas, New Mexico and California. It takes a gallon of gasoline approximately 7 days to travel through the West Line from California to Phoenix and approximately 6 days to travel on the East Line from El Paso, Texas to Phoenix. A small percentage of the state’s gasoline is trucked in from neighboring states. Arizona’s state and federal gasoline taxes are 37.4 cents per gallon. Comparatively, California’s state and federal taxes are 60 cents per gallon (another reason why moving to Arizona doesn't sound half bad), while Nevada consumers pay 51.9 cents per gallon. (Source: American Petroleum Institute)
     

http://www.azag.gov/consumer/gasoline/gas.htmlhttp://www.city-data.com/states/Arizona-Agriculture.html