Chapter 18: Hawaii

Hawaii is the 50th state of the United States. Is considered to be near the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The Hawaiian Island chain is the visible portion of a series of massive volcanoes. Like stated in the book, the ocean floor that is supporting the massive volcanoes is about 4000-5000 meters below sea level. Because of its oceanic location, the climate of the islands are impacted. The ocean fills the winds with moisture that brushes the island's mountains. With that, Hawaii faces its highs during September or October while in Santa Clarita, you can face the extreme weathers around July or August. While in September or October it starts to cool down. Also stated in the textbook, they stated that being coupled with environmental variation and generally temperate climate, the Hawaiian Island's isolation has fostered vastly diverse plants and bird communities.

The thing about the isolation of the island is that in the past, Hawaii there have been several thousand plants that are native in the Hawaiian islands and about 66 unique birds were found on the island. With the isolation, more than 1/3 of the birds are extinct. The rest of them are listed as rare or endangered species.

With its beautiful and consistent weather, Hawaii attracts many tourist and has become a very popular vacation spot. They have a lot to offer and the many different islands offer many different things to do!

(Information were from;)
(Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada Page: 360-362,368)
(pictures were from:)
(http://www.retroist.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/hawaii.jpg)
(http://siaphoto.com/wallpapers/kaanapali_beach_maui_hawaii-1400x1050.jpg)

Chapter 16: The North Pacific Coast

The North Pacific Coast is very wet. The greatest average annual precipitation on the continent could be found there. They average above 75 inches of precipitation which can be considered as a common thing up north. They also state that the average precipitation on the western slope of Olympic Mountains in northwestern Washington and the coastal short of British Columbia doubles that. All of these information were from page 326 of the text book.

Also being part of the North Pacific Coast, Seattle has been the largest city in that area since the boom era. It was founded as a logging center, but once it achieved being linked with the northern U.S. transcontinental railroads, it achieved regional dominance. Seattle has been the home of big major companies such as Amazon.com, Nordstrom, Starbucks, and Boeing. Many other companies are still based there.

Chapter 15: California

Since many of us already knows how California is, I am going to talk about the diversity of the state of California. Just like how I talked about in the blog for chapter 14, Santa Clarita is a diverse city, but it is only fitting that it is diverse because Santa Clarita is in a very diverse state.

Since California is close to Central and South America and Asia, SoCal is also the major destination for migrants who are entering the United States from the mentioned parts of the world.

On the chart below, shows the population for the Greater part of Los Angeles.

Largest - Mexican Metropolitan Area outside Mexico.
2nd Largest- Chinese Metropolitan Area outside China.
2nd Largest- Japanese Metropolitan Area outside Japan.
Largest - Korean Metropolitan Area outside Korea.
Largest - Filipino Metropolitan Area outside Philippines.
Largest - Vietnamese Metropolitan Area outside Vietnam.

The Los Angeles cityscape reflects its ethnic diversity. Places such as Little Tokyo has been part of the city for so long. Also, Monterey Park in the San Gabriel Valley is 50 % Asian.

(Information gathered from:)
(Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada Page 312)

Chapter 14: The Southwest Border Area: Tricultural Development

Most Americans take pride in the concept of an "American melting pot." American melting pot can be considered to be a fusion of different ethnicity, culture, and nationalities. Everybody brings in their own culture into the mix and they turn it into something a bit different. I guess you can say that they are very diverse. In Santa Clarita, when I first moved out here back in 1996, I used to hear all the time that this a place that contains a lot of rich white old people. I did not understand that at first because as a kid I did not really pay attention to any of that except my school work. As time progresses, I did see that taking place, but at the same time, Santa Clarita Valley became bigger when it comes to population wise. As time kept going, I realized how diverse Santa Clarita is. Their ethnic diversity has become even bigger than it used to be. You have all kinds of people working and living in Santa Clarita. It has everything you can ask for when it comes to diversity. The cool part about this is that people here are willing to share and teach other people about their own culture. Everybody can view how other culture lives.

(Information came from:)
(Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada Text Book Pages: 276-278)
(Picture came from:)
(http://www.santa-clarita.com/index.aspx?page=448)

Chapter 13: Empty Interiors

In the West, they present mountain ranges that contains a dramatic change in elevation. Measuring from base to peak, they sweep up at about 3000 feet or more. But what I wanted to talk about in this section was the wild life. In the Empty interior, they mention in the book that the Empty Interior supports a diversified, growing, and sometimes controversial wildlife population. They contained wild animals such as the bison, the North American elk, the pronghorn antelope, white-tailed deer, and wild turkey. All of these wild animals are actually continuing to grow in population.

Here in Santa Clarita, it contains many mountains. Throughout these mountains, several different wild animals exist. In the mountains near or around Santa Clarita, people might be able to locate animals such as the mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, and even black bears. In http://www.santaclaritaguide.com/Wildlife.html, they stated that generally if you see a deer, you are most likely to be in mountain lion territory, but that doesn't necessarily mean that if the deers are not present, they lions aren't either.

Chapter 12: The Great Plains and Prairies

In the great plains, hails can occur. Hails can measure up from 2 inches in diameter to up to the size of a baseball. Even hail can devastate the crops. "The warm moist air from the south and the cool, dry air from the north are uninterrupted as they cross the treeless, level land. With these kinds of air meet with full force, extreme weathers can occur." The warm and cold air mixing can be from a thunderstorm. They can develop a tornado also. Tornadoes are very violent and can cause severe damage. It is another violent result of the Great Plains storm system. That is the reason why the Great Plains is also known to be called "Tornado Alley."

In Santa Clarita, we might experience severe rain storms, but for the most part, we don't experience the hold and cold air mixing together that can form violent rain storms or even tornadoes. Like stated in the other section of the blog, Santa Clarita barely even get snow down here. If anything we experience a short amount of hail.

(Information gathered from:)
Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada Page 237-239)

Chapter 11: Agricultural Core

(The pictures above shows just some of the few that Santa Clarita grew in its city back before modernization)





From an article from the Los Angeles Times Newspaper, Jonathan Gaw stated that the Palafox Family was lured into the Santa Clarita Valley because of the vegetable fields. That was about 15 years ago where the Santa Clarita Valley was away from modernization. Back when town homes, office buildings, and even the massive shopping mall we now currently have did not exist, fields of many different types of agriculture existed. Unfortunately, as Santa Clarita decided to be modernized, the fields of onions, radishes, carrots, and parsleys started to disappear. It started forcing the farms to migrate to the west to Ventura county and north towards Bakersfield.

(Pictures were taken from:)
(http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dpictures%2Bof%2Bcarrots%252C%2Bonions%252C%2Bparsleys%26ei%3Dutf-8%26y%3DSearch%26fr%3Dyfp-t-701&w=1024&h=768&imgurl=images.flowers.vg%2F1024x768%2Fonion.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flowers.vg%2Fflowers%2Fonion.htm&size=139KB&name=bulb+onion+onion...&p=pictures+of+carrots%2C+onions%2C+parsleys&oid=cde60f2128caf47d721b594a73d3cb9b&fr2=&spell_query=pictures+of+carrots%2C+onions%2C+parsley&no=6&tt=35700&sigr=1179sqfcj&sigi=114nfkvug&sigb=13nbactr0&.crumb=8R85YJbdXny)
(Information was taken from:)
(http://articles.latimes.com/1993-03-21/local/me-13556_1_santa-clarita-valley)

Chapter 10: The Southern Coastlands: On the Subtropical Margin

Down in the southern coastlands, they are easily deceived by the typical mild winters. Like stated in the book, they may attempt to produce their crops all year round, but unfortunately some inevitable circumstances creeps up on them unexpectedly. Those mid-winter frost comes through the southern lands like Florida and considerable crop damage happens and financially gives them hardship. Those kinds of unforeseeable circumstances cannot be prevented, but at the same time, with the type of mild winter Florida has, it is hard to make a prediction. In Santa Clarita, it is a 4 season year. It is easier to predict what the outcome of the weather can be.

Another disaster that the southern coastland experiences are the hurricanes. Hurricanes are large cyclonic tropical storms that are generated by intense solar heating over large bodies of warm water. Like stated in the book, "The earth's rotation and spheroidal shape mean that air flowing toward the hurricane's center establishes the storm's broad, counterclockwise rotational pattern. The deeper the pressure pocket, the faster the wind flows and the more destructive the storm's potential(textbook).

Examples and different categories of the hurricanes:

Apr 11 2011
The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale is utilized to determine the relative strengths of hurricanes that may impact the United States coast. Since the 1990s, only wind speed has been used to categorize hurricanes.

Category One Hurricane

* Maximum Sustained Wind Speed: 74-95 miles per hour
* Damage Category: Minimal
* Approximate Pressure: Above 980 mb
* Approximate Storm Surge: 3-5 feet
* Examples: Hurricane Lili (2002) in Louisiana; Hurricane Gaston (2004) in South Carolina

Category Two Hurricane

* Maximum Sustained Wind Speed: 96-110 miles per hour
* Damage Category: Moderate
* Approximate Pressure: 979-965 mb
* Approximate Storm Surge: 6-8 feet
* Example: Hurricane Isabel (2003) in North Carolina

Category Three Hurricane

* Maximum Sustained Wind Speed: 111-130 miles per hour
* Damage Category: Extensive
* Approximate Pressure: 964-945 mb
* Approximate Storm Surge: 9-12 feet
* Examples: Hurricane Katrina (2005) in Louisiana; Hurricane Jeanne (2004) in Florida; Hurricane Ivan (2004) in Alabama

Category Four Hurricane

* Maximum Sustained Wind Speed: 131-155 miles per hour
* Damage Category: Extreme
* Approximate Pressure: 944-920 mb
* Approximate Storm Surge: 13-18 feet
* Example: Hurricane Charley (2004) in Florida; Hurricane Iniki (1992) in Hawaii; the Galveston Hurricane (1900) in Texas

Category Five Hurricane

* Maximum Sustained Wind Speed: Above 155 miles per hour
* Damage Category: Catastrophic
* Approximate Pressure: Below 920 mb
* Approximate Storm Surge: More than 18 feet
* Examples: Only three Category 5 hurricanes have struck the United States since records began: The Labor Day Hurricane (1935) in the Florida Keyes, Hurricane Camille (1969) near the mouth of the Mississippi River, and Hurricane Andrew (1992) in Florida



(Information obtained from)
(Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada textbook page 196-197)
(Hurricane categories: http://geography.about.com/od/lists/a/hurrcategories.htm)