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National parks in the USA

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Geographical position of The United States of America. Distribution of the National parks. History of the National Parks in the country. Major and Minor parks. Tourist trades and campings. The Grand Canyon is awe inspiring and the Grand Canyon KOA.
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Introduction

No human being can stand apart from the environment because each of us is a part of a natural world. We all depend upon our environment and our environment is depending upon us. Our survival and survival of the future generations depend upon a healthy world.

One of the major problems is the destruction of the rainforests. Traditionally there are three major causes of it: farming, ranching, and logging.

Farmers in rainforest countries are often poor and can't afford to buy land. Instead, these farmers clear rainforest land to grow their crops. Because tropical rainforest soil is so poor in nutrients, farmers cannot reuse the same land year after year. In following years, farmers just clear more land, destroying the forest piece by piece.

The continued increase in human population is having negative effect on our planet's biodiversity. The equation is pretty simple - more people need more space to build houses and industries and this means reduced habitats for many plant and animal species.

Animals and plants need more protected areas where they can live in peace without human interference. National Parks all over the world help to protect our ecosystem.

Topicality of the theme lies in that the United States of America is a country of beautiful views and natural sights. This country is famous for it National Parks. A National Parks is a reserve of natural or semi-natural land, declared or owned by a government, set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, animal and environmental protection, and restricted from most development. While ideas for national parks has been suggested previously, the United States of America established the first National Park in the world. That is why a word «national park» is closely connected with the United States of America. Nowadays National Park is a Part of ecological politics. Only in these parks, you can find untouched nature in their real view. All existing National Parks are a good idea to save not only nature and animals, but the whole our planet. Today, we have a lot of different and difficult problems, and the most serious is the ecological problem. The creation of National Parks all over the world is the first solution of this big problem.

During the nineteenth-twentieth centuries National Parks had been created in the United States of America, and now there are fifty eight National Parks in the country. All American Parks are the best examples of how to save our nature. Americans were one of the first people who had tried to save the planet, and creation of National Parks are theirs great achievement. Besides, National parks are a prominent tourists' attraction which fulfills important learning, recreational and economic functions.

park national tourist camping

1. Geographical position of the USA

The United States of America occupies the central part of the North American continent. It borders on Canada in the north and Mexico in the south. It is washed by the Atlantic Ocean in the east, by the Pacific Ocean in the west and by the Gulf of Mexico in the south.

The present territory of the United States of America consists of three separate parts. The USA proper and Alaska are situated in North America. The Hawaii are situated in the central part of the Pacific Ocean.

The area of the country is about nine million four hundred thousand square km. Its population is about two hundred and fifty six million people.

No general statement can be made about the landscape of the United States of America. It is a country of mountains and prairies, valleys and deserts. About one half of the territory in the west is occupied by the Cordilleras. In the east there are the Appalachian Mountains. Between these great mountain chains central and large valleys lie.

The Rocky Mountains extend from Alaska through Canada and the United States of America to Mexico. Together with the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California they have snow-capped peaks and clear mountain lakes.

The Great Lakes are situated in the north-east of the country. They are Lake Ontario, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, Lake Superior, Lake Michigan. The largest rivers of the United States of America are the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Columbia, the Colorado, and the Yukon. American rivers have very expressive names: the Snake River, the Milk River, the Green River, the Sweetwater River, the White River.

The United States of America has rich deposits of coal, oil, iron, zinc, copper, silver, phosphate rock, natural gas, uranium and nonferrous metals. The country has one fourth of the world's coal deposits.

The United States is a country in the Western Hemisphere. It consists of forty-eight contiguous states in North America, Alaska, a peninsula which forms the northwestern most part of North America, and Hawaii, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. There are several United States territories in the Pacific and Caribbean. The term «United States», when used in the geographical sense, means the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands of the United States. The country shares land borders with Canada and Mexico and maritime (water) borders with Russia, Cuba, and The Bahamas in addition to Canada and Mexico. [5]

General characteristics

A satellite composite image of the contiguous United States. Deciduous vegetation and grasslands prevail in the east, transitioning to prairies, boreal forests, and the Rockies in the west, and deserts in the southwest. In the northeast, the coasts of the Great Lakes and Atlantic seaboard host much of the country's population.

The United States shares land borders with Canada (to the north) and Mexico (to the south), and a territorial water border with Russia in the northwest. The contiguous forty-eight states are otherwise bounded by the Pacific Ocean on the west, the Atlantic Ocean on the east, and the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast. Alaska borders the Pacific Ocean to the south, the Bering Strait to the west, and the Arctic Ocean to the north, while Hawaii lies far to the southwest of the mainland in the Pacific Ocean.

Forty-eight of the states are in the single region between Canada and Mexico; this group is referred to, with varying precision and formality, as the continental or contiguous United States, and as the Lower forty eight. Alaska, which is not included in the term contiguous United States, is at the northwestern end of North America, separated from the Lower forty eight by Canada. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. The capital city, Washington, District of Columbia, is a federal district located on land donated by the state of Maryland. (Virginia had also donated land, but it was returned in 1847.) The United States also has overseas territories with varying levels of independence and organization.

The continental United States contains two harbor indented coasts of several thousand miles from which well watered coastal plains rise to two mountain ranges between which is an arable plain overlaid by thousands of miles of interconnected and navigable rivers. The Texas continental crossroads, the southerly deserts, and the basin and range country of Utah and Nevada complete the picture. The combination of rivers navigable thousands of miles inland, running throughout virtually all of the largest contiguous area of farm land in the world, has helped to make the United States the world's breadbasket and wealthiest nation by far. Considering both the natural features and the political unity of the states of the region of the Great Plains, contrasted with the river systems and political disunity of Europe as an example, nothing quite like it exists anywhere else in the world. New Orleans-purchased along with the French territory of Louisiana in 1803-is the key to the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Red river system of North America. In turn, Texas, with its own, unnavigable rivers, but productive land, acts as a buffer to protect New Orleans from the south and west.

Distribution of the National parks. [3]

The probability of a park being created in a state in a given year should depend on the distribution of its costs and benefits. Some states may have a greater endowment of potential parkland - thereby making park creation there of greater benefit or lower cost. States that were settled earliest might be expected to have accumulated more cultural capital and therefore host more parks. Likewise, natural beauty may attract early settlement. The year of entry into the union is also controlled for, possibly capturing development pressures or historical resources. Whether the state joined the Confederacy during the Civil War may also reflect an endowment of war memorials and battlefield sites. States with larger land areas may have a greater supply of parks to declare. The opportunity cost of park designation is not evenly distributed across states. A measure of the amount of vacant (unreserved or «unappropriated») land in a state may capture the local costs of park creation. Population is also controlled for, although it might be related to both benefits (more people to enjoy the park) and costs (greater opportunity costs from development pressures). The percentage of the state population that is urban should influence park creation. More...

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