US Continental Transect: Geography, Demographics, and Environmental Systems

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering urban geography, socio-economic disparities, environmental features, desert landforms, and history across the continental transect from New York to California.

Transect

A straight line through a geographical area along which researchers make systematic observations of environmental, climatic, and demographic changes.

Manhattan Schist

The durable underlying bedrock found in New York City that provides structural support for the foundations of skyscrapers.

Washington Heights

A northern Manhattan neighbourhood historically settled by Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban immigrants, offering cultural networks and affordable housing.

Gentrification

The process where wealthier residents move into an existing urban district, increasing property values and rents, altering cultural character, and displacing long-term residents.

Rent Burdened

A demographic condition in which a household expends more than $30\%$ of its total household income toward rent costs.

The American Dream

The cultural ethos and belief that any individual can attain socioeconomic success through personal sacrifice and risk-taking.

Rust Belt

An industrial region spanning from the Great Lakes to the upper Midwest characterised by deindustrialisation, population loss, and urban decay.

Lot Links

A municipal recovery initiative in Dayton, Ohio, designed to counter urban decay by selling vacant homes for an average of $\$1,900$ to encourage renovation.

Great Plains

A vast high plateau of semi-arid grassland and steppe stretching from the Rocky Mountains across the central United States and Canada at altitudes of $450\text{--}1,800\,\text{m}$.

Transcontinental Railroad

A railway completed in Utah in $1869$ connecting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific lines, integrating the interior United States for commerce and settlement.

Manifest Destiny

The 19th-century political and philosophical doctrine holding that the United States was divinely destined to expand across the North American continent.

Pacific Railway Act of 1862

Federal legislation providing federal support, land grants, and bonds to fund the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad to link the East and West coasts.

Washita Massacre (1868)

A total war military engagement led by General Sheridan in which more than $100$ Cheyenne people were killed to clear land during westward railroad expansion.

Tribal Sovereignty

The inherent legal authority that permits Native American reservations to govern their territories partially outside state laws, allowing economic initiatives like gaming.

Redlining

The discriminatory practice where lenders and insurers systematically refuse mortgages or credit to racial minorities in specific geographic zones.

White Flight

The mid-20th-century mass migration of white residents from integrating urban cores to expanding suburbs, facilitated by federal mortgage initiatives.

California Current

A cold equatorward ocean current moving southward from British Columbia to Baja California, keeping coastal air temperatures mild and driving marine upwelling.

Upwelling

An oceanographic process where offshore winds displace coastal surface waters, causing cold, nutrient-rich deep water to rise and sustain productive marine ecosystems.

Santa Ana Winds

Dry katabatic winds originating from high pressure over the Great Basin that warm by roughly $30\,^\circ\text{F}$ as they descend and accelerate through Southern California canyons.

Wadi

A desert gully or dry valley that remains dry until it is rapidly carved and shaped by flash flood events.

Mesa

An isolated, flat-topped highland plateau with steep sides formed by parallel retreat erosion, characterised by having a top that is wider than its vertical height.

Butte

A steep-sided, flat-topped desert landform formed through progressive parallel retreat erosion, characterised by being taller than it is wide.

Spire

A narrow, tapering tower of desert rock formed after weathering removes a butte's resistant cap rock and erodes the remaining column.

Pedestal Rock

A desert landform shaped when abrasive, wind-borne sand selectively erodes and undercuts the lower base while leaving the upper section intact.

Alluvial Fan

A fan-shaped accumulation of sediment deposited by flowing water at the point where a steep valley stream empties onto a flatter desert plain.

Bajada

A broad, continuous alluvial depositional plain created along a mountain foot by the lateral coalescence of multiple individual alluvial fans.

Salton Sea

An endorheic saline lake formed in $1905$ by an accidental engineering breach of a Colorado River canal, sustained largely by modern agricultural runoff.

Opioid Crisis

A nationwide public health epidemic initiated in the late 1990s by the aggressive medical marketing and overprescription of synthetic and natural opioid analgesics.