Portal:Geography/Featured article/archive/2008
This is an archive of articles that appeared on the Geography portal in 2008.
White Deer Hole Creek is a 20.5-mile (33.0 km) long tributary of the West Branch Susquehanna River in Clinton, Lycoming and Union counties in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. A part of the Chesapeake Bay drainage basin, the White Deer Hole Creek watershed drains parts of ten townships. The creek flows east in a valley of the Ridge-and-valley Appalachians, through sandstone, limestone, and shale from the Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian periods.
As of 2006, the creek and its 67.2 square miles (174.0 km2) watershed are relatively undeveloped, with 28.4% of the watershed given to agriculture and 71.6% covered by forest, including part of Tiadaghton State Forest. The western part of White Deer Hole Creek has very high water quality and is the only major creek in Lycoming County classified as "Class A Wild Trout Waters", defined by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission as "streams which support a population of naturally produced trout of sufficient size and abundance to support a long-term and rewarding sport fishery." The rest of the creek and its major tributary (Spring Creek) are kept stocked. There are opportunities in the watershed for canoeing, hunting, and camping, and trails for hiking and horseback riding.
Historically, two paths of the native indigenous peoples ran along parts of White Deer Hole Creek. Settlers arrived by 1770, but fled in 1778 during the American Revolutionary War. They returned and the creek served as the southern boundary of Lycoming County when it was formed in 1795. A logging railroad ran along the creek from 1901 to 1904 for timber clearcutting and small-scale lumbering continues. During World War II a TNT plant was built in the watershed, which became a federal prison in 1952. Most development is in the eastern end of the valley, with two unincorporated villages, the hamlet, and most of the farms (many Amish). (more...)
Japan (日本 Nihon or Nippon ?, officially 日本国 or Nihon-koku) is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of China, Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is sometimes identified as the "Land of the Rising Sun".
Japan comprises over 3,000 islands, the largest of which are Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū and Shikoku, together accounting for 97% of land area. Most of the islands are mountainous, many volcanic; for example, Japan’s highest peak, Mount Fuji, is a volcano. Japan has the world's tenth largest population, with about 128 million people. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes the capital city of Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest metropolitan area in the world, with over 30 million residents.
Archaeological research indicates that people were living on the islands of Japan as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention of Japan begins with brief appearances in Chinese history texts from the first century AD.
Influence from the outside world followed by long periods of isolation has characterized Japan's history. Since adopting its constitution in 1947, Japan has maintained a unitary constitutional monarchy with an emperor and an elected parliament, the Diet.
A major economic power, Japan has the world's second largest economy by nominal GDP. It is a member of the United Nations, G8, G4 and APEC, with the world's fifth largest defense budget. It is also the world's fourth largest exporter and sixth largest importer and a world leader in technology and machinery. (more...)
Monte Ne is an area in the Ozark hills of the White River valley east of Rogers on the edge of Beaver Lake in the U.S. State of Arkansas. From 1901 until the mid-1930s the area was a health resort and ambitious planned community. It was owned and operated by William Hope Harvey, a financial theorist and one time U.S. Presidential nominee. Two of its hotels, "Missouri Row" and "Oklahoma Row", were the largest log buildings in the world.[1] Oklahoma Row's "tower section" is one of the earliest examples of a multi-story cement structure.[1] The tower is the only structure of Monte Ne still standing. Monte Ne introduced the first indoor swimming pool in Arkansas,[2] and was also the site of the only presidential convention ever held in Arkansas.[3]
The Monte Ne resort was not a financial success, due in part to Harvey's management style. All ventures associated with Harvey's original Monte Ne concept were either never completed or experienced bankruptcy, and shortly after his death the property was sold off in lots. The remainder of the resort and town was almost completely submerged after Beaver Lake was created in 1964. All that remains today are foundations and one severely vandalized structure. The area on the edge of Beaver Lake that is still referred to as Monte Ne, is owned and managed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers and serves mainly as a boat ramp. (more...)
Prairie Avenue is a north–south thoroughfare on the South Side of Chicago, which historically extended from 16th street in the Near South Side community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, USA to the city's southern limits and beyond. The street has a rich history from its origins as a major trail for horseback riders and carriages. During the last three decades of the 19th century, a six-block section of the street served as the residence of many of Chicago’s elite families and an additional four-block section was also known for grand homes. The upper six-block section includes the historic Prairie Avenue District.
Several of Chicago's most important historical figures have lived on the street. This is especially true of the period of recovery from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 when many of the most important families in the city moved to the street. Residents of the street have influenced the evolution of the city and have played prominent national and international roles. They have influenced the political history, the architecture, the culture, the economy, as well as the law and government of Chicago. The street has over time been influenced by the demographics of Chicago.
Birchington-on-Sea is a village in northeast Kent, England, with a population of around 9,800. It is part of the Thanet district and forms the civil parish of Birchington. It lies on the coast of the Thames Estuary, between the seaside resorts of Herne Bay and Margate.
As a seaside resort, the village is a notable tourist and retirement destination. The village's Minnis Bay is a family beach with attractions such as sailing, windsurfing, a paddling pool and coastal walking routes. Its three smaller beaches are surrounded by chalk cliffs, cliff stacks and caves.
The village was first recorded in 1240. Its parish church, All Saints, dates to the 13th century and its churchyard is the burial place of the 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Quex Park, a local 19th century manor house, is home to the Powell Cotton Museum of stuffed exotic animals and a twelve-bell tower built for change ringing.
Mount Pinatubo is an active stratovolcano located on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, at the intersection of the borders of the provinces of Zambales, Tarlac, and Pampanga. Ancestral Pinatubo was a stratovolcano made of andesite and dacite. Before 1991, the mountain was inconspicuous and heavily eroded. It was covered in dense forest which supported a population of several thousand indigenous people, the Aeta, who had fled to the mountains from the lowlands when the Spanish conquered the Philippines in 1565.
The volcano's eruption in June 1991 produced the second largest terrestrial eruption of the 20th century. The 1991 eruption had a volcanic explosivity index (VEI) of 6, and came some 450–500 years after the volcano's last known eruptive activity (estimated as VEI 5, the level of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens), and some 500–1000 years after previous VEI 6 eruptive activity. Successful predictions of the onset of the climactic eruption led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from the surrounding areas, saving many lives, but surrounding areas were severely damaged by pyroclastic flows, ash deposits, and later by lahars caused by rainwater remobilizing earlier volcanic deposits: thousands of houses and other buildings were destroyed.
The Redwood National and State Parks are located in the United States, along the Pacific Ocean coast of northern California. The parks consist of a combined area of 131,983 acres (534.12 km2) and they protect 45% of all remaining Coastal Redwood old-growth forests. These trees are the tallest and one of the most massive tree species on Earth. In addition, the parks preserve other indigenous flora, fauna, grassland prairie, cultural resources, portions of rivers and other streams, and 37 miles (60 km) of pristine coastline. In 1850, old growth redwood forest covered more than 2,000,000 acres (8,100 km2) of the California coast. The northern portion of that area, originally inhabited by Native Americans, attracted many lumbermen and others turned gold miners when a minor gold rush brought them to the region. After many decades of unobstructed clear-cut logging, serious efforts toward conservation began. Redwood National Park was created in 1968, by which time nearly 90% of the original redwood trees had been logged. The ecosystem of the RNSP preserves a number of threatened animal species such as the Brown Pelican, Tidewater Goby, Bald Eagle, Chinook Salmon, Northern Spotted Owl, and Steller's Sea Lion. In recognition of the rare ecosystem and cultural history found in the parks, the United Nations has designated them a World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve. (more...)
Cleveland is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the U.S. state of Ohio. It was founded in 1796 near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, and became a manufacturing center owing to its location at the head of numerous canals and railroad lines. With the decline of heavy manufacturing, Cleveland's businesses have diversified into the service economy, including the financial services, insurance, and healthcare sectors. As of the 2000 Census, the city proper had a total population of 478,403, making it the 33rd largest city in the nation. Recent investments have provided the city with tourist attractions in the downtown area, such as Jacobs Field, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Playhouse Square Center. In studies conducted by The Economist in 2005, Cleveland and Pittsburgh were ranked as the most livable cities in the United States, and the city was ranked as the best city for business meetings in the continental U.S. Nevertheless, the city faces continuing challenges, in particular from concentrated poverty in some neighborhoods and difficulties in the funding and delivering of high-quality public education. (more...)
Yarralumla is a large suburb within Canberra, the capital city of Australia. Located approximately 3.5 kilometres south-west of the city centre, Yarralumla extends along the southern bank of Lake Burley Griffin. Europeans first settled the area in 1828, and it was named Yarralumla in 1834 from the Ngunnwal Indigenous Australian name for the area. Yarralumla is most noted for being the site of Government House, the official residence of the Governor-General of Australia, built in 1891. The suburb was officially gazetted in 1928 and today is home to approximately 3000 people and many diplomatic missions. In recent years, it has become one of Canberra's most desirable and expensive suburbs because of its leafy streets, attractive lakeside setting and central location. (more...)
Sheerness is a town located beside the mouth of the River Medway on the northwest corner of the Isle of Sheppey in north Kent, England. With a population of 12,000, it is the largest town on the island. Sheerness began as a fort built in the sixteenth century to protect the River Medway from naval invasion. After a Dutch attack in 1692, Samuel Pepys, the Secretary to the Admiralty, established a Royal Navy dockyard in the town, where warships were built and repaired until its closure in 1960. In the nineteenth century, Sheerness also became a seaside resort, when a pier and promenade were constructed. Industry remains an important part of the town, and the port of Sheerness is one of the United Kingdom's leading car and fresh produce importers. The town is the site of one of the UK's first co-operative societies and the world's first multi-storey building with a rigid metal frame. (more...)
Hamersley is a residential suburb 14 kilometres (9 mi) north-northwest of the central business district of Perth, the capital of Western Australia, and six kilometres (4 mi) from the Indian Ocean. The suburb adjoins two major arterial roads—Mitchell Freeway to the west and Reid Highway to the south—and is within the City of Stirling local government area. It was built during the late 1960s and 1970s as part of the Government of Western Australia's response to rapidly increasing land prices across the metropolitan area.
Before development, Hamersley was a remote district covered in jarrah, marri, banksia and other vegetation typical of the Swan Coastal Plain, with small areas cleared for small-scale agriculture such as market gardening and poultry farming. By 1974, six years after the first subdivision, Hamersley was home to the district's first community hall, an annual parade and fair which were broadcast on Perth TV and radio, an active progress association, and its own newspaper, the Hamersley Gazette, a forerunner to today's Stirling Times. Rapid growth further north removed the focus from Hamersley, which was completed in 1981 and has remained relatively stable since then.
Significant reserves of remnant bushland remain in parts of the suburb. The largest of these is an exclusion zone around the 208 metres (682 ft) high ABC radio tower in the suburb's southeast, which broadcasts AM stations to the Perth metropolitan area. The guyed tower was built in 1939 and is a landmark in the region, although it has become a local political issue over the past decade.
Hurricane Claudette was the third tropical storm and first hurricane of the 2003 Atlantic hurricane season. A fairly long-lived July Atlantic hurricane, Claudette began as a tropical wave in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It moved quickly westward, brushing past the Yucatán Peninsula before moving northwestward through the Gulf of Mexico. Claudette remained a tropical storm until just before making landfall in Port O'Connor, Texas, when it quickly strengthened to a strong Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Forecasting of its path and intensity was uncertain throughout its lifetime, resulting in widespread and often unnecessary preparations along its path.
Claudette was the first hurricane to make landfall in July in the United States since Hurricane Danny in the 1997 season. The hurricane caused one death and moderate damage in Texas, mostly from strong winds, as well as extensive beach erosion. Because of the damage, President George W. Bush declared portions of South Texas as a Federal Disaster Area, allowing the affected citizens to apply for aid. Claudette also caused significant rainfall and minor damage in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo as a tropical storm, as well as minor damage on Saint Lucia before developing into a tropical cyclone.