ì<(sk$m)=beicjf< +^-Ä-U-Ä-U

Transcription

1 Fascinating Facts Regions and Resources Most Americans use nearly seven hundred pounds of paper each year. Thirty-nine percent of things put in landfills are made of paper and could have been recycled. It takes between five hundred and one thousand years for just one inch of rich soil to form. Genre Comprehension Skill Text Features Nonfiction Draw Conclusions Captions Headings/Subheadings Map Time Line Scott Foresman Social Studies ì<(sk$m)=beicjf< +^-Ä-U-Ä-U ISBN by Barbara Bigelow

2 In this book you will read about some of the regions and natural resources in the United States. Read on to find out more about the resources that are beneath the earth s surface! Regions and Resources Vocabulary natural resources region physical environment landform climate fuel mineral communities by Barbara Bigelow ISBN: Copyright Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by Copyright, and permission should be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. For information regarding permission(s), write to: Permissions Department, Scott Foresman, 1900 East Lake Avenue, Glenview, Illinois Editorial Offices: Glenview, Illinois Parsippany, New Jersey New York, New York Sales Offices: Needham, Massachusetts Duluth, Georgia Glenview, Illinois Coppell, Texas Sacramento, California Mesa, Arizona V0G

3 Trees are a natural resource. What is a natural resource? Nature is truly amazing. Just take a look around you. Almost everything you see started out as a natural resource. Natural resources are useful materials that come from the earth. The toothpaste you used this morning contains sand. Sand is a natural resource. The paper this book was printed on came from a tree. Our forests are natural resources. The gasoline that powers the car or the bus you ride in started out as oil. Oil is a natural resource. How about cars? Cars are made from natural resources too. Car bodies are formed from sheets of steel. Steel is made mostly of iron, which is found in rock. Iron is an important natural resource. Five Regions in One Country The United States is the fourth-largest country in the world. It is big enough to be divided into five different regions. A region is a large land area that has special features. The five regions of the United States have very different physical environments. You can tell one type of physical environment from another by observing its landforms and its climate. Landform is a scientific word for the different shapes found on Earth s surface. Deserts and mountains are two examples of landforms. Climate refers to the kind of weather a place has from year to year. This map shows the five regions of the United States. West region Southwest region Midwest region Southeast region Northeast region 2 3

4 Check This Out Did you know that the first letters of the four directions on a map North, East, West, and South spell the word NEWS? The five regions of the United States look very different. You will find mountains in the West and flat plains in the Midwest. The Southwest is very hot and dry all year round. The Northeast can get very cold and snowy during the winter. The South is warmer than some other regions. This is an oil well. This is a hot, dry climate in the Southwest region. Where is that from? Natural resources come from nature. The five regions of the United States have very different resources in their soil, rocks, and waters. Let s look at a few states and their natural resources. Texas is a very large state in the Southwest. It is famous for its oil. Oil is a natural resource that is found beneath the ground. It comes from wells, or deep holes in Earth s surface. We use oil for fuel. Fuels provide us with heat, light, and other forms of energy. 5

5 Midwestern states, such as Wisconsin, have cows and livestock. You probably already know how valuable our forests are. They provide homes for animals and oxygen for us to breathe. They shade us from the Sun. Trees are also important to the building industry. Lumber comes from trees. It is wood that has been cut into boards. Wood from trees is also used to make paper and furniture. You might be surprised at some of the other things that are made from trees. Medicines, fabrics, bowling balls, football helmets, hairspray, paints, tires, cough drops, and gum all come from trees. The best thing about trees, though, is that they can be replaced by planting new ones. That makes them a renewable resource. If we are careful, they will never disappear! The state of Wisconsin is in our nation s Midwest. This state has lots of cows, farmland, and trees. Wisconsin is known for its dairy products, such as milk and cheese. This state also produces the most paper in our country. Idaho is a state in the Northwest. Much of its land is used for farming. Idaho is famous throughout the world for its plentiful potato crops. The soil in Idaho is good for growing wheat and trees. Many potato crops are grown in Idaho. 6

6 Gold is a very valuable mineral. A mineral is a natural resource that has never been alive. Gold was first discovered in California back in This discovery caused thousands of people to move out west. The big westward movement became known as the Gold Rush. Can you dig it? Gold is usually found buried in rock. Sometimes it is mixed with loose soil. People panned for gold in the Old West by swirling water from muddy streams in pans to help separate the tiny gold flecks from the dirt. Later, people dug deep holes called gold mines in the earth to search for larger chunks of gold. A miner s job was to get the nuggets, or chunks of gold, out of the mine. Miners panned for gold. Many of the people who took part in the Gold Rush wanted to find some gold for themselves. Others followed the crowd looking for different kinds of work. Let s see what might have happened out west in 1849 after gold was discovered. Many people traveled far to look for gold, but there were other jobs to do. 8 Thousands of people headed west hoping to find gold nuggets such as these. The Miner Forty-Niners The gold miners were nicknamed forty-niners because the busiest year for gold mining in California was Between the discovery of gold in 1848 and the end of the Gold Rush in 1850, about eighty thousand people moved to California. 9

7 The miners had to buy supplies, so some people set up stores to sell things. The miners had to eat, so other people grew food, cooked, or set up places for miners to buy meals. The miners might get injured or sick, so doctors were needed. People were able to find many things to do even if they were not looking for gold! Then what happened? Not many gold miners got rich. By 1850 the Gold Rush was over. A lot of miners decided to go back to the states they came from. Some of the mining towns were deserted. They became known as ghost towns after everyone left. Some people ended up staying in the area, though. Many of them took up farming and communities were formed. A community is a place where people live, work, and have fun together. California became this country s thirty-first state at the end of Some mines were in the mountains

8 How did fuels get under the ground? Oil, coal, and natural gas are fuels. We burn them to produce heat, electricity, and other forms of energy. All of these fuels were formed millions of years ago and are buried in the ground. You are probably wondering how all that oil, coal, and natural gas ended up getting stuck under tons of rock. Let s take a look at how oil forms. Coal and natural gas form almost the same way. 12 Oil is sometimes called black gold because it is such a valuable natural resource.

9 A Fuel Time Line 1839 The first steam shovel is invented. This invention makes it much easier to dig coal from the ground. 1930s Lots of oil is found in Texas The price of oil goes way up in the United States. People have to wait in lines for hours at gas stations to fill up their gas tanks Scientists predict that plankton, sunflowers, and bananas may be the fuels of the future s America s first oil field is drilled in Pennsylvania The gas-electric hybrid car is introduced in Japan. It can run on gas or electricity. How Oil Is Formed Suppose it is three hundred million years ago, even before the dinosaurs roamed Earth. Billions of tiny plants and animals were living in Earth s oceans. When these ocean creatures died and sank to the bottom of the water, they formed a muddy layer. Over time, the plant and animal bodies were buried under more and more layers of mud. It got pretty hot under there, and the mud turned to rock. Much later, those dead plants and animals turned into thick, gooey oil. 14 Will our natural resources last forever? Not every natural resource is like a tree. After a tree is cut down, a new one can be planted in its place. That is why forests are called renewable resources! Unfortunately, oil, coal, and natural gas are not like that. Once we find and use all the oil, coal, and natural gas in Earth s crust, they will be gone forever. We cannot plant new supplies. That is why it is so important to conserve our resources. 15

10 Glossary climate the kind of weather a place has from year to year communities places where people live, work, and have fun together fuel a resource that can be used to produce light, heat, or other forms of energy landform a shape or part of the earth s surface, such as a mountain or a desert Write to It! What natural resources are near where you live? How are they important to your community? Write one paragraph about your ideas. Write your paragraph on a separate sheet of paper. mineral a natural resource that has never been alive natural resources useful materials that come from the earth physical environment a region s landforms and climate region a large land area that has special features Illustration 3 Guy Porfirio Photographs Every effort has been made to secure permission and provide appropriate credit for photographic material. The publisher deeply regrets any omission and pledges to correct errors called to its attention in subsequent editions. Unless otherwise acknowledged, all photographs are the property of Scott Foresman, a division of Pearson Education. Photo locators denoted as follows: Top (T), Center (C), Bottom (B), Left (L), Right (R) Background (Bkgd) 16 Opener: (C) David Muench/Corbis, (Bkgd) Digital Vision 2 Gary Vestal/Getty Images 4 (B) David Muench/Corbis, (T) Getty Images 5 Corbis 6 Peter Adams/Getty Images 7 David R. Frazier Photolibrary, Inc./Alamy Images 8 Tom Myers 9 The Granger Collection, NY 10 Royalty-Free/Corbis 13 Peter Skinner/Photo Researchers, Inc.