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Old 06-27-2019, 09:12 AM
 
Location: Taos NM
5,314 posts, read 5,039,092 times
Reputation: 6677

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Lennox 70 View Post
Denver and Colorado Springs are in between the Great Plains and the Rockies. They're both technically on the plains with the Rockies right behind them hence the Front Range.
Pretty much every town and city in the mountainous part of Colorado is on a striking transition zone. Elevation changes obviously alter the vegetation composition, but the effect is more pronounced in Colorado (and WY) than it is on the west coast or in the eastern US because the climate is so harsh only a couple species of plants can survive in any given area. So what ends up happening is you quickly transition from one monoculture forest to another as you shift from the north slope of a mountain to the west side on top of the changes you get from elevation differences.

We went camping a couple weeks ago. Our campsite was mostly all aspen, all about the same age, which was the result of a fire burning a stripe of the side the mountain probably about 100 years ago. To the west of the campsite the forest was almost exclusively Douglas Fir. To the east of the campsite, the forest was exclusively spruce. Dropping 100 ft in elevation, it was exclusively sagebrush. Dropping down to the stream lower, exclusively grass.

I think it's the ability to quickly transition lots of various vegetation types rather than the actual beauty within any given forest that draws people to Colorado.
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Old 06-27-2019, 10:17 AM
 
Location: The Republic of Gilead
12,716 posts, read 7,737,287 times
Reputation: 11323
Quote:
Originally Posted by cloudcrash619 View Post
There probably is a slight difference (like less trees to the west), but the first view is from May and the second view is from February, when trees are bare and the grass is brown in most of the South.
It is a lot flatter to the west and it is almost treeless. In fact, OKC was the westernmost extent of the crosstimbers forest naturally. It was during the 1930s dust bowl that trees were planted farther west.

Going east though, I wouldn't say it looks like Arkansas. Crosstimbers trees are short and shrubby and going east on I-40, you don't get into full-sized trees until around Muskogee, OK and even then, those trees are puny compared to the ones east of Fort Smith, AR.
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Old 06-27-2019, 07:22 PM
 
6,772 posts, read 4,420,268 times
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Charlotte's metro is a little bit of a transition. In its western suburb of Gaston County (where I live), it starts getting a bit hilly. I can see Crowder's Mountain from my neighborhood and Kings Mountain beyond that. We're just at the start of the foothills. South and east of Charlotte, it's pretty flat.
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Old 06-27-2019, 08:50 PM
 
Location: The High Desert
15,973 posts, read 10,531,630 times
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Albuquerque sits up against the Sandia and Manzano Mountains on the east and, across the Rio Grande, borders the northern region of the Chihuahuan desert on the west. There are visible mountains to the north, the Sangre de Cristos near Santa Fe, and the Jemez Mountains to the northwest.
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Old 06-28-2019, 10:54 AM
 
8,256 posts, read 17,250,408 times
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Columbus Ohio is flat and to the west is all flat, but Appalachians start a little east.

Also idk what the regions would be called, but I don't think people realize how hilly the NYC area can be. Manhattan where tourists go and basically all of Long Island (including Brooklyn and Queens) is quite flat. Manhattan has some small changes in elevation below Central Park where tourists would see. But northern parts of Manhattan, already start some real topography that extends into the Bronx and just continues on. NJ across the Hudson has some extreme hills and then further into NJ it's actually quite hilly. NYC is definitely a transition area, but it's rarely acknowledged by people who don't leave the tourist areas.

Manhattan
https://goo.gl/maps/kweJHWJ1S5so3Fzj7
https://goo.gl/maps/DTH2NjXuceRA5orV7
https://goo.gl/maps/zpvkshobhnHi5xP27
https://goo.gl/maps/yPY7vuf7qFqRFZfc8
https://goo.gl/maps/VuywP9rwsGYV2Ts69 (Spin around to see the NJ cliffs also)

Bronx
https://goo.gl/maps/GqtKD7m9MtaPFPgd8
https://goo.gl/maps/Evw1cLFZ7uW7DMKM8

NJ (riverfront)
https://goo.gl/maps/A2nMiiVLEwxw6FMUA
https://goo.gl/maps/aDPGgcai2gJhSCn29
https://goo.gl/maps/HdT4ZN93hgoWN9F36
https://goo.gl/maps/ke2iPerf7iXvRpkd9

Once you get past those parts of NJ, it turns flat again for a few miles. After those few miles, the rest of NJ is all hilly or mountainous. I think this view kinda shows how it stays flat for a few miles, then just jumps up into cliffs around West Orange.

I don't know Westchester County as well, but I do know that right above like Midtown Manhattan, the Hudson Valley starts as an actual valley with steep cliffs on both sides.
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Old 06-28-2019, 11:22 AM
 
8,753 posts, read 6,674,180 times
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Every city in the western US is on the edge of a mountain range. Some like Albuquerque are more interesting and up close than others like Denver.
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Old 06-28-2019, 11:59 AM
 
Location: BMORE!
10,071 posts, read 9,844,531 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kidphilly View Post
Philly has a few including the swampy pinelands of NJ, shelf where Philly is and the foothills of the Appalachians to the west


most of the EC cities in the NE have a similar dynamic
Yea, I was gonna say that dynamic applies to just about all of the cities in the NE-Corridor.
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Old 06-29-2019, 09:51 PM
 
1,798 posts, read 1,104,621 times
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Most Southern California counties have significant geographical (ecological, topographical, etc.) shifts across very short distances.

For instance, a 1-2 hour drive across San Diego County could easily result in:
Chaparral
Desert
Mountain woodland
Grassland
Coastal Wetlands

Honestly, if you stay on SR-76, SR-87, or I-8 for 1.5 hrs from the coast to the inland desert, you'll probably see more geographies than most states have.
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Old 06-30-2019, 09:29 AM
 
13,942 posts, read 14,823,775 times
Reputation: 10383
Quote:
Originally Posted by KodeBlue View Post
Yea, I was gonna say that dynamic applies to just about all of the cities in the NE-Corridor.
I was going to Say Baltimore is the last coastal city that has the fall line.

DC and Richmond are fall Line cities that are inland which is traditionally southern.
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Old 06-30-2019, 03:18 PM
 
Location: Oklahoma
17,625 posts, read 13,438,260 times
Reputation: 17542
Quote:
Originally Posted by bawac34618 View Post
It is a lot flatter to the west and it is almost treeless. In fact, OKC was the westernmost extent of the crosstimbers forest naturally. It was during the 1930s dust bowl that trees were planted farther west.
There are a couple of bands of the Crosstimbers further west than OKC that are natural. And there have always been trees in creekbeds in western OK but there was a lot of tree planting in western Oklahoma in the 1930s. These shelter belts were long rows of trees planted on section lines.

The shelter belts are slowly disappearing but can still be seen in some places. I've gone by the first shelter belt ever planted in the USA. They are maintaining it. It is by Willow, OK.
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