The Appalachian Region

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The Appalachian region consists six physiographic regions, including the Piedmont, the Blue Ridge Mountains, The Great Valley, The Ridge and Valley, the Allegheny Mountains, and the Appalachian Plateau. The Piedmont is the first physiographic region as traveling westward, which is a plateau region that straddles between the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the Appalachian Mountains. It stretches from New Jersey in the north to central Alabama in the South, which varies in width like it is 300 miles wide in North Carolina but extremely narrow in New Jersey. Moreover, the Piedmont is the eastern periphery of the Appalachian region and includes 80,000 thousand square miles of relatively small rolling hills that vary in elevation between 200 and 800 …show more content…
Elevations in the Northern Section rarely exceed 4,000 feet in elevation, while elevations in the Southern Blue Ridge are higher with vast areas exceeding 3,000 feet in height and more than 40 peaks rising above 6,000 feet, 125 peaks are rising over 5,000 feet in elevation. Mt. Mitchell, in North Carolina, is the highest peak in the Appalachian Mountains at 6,684 feet in elevation. Most of the Blue Ridge Mountains would have the first mountain ridge towards the east which is 1,000-1,800 feet above sea level and is less than a mile wide. For instance, Sugar Loaf Mountain is the first mountain ridge as traveling westward in Maryland where the second mountain range is greater than 2,000 feet above sea-level like the Shenandoah National Park mountains. Moreover, the Blue Ridge Mountains consist of metaphoric rocks such as gneiss (that resembles a marble cake in coloration) and sedimentary rocks such as limestone. The Great Appalachian Valley, (The Great Valley or Great Valley Region) is the third physiographic region, which is a large trough, a continuous chain of valley lowlands that stretches for 1,200 miles from Quebec, Canada to …show more content…
As moving westward, the valley extends 10-20 miles long towards the next mountain ridge, known as the Ridge and Valley. The Ridge and Valley Region extends from Alabama to New York and stretches between the Great Appalachian Valley and the Allegheny Mountains, which consists of long even ridges and long continuous valleys in between the ridges. Whereas, the ridges, and valleys became oriented in a southwest to northeast direction. Further west, the region has fewer valleys and taller mountains, which this area starts to become part of the Alleghany