CH 11 North America

• North American Plate


  A tectonic plate covering most of North America, Central America, and Greenland
• Canadian Shield


  The ancient rocks of Northern Canada, the oldest in North America, which contain many mineral deposits
• Loess


  Fine-grained and fertile soils developed from windblown deposits
• Hydrology


  The surface water drainage of a region including lakes and rivers
• Deciduous


  Plants with broad leaves that mostly lose their foliage in cold or dry seasons
• Coniferous


  Forest of needle-leaf trees commonly occurring in areas with long winters or poor, sandy soils
• Megalopolis


  An expanded urbanized area that includes several metropolitan areas with over a million people and dominates the economy of surrounding areas
• Countermigration


  Movement of people returning to regions they once left, as in the return of African Americans from northern US cities to the south
• Native Americans


  Indigenous people who inhabited the Americans before the European arrival, including Amerinds and Inuits (Eskimos)
• First Nations


  Indigenous or native Canadians
• Reservations


  Government-designated lands set aside for Native Americans, found in the central and northwestern parts of the United States
• British North American Act


  Act that established independence for Canada from Britain on July 1, 1867
• Homestead act of 1862


  The US act of 1862 that provided land cheaply or freely to families settling in the Western US
• Economies of scale


  Increased productivity gained by building larger factories and gaining access to larger markets
• Horizontal intergration

  The combining of the producers of the same product in a single corporation to create economies of scale and the control of prices
• Vertical Integration

  The combining of producers of raw materials, manufacturers that process the materials, and those that assemble the products in a single corporation to achieve economies of scale
• manufacturingProduction Line

  The system of manufacting in which components are made and assembled into the final product in a sequence of factory-based processes
• Fordism


  The application of production lines in the assembly of a wide range of components in various manufacturing industries based on the production system established by Henry Ford for the automobile industry
• Group of Eight (G8)


  An economic discussion forum consisting of the world's eight most materially wealthy countries
• UN Security Council


  One of the principal divisions of the United Nations, maintenance of international peace and security
• Uneven Development


  The increase in the gap between poor and wealthy regions in a country and the shifting locations of economic growth and decline over time seen by Marxists as an outcome of capitalism
• Concentric pattern of urban zones

  A pattern or urban geography with a central business district surrounded by a hierarchy of residential zones
• Edge city

  A post-industrial city, usually in the suburbs of a major city contains significant commercial space and service industries
• Tennessee Valley Authority


  Est by the US government in 1933 to stimulate economic growth in southern Appalachia through the damming of rivers to improve transportation, flood control, and electricity costs
• Remittance


  Funds sent home by workers in foreign countries
• maquiladora


  Mexican government program that encourages foreign-owned factories to be sited in Mexico by not charging import duties on raw materials for assembly.
• desalination plant


  A mechanism that extracts fresh water from seawater by evaporation and condensation.