What is the difference between coastal plains and great plains for rd in short?
Answers
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GREAT PLAINS
Great Plains, also called Great American Desert, The Great Plains lie between the Rio Grande in the south and the delta of the Mackenzie River at the Arctic Ocean in the north and between the Interior Lowland and the Canadian Shield on the east and the Rocky Mountains on the west.
Their length is some 3,000 miles (4,800 km), their width from 300 to 700 miles, and their area approximately 1,125,000 square miles (2,900,000 square km)
The Great Plains are a vast high plateau of semiarid grassland.
Their altitude at the base of the Rockies in the United States is between 5,000 and 6,000 feet (1,500 and 1,800 metres) above sea level
low hills and incised stream valleys are commonplace.
The soil groups of the Great Plains are correlated with rainfall and natural grass cover.
In the more humid region with taller, heavier grass cover, deep, black soils (mollisols) with much organic matter developed. Sections with less moisture have lighter, shallower soils with less organic matter, while in the most arid regions the soils are even thinner, lighter in colour, and less organic in composition.
Most of the soils have an accumulation of carbonates in their lower horizons, translocated there by infiltrating water
The Great Plains have a continental climate. Over much of their expanse, cold winters and warm summers prevail, with low precipitation and humidity, much wind, and sudden changes in temperature
Natural vegetation in the Great Plains is dominated by grasses—tallgrass and medium grass prairie in the east and shortgrass and bunchgrass steppes in the west.
Gallery forests are found along the rivers and include hardy xerophytic trees .Coniferous evergreens dominate the mountain islands.
COASTAL PLAINS
A coastal plain is a flat, low-lying piece of land next to the ocean. Coastal plains are separated from the rest of the interior by nearby landforms, such as mountains.
In western South America, a large coastal plain lies between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. In the United States, coastal plains can be found along the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.
Coastal plains can form in two basic ways. Some start as a continental shelf, a flat piece of land located below sea level. When the ocean level falls, the land is exposed, creating a coastal plain. Sometimes, these coastal plains can extend far inland. Fossils of marine organisms have been found in the landlocked U.S. state of Kansas, for instance. Kansas was part of a vast coastal plain that formed when the Western Interior Seaway was forced to the Gulf of Mexico about 100 million years ago. The Western Interior Seaway was a large sea that split the continent of North America from what is now the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean during the Cretaceous period.
A coastal plain can also develop when river currents carry rock, soil and other sedimentary material into the ocean. Layers of this deposited sediment build up over time, creating a flat or gently sloping landscape.