Welcome to Wednesday!

1. Welcome to Wednesday! Please get out your journals “Teachers open the doors, but you must enter by yourself” – Chinese Proverb

2. Journal 1.27.10 • You are given the task to create a new TV station, please answer the following questions: • What is the name of your station going to be (HBO, NBC, TNT, ESPN)? • What kind of shows are you going to have on it? • What shows are you going to steal from other networks and put on your network? • Who is hosting your late night comedy show? • Who is your newsman and weather man? • Why are people going to watch your station?

3. Where is Latin America? • Latin America stretches from the border of the US and Mexico all the way down to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America, which is over 7,000 miles • Latin America consists of Central America, South America and the Caribbean • Central America: the nations south of Mexico and north of South America • Latin America has a variety of different landforms all including peninsulas, plateaus, isthmuses, pampas and rainforests

5. Central America

6. Geography of Central America • Central America and Mexico stretch over 2,500 miles from the border of the US to South America (same length as LA to NYC) • Mexico is a nation of plateaus and mountains, and most Mexicans live on the central plateaus • Central America is actually a giant isthmus • Isthmus: a strip of land with water on both sides that joings two larger bodies of land • The most famous isthmus of Central America is the Isthmus of Panama which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean • The Isthmus of Panama made it the perfect place for the Panama Canal to be built there in the early 1900’s

7. Geography of the Caribbean • The Caribbean Sea consists of three groups of islands • The Bahamas: a series of islands off the southern tip of Florida and north of Cuba • Greater Antilles: the largest islands in the Caribbean, which are Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola • Hispaniola is the only island that is divided into two nations, Haiti and the Dominican Republic • Lesser Antilles: smaller islands in the Caribbean, which are the divided into the Windward and Leeward Islands • Windward Islands: lower part of the Lesser Antilles which includes Trindad and Tobago, Barbados, and St. Lucia • Leeward Islands: upper part of the Lesser Antilles, which includes the Virgin Islands, Antigua and Nevis

8. The Greater Antilles

9. Lesser Antilles

10. The Hero of the Caribbean

11. Geography of South America • The continent of South America is dominated by landforms but mostly by its mountains with the largest of these being the Andes Mountains • Andes Mountains: a large system of mountain ranges located along the Pacific Coast of Central and South America • Other smaller mountain ranges in Latin America include the Guiana Highlands in northeastern South America and the Brazilian Highlands on the east coast of Brazil • The Andes run over 5,500 miles and have heights of over 20,000 feet and are the second highest mountains in the world behind the Himalyas • South of the Andes are the great pampas of Argentina which are huge grasslands where gauchos herd huge herds of cattle • Pampas: vast area of grassland and rich soil in south-central South America

12. The Andes

13. Map of Pampas

14. Gaucho on the Pampas

15. The Rain forest of South America • Throughout the interior of South America are the great rain forest along the Amazon River • Amazon River: second longest river in the world • The Amazon stretches from the Andes of Peru to the Atlantic Ocean, almost the entire width of the continent • Within the Amazon is one of nature’s great wonders the rain forest • Rain forest: a dense evergreen forest that has abundant rainfall throughout the year • The Amazon Rain forest covers 1/3 of the continent and has the greatest concentration of animals of anywhere on the planet

16. Piranha

17. Anaconda in its coils

18. Anaconda

19. Climates of the US

20. Climate of South America

21. Latin American Climates • Latin America has a variety of climates including: • Hot and wet weather in the rain forests • Florida like (hot and wet in the summer, cool and dry in the winter) weather in the interior • TN/NC like weather in Argentina and Uruguay • NE/CO weather in the interior of Argentina • Extreme cold weather in the Andes Mountains

22. Things that affect climate: • Many things affect the climates of Latin America can include location, elevation and wind patterns • Elevation: the height of land above sea level • Elevation affects climate drastically in the nations of Bolivia and Ecuador which have very cool climates • Location has a great deal to impact the climates of Latin America, the further away people living from the Equator the colder the climate is • Wind patterns often affects climates, winds move cold air from the North and South poles towards the Equator, but warm air from the Caribbean can warm the continents

23. Changes in the climate • Every so often in Latin America the climate changes drastically known as El Nino • El Nino: a warming of the ocean water along the western coast of South America • El Nino’s occur every few years and because they occur around Christmas they are called El Nino “the Christ child” • El Nino’s can affect weather not only in Latin America but in North America

24. Welcome to Monday No Journal! “Nobody whoever gave his best regretted it” - George Halas

25. Climates affect money • The Climates of Latin America can greatly affect how people make money in their nations • Climates can affect what crops are grown and millions of tourists from throughout the world flock to Latin America building up its economy • Economy: the ways that goods and services are produced and made available to people • The goods people sell from Latin America include coffee, bananas, and sugar cane • The services people offer in Latin America is tourism, warm weather and cold margaritas

26. Tourism • The advantages of tourism in Latin America are: • Tourists spend a lot of money which creates new jobs • Resorts offer activities to people that are worked by locals • Tourism helps reduce the income gap between rich and poor locals • New technologies (cell phones, wireless internet) are brought to these countries that could not afford it • The disadvantages to tourism are: • Resorts are built in beautiful natural settings that now are polluted • Tourism makes light of the large gap between the rich tourists and the less well off locals • Many of the profits that are generated in the tourist countries are sent to companies in other nations who own the resorts • Local government is often doing what is in the best interest of the resorts, not of local people

27. Tourism: Central Florida

28. Natural Resources • Latin America has a variety of natural resources that makes people want to invest in their nations • Natural Resources: things found in nature that people can use to meet their needs • Natural resources include gold, silver, lead,oil, coal and hydroelectric energy • Hydroelectric Energy: electric power created by rushing water • Hydroelectric plants are found all over South America and more are being built in Central America • Check the map of page 421 for where the resources are found

29. Resources and Money • Not every nation in Latin America is blessed with multiple resources to provide its people with income, unfortunately some nations have one-resource economies • One-resource economy: an economy that largely depends on one resource or crop • Some of the Caribbean islands are examples of one-resource economies but their resource is tourism • When people don’t go on vacations in their nations everyone suffers by a loss of income • Examples in the US would include Florida (tourism), Michigan (automobiles) and West Virginia (coal) • The goal of all of these nations and (states) is to diversify their economies • Diversify: to add variety to something

30. Label Mexico on your map

31. Label Yucatan Peninsula

32. Label Cuba and Hispaniola on your map:

33. Label Panama on your map

34. End of the Chapter Test tomorrow! Go Vols!