Geography

 General Information: 

– Capital: Sacramento

– Largest City: Los Angeles

– Area: 423,970 km2

=> 3rd largest state in the USA

Highest Point: 4,418m (Mount Whitney)

 Geographical regions: 

– Californias geographie very diverse

– divided in eleven different geomorphological areas

Great Basin/Basin and Range

–  Great Basin is an arid Great landscape with no outlet

–  located east of Sierra Nevada, largerly in neighbour-state Nevada

–  includes many large and small mountain ranges and valleys

– There is a number of dried lakes from the last Ice Age

→ left different salts in the desert landscape

– in the area of the White Mountains grow the oldest

trees in the World (Bristlecone Pine)

Sierra Nevada:

- east of California

- mountain range of 600 km

- highest summit: Mount Whitney

- 200 - 250 sunny days per year

- three biggest national parks:

->  Yosemite-national park, Kings-Canyon-national park, Sequoia-national park.

Colorado desert;

- south of California and in Mexico

- 39.000 km² big

- Salton Sea

 Climate: 

three zones - influenced by the Pacific
 * 1) Coast: temperature lower than in midland

2. Sierra Nevada: summers really hot

- after sunset the temperature sinks rapidly because of the altitude

- winter -> large amount of snow

3. Desert: sunny and warm whole year

-at the night the temperature sinks rapidly