Chapter 2: Split Page Notes
Piney Hills and Coastal Marshes: The Geography of Louisiana
Question
Section 1:
What is the difference between physical and cultural geography? How does one impact the other?
Response
Physical and Cultural Geography
How big is Louisiana? Where does it rank in terms of size?
What are Louisiana’s natural boundaries? What are the artificial boundaries?
How much water can be found in
Louisiana? What is the percentage?
How much of our nation’s wetlands can be found here?
What disputes resulted based on the position of the Mississippi River?
What was the outcome?
How many time zones are there in the world? In the U.S.? How are time zones typically determined? What time zone is Louisiana in?
Section 2:
By what four criteria are natural land regions determined?
Natural Land Regions

Why is Louisiana considered to have low relief?
What are the three natural land regions in Louisiana?
What characteristics make up the coastal marsh region?
Why are New Orleans cemetaries referred to as “Cities of the Dead”?
What conditions make them necessary?
What areas comprise the floodplain region? What typically grows there?
How were most of the uplands formed?
Where is Louisiana’s largest upland region? What is the highest point in
Louisiana? How high is it?
What typically grows in the uplands?
Why do such plants thrive there?
Section 3:
Where does the Mississippi River get its name? What does the name mean?
Rivers and Bayous

How does the Mississippi rank in size in the United States? In the world?
Where does Louisiana start? How many miles does it cover? How many states/provinces does it drain? How many gallons of water flow through
Louisiana each day?
What is the second longest river in
Louisiana? Where does it begin and end?
What are some unique characteristics of the Red River?
What is the longest distributary of the
Mississippi River? Where does it flow?
What distinction does the Atchafalaya
Basin hold? What three types of animals are noteworthy of this area?
Why are they important?
Describe the evolution of the Ouachita
River. How has it been tamed?

What is important about the Sabine
River?
What is important about the Pearl
River? Where did it get its name?
Where does the Calcasieu River begin and end? What importance does that have in relation to our state? What is the river’s main use?
Where did the Acadians originally settle? What makes that area important today?
What is commonly referred to as the
“Longest Street in America”? What does it run the length of? What did this body of water originate as?
How long is the Intracoastal
Waterway? What is its primary purpose?
How wide and deep is the Gulf of
Mexico? How does its size relate to other large bodies of water? How does
Louisiana rank in terms of coastline?

Section 4:
Why is it important for us to have systems in place to control rivers?
When and who built the first levees?
What event led to the creation of our current levee system? How much damage did it do?
What organization built our current levee system? What purpose does the levee system serve?
In what ways do levees create flooding?
Where and when was the Old River
Control Structure built? What was its purpose?
What is the “Old” Atchafalaya? What cause its change?
Controlling Louisiana’s Rivers

How did the event mentioned in the above question impact the “New”
Atchafalaya? What is predicted to happen within the next fifty years?
How are the changes in the
Atchafalaya predicted to impact the
Mississippi? What bigger impact would this have on our state?
What is the “Three Rivers” area?
Other than the Old River Control
Structure, what other control structures do we have in place? What are they designed to do?
What is the J. Bennett Johnston
Waterway? What was it designed to do?

Section5:
What are the five different kinds of lakes located in Louisiana?
What causes oxbow lakes to form?
What are some examples?
What causes depression lakes to form?
What are some examples?
Where is the only place Raft Lakes can be found? What caused their existence? What had to be done to maintain them?
How large and deep is Lake
Pontchartrain?
How are coastal lakes created? What are some examples?
What are reservoirs? What are they designed to do?
Lakes

How large is the Toledo Bend
Reservoir? What technical device makes its home there? What does it do?
Section 6:
What is the difference between weather and climate? What factors impact climate?
What factors play the greatest role in impacting Louisiana’s climate?
How does Louisiana compare in relation to the equator?
How does the Gulf impact our climate?
What type of climate does Louisiana have? What conditions are indicative of this type of climate?
About how much rain does our state receive each year? Where does the most rain fall? When? What is our rainfall record?
Climate

Compare and Contrast the climate of
Dallas and Shreveport. What causes the differences?
Briefly describe the weather in
Louisiana during each of the four seasons.
What causes hurricanes to form?
When is hurricane season? When does
Louisiana typically experience its strongest storms?
On what scale are hurricane catagories determined? What causes a change in levels?
What is the most dangerous part of a hurricane? What causes this to happen?
How are hurricanes named? What is the name cycle? What happens to names of particularly notable storms?

Describe the details of hurricanes
Andrew and Audrey.
What is a tornado? By what scale are they categorized? What determines the catagories?
What two hurricanes are most noteworthy in recent history? What level of damage did they cause respectively?
According to the 2000 census, what was the population of our state? How does that number compare to other states in the nation?
What parish noted the greatest growth during the latter part of the 20 th century? How did that compare to the population of New Orleans?
What factors contribute to the population growth (or lack thereof) in our state?

What is Louisiana’s population density? How does that compare to the rest of the nation? What factors account for the discrepancy between state and national averages?
What are the three cultural regions of our state? Where is each traditionally found and what qualities determine them?