Georgia

I

Introduction

Georgia, one of the southern Atlantic coast states of the United States, bordered on the north by Tennessee and North Carolina; on the east by South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean; on the south by Florida, and on the west by Alabama. The Savannah River forms part of the eastern border and the Chattahoochee River part of the western border.

Georgia entered the Union on January 2, 1788, as the fourth state. During the American Civil War it was a member of the Confederate States of America. Once principally a farming state, known for its considerable cotton output, Georgia in the late 1990s had an economy centred on manufacturing and service industries. Georgia is named after George II of Great Britain and is known both as the “Empire State of the South” and the “Peach State”.

II

Land and Resources

Georgia has an area of 152,750 sq km (58,977 sq mi) and is the largest US state east of the Mississippi River. The state is roughly rectangular in shape, and its extreme dimensions are about 515 km (320 mi) from north to south and 441 km (274 mi) from east to west.

A

Physical Geography

Georgia encompasses parts of six regions: the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the East Gulf Coastal Plain to the south; the Piedmont Plateau and Appalachian Mountains in the north; and the Valley and Ridge Region and Cumberland Plateau in the west and north-west. The result is a varied landscape. The Atlantic coast is broken by many inlets and contains much marsh and swamp; offshore are the Sea Islands (a chain that continues north into South Carolina and south into Florida). Straddling the southern border of the two coastal plains is the Okefenokee Swamp, which is also partly in Florida. Most of the northern half of Georgia is made up of a part of the Piedmont Plateau. The fall line is at the southern edge of this region.

Three regions of the Appalachian Mountains make up northern Georgia. The Blue Ridge is underlain by extremely hard crystalline rocks such as gneiss. To the west of the Blue Ridge is the Valley and Ridge Region, where wide, flat, fertile valleys extending north-east to south-west are separated by narrow, steep-sided ridges. The north-western corner of Georgia, made up of a section of the Cumberland Plateau, contains narrow, relatively infertile valleys bordered by ridges.

Major rivers include the Savannah, Altamaha, Ocmulgee, Oconee, Chattahoochee, and Flint. Georgia has no large natural lakes, but dams on rivers have formed a number of large bodies of water.

B

Climate

The two Coastal Plain regions of Georgia and the Piedmont Plateau area have a humid subtropical climate. The southern location, relatively low elevation, and proximity to the comparatively warm waters of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico produce a climate with long, hot summers, short, mild winters, and rainfall at all times of the year. The climate is classified as humid continental in the Blue Ridge, Valley and Ridge, and Cumberland Plateau regions of the north. The recorded temperature in the state has ranged from -27.2° C (-17° F), in 1940 near Rome in the north-west, to 44.4° C (112° F), in 1952 at Louisville in the east.