Chapter 8: Appalachia and the Ozarks

San Francisco has nothing to compar to the Appalachia and the Ozarks. The only forestry near the bay area would be the 559 acre Muir Woods National Park. It is actually in Mill Valley, Ca, Muir Woods is open every day of the year, including all holidays. Park hours vary throughout the year, but the park is generally open 8:00 a.m. to sunset. You will see the tallest type of tree in the world, the Coast redwood, sequoia sempervirens, as well as the countless other plants and animals that are part of an old-growth redwood forest, including tanoak trees, ferns, redwood sorrel, stellar jays, black-tailed deer, and banana slugs, to name a few.

There is also the Calaveres Dam, located at the Alameda-Santa Clara County line.  The dam is a 230 foot high barrier which holds the largest drinking water reservoir in the 9 county region.  Since its location is on an active fault zone, dam regulators drained the reservoir to about a third of its capacity.  The Calaveras reservoir sits in the Alameda Creek watershed, which drains most of the southern sections of the East Bay, including the southern slopes of Mount Diablo

Chapter 7: The Bypassed East

San Francisco is pretty much cold most of the year and gets a lot of rain. What we read about in our book “Regional Landscapes of United States and Canada” is that the bypassed east is also cold, with lots of precipitation, and mountains. Mountains are the biggest difference between the bypassed east and San Francisco. San Francisco’s temperature averages at 57 degrees F annually, the annual average precipitation is 22.28 inches and the most rain comes in January.

Mount Tamalpais, just across the Golden Gate Bridge, has a peak 2,604 ft. high; at its base is the Muir Woods National Monument.  Mount Tamalpais is the product of The North American and Pacific Plates sliding against each other, and it is also by the San Andreas Fault.

There is almost zero agriculture in the Bay area, first of all its covered in buildings second due to high pollution the soil is not the best for crops. But in Solano County they grow beans, sunflower seed, wheat, corn, almonds, walnuts, grapes, and alfalfa.  In Sonoma county there’s crops such as apples, mushrooms, watercress, and chestnuts.  But wine grapes dominate most of the crops in Sonoma.  

Chapter 5: The North American Manufacturing Core

Manufacturing is an important economic activity in the United States. The evidence of this is everywhere--in articles of clothing, items of preserved food, residential structures, means of transport and communication, and many other things. In spite of the presence of items manufactured outside the country, domestic industry remains paramount, and it is rare for any medium-sized U.S. town to be without at least some local employment in manufacturing. San Francisco is not part of the North American Manufacturing Core, but has some similarities.

The location of San Francisco means that there should be an easily flow with the means of transportation and communication.  The railway system is the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) which helps people commute in and out of the City without having to sit in their cars during traffic.  The central part of BART is San Francisco of course because of all of the office space that dominate the financial districts.  BART also makes stops at the Oakland Coliseum, SF Downtown shopping areas, and AT&T Park.  Many people also use the ferry system to commute to and from the City.  People who live on the east and north side of the bay frequent this mode of transportation.


Other famous manufacturing include: Levi's Jeans, New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) was built by General Motors and used to manufacture cars such as the Chevy Nova, Geo Prism, and Toyota Corolla.  The plant operated from 1984 to 2010.  When the plant closed more than 4,700 employees were out of a job. Some famous foods are del monte, Ghirardelli, and Rice o Roni.

Chapter 4: Megalopolis

Megalopolis that stretches the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco is considered to be a western model of the original megalopolis on the east coast, which was termed the SanSan by French geographer Jean Gottman. The Oxford Dictionary of Geography defines the term as "any many-centered, multi-city, urban area of more than 10 million inhabitants, generally dominated by low-density settlement and complex networks of economic specialization."

There are a few reasons why San Francisco can be part of a megalopolis. Part of it because they have the San Francisco Bay which is easily navigate-able for ships, Port of San Francisco which has been considered a natural harbor, and the Bay is spanned by six bridges (Golden Gate, Bay Bridge, San Mateo Bridge, Dumbarton, Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, and the Carquinez). With the Pacific Ocean as a route to Asia, the Bay Area has been a stop for freight liners to drop off their cargo.  The area is also linked to several major freeways, such as Interstate 5, US Route 101, California Route 99, and Interstate 80. 

   

The Northern California megaregion is home to the Silicon Valley with major corporations such as Cisco Systems, Apple Inc., Oracle, EBay, Yahoo!,Facebook, Youtube, Google, and Hewlett Packard, the San Francisco Financial District (headquarters of various financial firms such as VISA,Wells Fargo, and Union Bank of California), Wine Country, and much of the Central Valley which is one of the world's most productive agricultural areas, producing 8% of the nation's total crops. The centers of major national government offices, such as the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the U.S. Mint as well as the California State Capitol are all located within the region. The Bay Area also has the largest concentration of multi-millionaire households of any metropolitan area in the country and the largest concentration of Billionaires of any U.S. metropolitan area.

 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SanSan)

Chapter3:Foundations of Human Activity

Expansion of the European settlement frontier in San Francisco: between 1810-1830 had a population density of 2 or more persons per square mile.

Population density as of today is 300.0 to 2,999.9 people per square mile by county.

San Francisco is one of the largest urban ares in the U.S as of 2000 Metropolitan population ranking, they are at rank number 5.

Eating Preferences based on % of eating establishments:

• chicken: 2.9-6.5
• seafood: 0.7-3.3
• steak: 0.8-2.2

Predominant relegious affiliations

• Relegious group- Catholic Church
• Number of counties-1,259

Tribes that lived in San Francisco

• The Ohlone people, also known as the Costanoan, are a Native American people.

Contemporary Ohlone Groups

• Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, San Francisco Bay Area
• With 397 enrolled members in 2000, the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe comprises "all of the known surviving Native American lineages aboriginal to the San Francisco Bay region who trace their ancestry through the Missions Dolores, Santa Clara and San Jose" and who descend from members of the historic Federally Recognized Verona Band of Alameda County. On 21 September 2006, they received a favorable opinion from the U.S. District in Washington D.C of their court case to expedite the reaffirmation of the tribe as a federally recognized tribe.
• http://web.archive.org/web/20090509075105/http://www.muwekma.org/news/index.html

Total Population Percentage of race in CA in 2000

1. American Indian and Alaska Native:0.9-4.9
2. Black or African American:5.0-12.2
3. Asian:3.6-12.4
4. Hispanic or Latino Origin: 25-98.8

European Settlement expansion occured in 1750-1850

Megalopolitan growth is seen in San Francisco area

• Between 1990-2000 there was a 12.6% growth of population in San francisco

Chapter 2: Geographic Patterns of the Physical Environment

Some Basic Facts:

• Physiographic Region- Pacific Mountains and Valleys
• Percipitation- 20.0-39.9 mean annual percipitation in inches.
• Climate Regions- Humid Mesothermal(Csb) Mediterranean or dry summer subtropical. Warmest month mean under 71.6 degrees F, at least 4 months have means over 50 degrees F.
• Vegetation Regions-Cold needleleaf foorest and coastal forest.
• Soil types- Highlands and Xeralfs
• Metallic minerals- nothing major just some types of sediments.