South Mountain

South Mountain or South Mountains may refer to:

Canada

United States

Landforms

Parks

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Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania ⁱ/ˌpɛnsᵻlˈveɪnjə/ (Pennsylvania German: Pennsilfaani), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle. The state borders Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, and New Jersey to the east.

Pennsylvania is the 33rd largest, the 6th most populous, and the 9th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The state's five most populous cities are Philadelphia (1,560,297), Pittsburgh (305,801), Allentown (118,577), Erie (100,671), and Reading (89,893). The state capital is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 51 miles (82 km) of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles (92 km) of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary.

The state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States; it was originally founded in 1681 as a result of a royal land grant to William Penn, the son of the state's namesake. It was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12, 1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the state's largest city of Philadelphia. During the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg was fought in the south central region of the state.

Mountain

A mountain is a large landform that stretches above the surrounding land in a limited area, usually in the form of a peak. A mountain is generally steeper than a hill. Mountains are formed through tectonic forces or volcanism. These forces can locally raise the surface of the earth. Mountains erode slowly through the action of rivers, weather conditions, and glaciers. A few mountains are isolated summits, but most occur in huge mountain ranges.

High elevations on mountains produce colder climates than at sea level. These colder climates strongly affect the ecosystems of mountains: different elevations have different plants and animals. Because of the less hospitable terrain and climate, mountains tend to be used less for agriculture and more for resource extraction and recreation, such as mountain climbing.

The highest mountain on Earth is Mount Everest in the Himalayas of Asia, whose summit is 8,850 m (29,035 ft) above mean sea level. The highest known mountain on any planet in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars at 21,171 m (69,459 ft).

South

South is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. It is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. South is the polar opposite of north and is perpendicular to east and west.

Etymology

The word south comes from Old English sūþ, from earlier Proto-Germanic *sunþaz ("south"), possibly related to the same Proto-Indo-European root that the word sun derived from.

Navigation

By convention, the bottom side of a map is south, although reversed maps exist that defy this convention. To go south using a compass for navigation, set a bearing or azimuth of 180°. Alternatively, in the Northern Hemisphere outside the tropics, the Sun will be roughly in the south at midday.

South Pole

True south is the direction towards the southern end of the axis about which the earth rotates, called the South Pole. The South Pole is located in Antarctica. Magnetic south is the direction towards the south magnetic pole, some distance away from the south geographic pole.

Roald Amundsen, from Norway, was the first to reach the South Pole, on 14 December 1911, after Ernest Shackleton from the UK was forced to turn back some distance short.

Lehigh Valley

The Lehigh Valley (/ˈli.haɪ ˈvæ.li/), known officially by the United States Census Bureau and the United States Office of Management and Budget as the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ Metropolitan Statistical Area and referred to informally and locally as The Valley is a metropolitan region officially consisting of Carbon, Lehigh and Northampton counties in eastern Pennsylvania and Warren county on the western edge of New Jersey, in the United States. The Lehigh Valley's largest city, with a population of 119,104, is Allentown.

The Lehigh Valley is the fastest growing and third most populous region in the state of Pennsylvania with a population of 821,623 residents as of the 2010 U.S. Census. It is eclipsed in total population only by the metropolitan areas of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. It is the 64th most populated metropolitan area in the United States. Lehigh County, the Valley's largest county in terms of overall population, is among the fastest growing in the nation as well, ranking in the 79th percentile for population growth between 2010-2012. The core population centers are located in southern and central Lehigh and Northampton counties along U.S. Route 22 and Interstate 78.