Region Overview

North America includes one of the largest countries of the world - Canada and the United States and the largest island, Greenland, as well. During the last Ice Age, a great sheet of ice flowed across the continent, scoring the landscape, deepening the depressions that now hold the Great Lakes, and dumping fertile soil onto the central plains. The Rocky Mountains form the backbone of the continent, running from Alaska to New Mexico. In the east are the Appalachian Mountains, flanked by coastal lowlands to the east and south. In eastern Canada lies the Canadian Shield, a huge basin of ancient eroded rocks now covered with thin soils. Deserts stretch from the south-western United States down into northern Mexico.
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