Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Great Basin, semiarid, N section of the Basin and Range province, the intermontane plateau region of W United States and N Mexico. Lying mostly in Nevada and extending into California, Oregon, Idaho, ...

(Encyclopedia) mountain climbing, the practice of climbing to elevated points for sport, pleasure, or research. Also called mountaineering, it is practiced throughout the world. Many mountain climbing clubs have...

(Encyclopedia) Karakorum or Karakoram, mountain range, extending c.300 mi (480 km), between the Indus and Yarkant rivers, N Kashmir, S central Asia; SE extension of the Hindu Kush. It covers disputed territory, held...

(Encyclopedia) Pacific Margin, western section of the great North American Cordillera, W United States and W Canada, stretching from SW Alaska to S Calif. It is composed of a central lowland region (Central Valley, ...

(Encyclopedia) Lebanon, ancient Libanus, mountain range, c.100 mi (160 km) long, paralleling the Mediterranean Sea from S Lebanon N into Syria and rising steeply from the coast. Qurnet as Sawda (10,131 ft/3,088 m) i...

(Encyclopedia) Sierra Club, national organization in the United States dedicated to the preservation and expansion of the world's parks, wildlife, and wilderness areas. Founded (1892) in California by a group led by...

(Encyclopedia) range, large area of land unsuited to cultivation but supporting native grasses and other plants suitable for livestock grazing. Principal areas in the western hemisphere are the pampas of South Ameri...

(Encyclopedia) Gilbert, Grove Karl, 1843–1918, American geologist, b. Rochester, N.Y., grad. Univ. of Rochester, 1862. When the U.S. Geological Survey was created in the Dept. of the Interior in 1879 (to replace f...

(Encyclopedia) Yucca Mountain, mountain in the SW Nevada desert about 100 mi (161 km) northwest of Las Vegas. It is the proposed site of a Dept. of Energy (DOE) repository for up to 77,000 metric tons of nuclear was...

(Encyclopedia) Whitney, Mount, peak, 14,494 ft (4,418 m) high, E Calif., in the Sierra Nevada at the eastern border of Sequoia National Park; the highest peak in the contiguous 48 states (Denali [Mt. McKinley], Alas...