![]() The oldest layers of bedrock in New Hampshire date back 650 million years. What gave the land of New Hampshire its features? The variety of the topography combined with its long history make New Hampshire’s geography a story well worth exploring. When students examine New Hampshire’s geography, they can gain an impressive range of geographic knowledge merely by studying the diversity of their own home state. ![]() Understanding place is an essential part of well-developed geographic knowledge. This unit focuses on how the physical characteristics of the land came to be, the ways in which those features support plant and animal life, why humans have explored the land, and how people have organized their understanding of its features. Each unit of this curriculum investigates geographic “how” and “why” questions relevant to particular eras of the state’s history. It is an investigation that goes beyond the “what” and “where” of physical and human characteristics to the “how” and “why” those characteristics came to be. The capital is Concord, a small city of 40,000 located on the Merrimack River near New Hampshire’s geographic center.Įxploring the geography of New Hampshire, its “earth writing,” is far more than simply absorbing a collection of facts about the land’s surface and inhabitants, past and present. In 2020 its population is just over 1.3 million people, who are concentrated in the southern half of the state. Covering 9,351 square miles, New Hampshire is the fifth smallest state in the country. New Hampshire is dominated by the rugged White Mountains in the north and cut through by thousands of miles of streams and rivers including the Connecticut River, which runs along its western border with Vermont, and the Merrimack River, which runs north to south through the middle of the state. Its range of elevation and orientation on the globe combine to create a unique topography and climate that support a remarkable variety of animal and plant life as well as human activity in a relatively small space. New Hampshire’s history of map-making illustrates the impact geography has had on the state’s development and history.įrom its Atlantic coastline, through its dense forests and meandering rivers, across its lakes, and over the peaks of its alpine mountains to its international border with Canada, New Hampshire’s geography is like no other state. But the people of the state tend to see it divided into seven regions, all with unique geographic and cultural features: Seacoast, Merrimack Valley, Monadnock, Lakes, Dartmouth/Lake Sunapee, White Mountains, and Great North Woods. ![]() New Hampshire is generally thought to have three different types of topography: Coastal Lowlands, Eastern New England Uplands, and the White Mountains. The region’s geography has affected the way people live in New Hampshire, and the harvesting of natural resources has made a major impact on settlement patterns. Of note is that New Hampshire is the second-most forested state in the country. There are six categories of animal and plant habitats that support 500 species of wildlife, not including insects: forests alpine, rock, cave lakes, ponds, rivers grass, shrub, developed land wetlands and coastal. In addition, the range of latitude New Hampshire covers between its northern and southern portions creates two distinct climates for these regions, although all parts of the state experience four distinct seasons. Most of New Hampshire is classified as having a cool-temperate climate, although the many areas of the state that are at high elevations, particularly Mount Washington, have more extreme weather conditions. When the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago, New Hampshire was a land of mountain ranges (notably, the White Mountains), rolling hills, hundreds of lakes, and several rivers (particularly the Connecticut and Merrimack Rivers), with a small stretch of rocky ocean shore. This natural history unit covers a wide range of topics related to New Hampshire’s physical, geographic history:Īlthough New Hampshire is the fifth smallest state in the country, it contains a remarkable variety of topography, plant and animal life, and climate.
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