Suggested levels for Guided Reading, DRA,™ Lexile,® and Reading Recovery™ are provided in the Pearson Scott Foresman Leveling Guide. Africa’sAfrica’s ChangingChanging GeographyGeography Comprehension Genre Text Features Skills and Strategy Expository • Cause and Effect • Captions nonfi ction • Graphic Sources • Maps • Graphic Organizer • Glossary Scott Foresman Reading Street 6.5.3 ì<(sk$m)=bdgfjj<ISBN 0-328-13659-X +^-Ä-U-Ä-U by Lillian Duggan 113659_CVR_FSD.indd3659_CVR_FSD.indd A-BA-B 110/11/050/11/05 8:12:498:12:49 PMPM Vocabulary Reader Response densest 1. What caused the formation of Mount Kilimanjaro? 2. Copy the table below on a separate sheet of paper. In the eaves right-handAfrica’s column, list the Changing geographic features of Africa that you read about in this book. In the left-hand column, expanse list the geologicGeography or climate changes that caused the geologic feature. List as many features as you can. moisture Cause Geographic Feature ventured Word count: 2,832 3. Read the definition of the word eaves in the glossary. Why did the writer of this book use the word on page 12 in connection with the Great Escarpment? 4. Which of the geographic features described in this book would you most like to visit? Why? by Lillian Duggan Note: The total word count includes words in the running text and headings only. Numerals and words in chapter titles, captions, labels, diagrams, charts, graphs, Editorial Offices: Glenview, Illinois • Parsippany, New Jersey • New York, New York sidebars, and extra features are not included. Sales Offices: Needham, Massachusetts • Duluth, Georgia • Glenview, Illinois Coppell, Texas • Ontario, California • Mesa, Arizona 113659_CVR_FSD.indd3659_CVR_FSD.indd C-DC-D 113659_001-024_FSD3659_001-024_FSD 1 111/17/0511/25/06//2157/065 55:50:5811:08:29::5008:5289 PMPM Africa You’ve waited a long time for this trip. Finally, the huge ocean liner sets sail from New York City. The Statue of Liberty fades in the distance as the ship heads southeast across the Atlantic Ocean. You try to visualize what awaits you at your final destination, the great continent of Africa. Africa—where humans took their first steps, where the great pyramids of Egypt rise from the desert, and the ancestral homeland for millions of Americans. With a land area of about 11,724,000 square miles, Africa is more than 2 million square miles larger than North America. Africa contains many kinds of landforms. On your trip you might visit a tropical rain forest, an arid desert, a grassy savanna, or even a snowcapped mountain peak. In this book, we’ll look at how geology and climate have shaped the geography you might encounter on a trip to Africa. ARCTIC OCEAN Every effort has been made to secure permission and provide appropriate credit for photographic material. The publisher deeply regrets any omission and pledges to correct errors called to its attention in subsequent editions. Europe North Unless otherwise acknowledged, all photographs are the property of Scott Foresman, PACIFIC America a division of Pearson Education. OCEAN ATLANTIC PACIFIC OCEAN AFRICA OCEAN Photo locators denoted as follows: Top (T), Center (C), Bottom (B), Left (L), Right (R), Background (Bkgd) Equator South Opener Phil Banko/Corbis; 1 ©Rob C. Nunnington; Gallo Images/Corbis; 10 ©Yann INDIAN Arthus-Bertrand/Corbis; 11 ©Royalty-Free/Corbis; 12 ©Rob C. Nunnington; Gallo America OCEAN ATLANTIC Images/Corbis; 13 ©Richard List/Corbis; 15 (Inset)Phil Banko/Corbis; 16 ©Andrew PACIFIC Australia OCEAN Brown; Ecoscene/Corbis; 17 ©Rob Howard/Corbis; 20 ©Lloyd Cluff/Corbis OCEAN ISBN: 0-328-13659-X Copyright © Pearson Education, Inc. Antarctica All Rights Reserved. Printed in China. This publication is protected by Copyright, and permission should be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form by any Africa is located south of Europe, means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. For information between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. regarding permission(s), write to: Permissions Department, Scott Foresman, 1900 East Lake Avenue, Glenview, Illinois 60025. 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 V0H3 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 3 113659_001-024_FSD3659_001-024_FSD 2 44/6/06/6/06 22:44:45:44:45 PPMM 113659_001-024_FSD3659_001-024_FSD 3 110/11/050/11/05 8:15:128:15:12 PMPM Geographical Features On a trip to Africa, you could visit the world’s longest river as well as its largest desert. The Nile River, in eastern Africa, is more than 4,000 miles long! And the huge, dry EUROPE expanse of the Sahara spans most of the northern part of the continent. ATLANTIC MMEDITEREDITE OCEAN R To the south of the Sahara lie the Sahel and the s RANEANR A N E A N S ESEA A ASIA ntain savanna. The Sahel is a region of dry grassland that ou The Sahara receives little rainfall. The savanna is a large, grassy plain Atlas MountainsM that gets more rain than the Sahel. REDR E D SEAS E A Africa also has other deserts, including the Namib and Ahaggar Range Range the Kalahari in the southern part of the continent. Nile River NileNile River But Africa is more than a land of dry deserts and River Nile Djouf A F R I C A grasslands. It is also home to tropical rain forests. The Basin Chad Sudan major rain forests sit on the equator. They are home to Basin Basin A d e n hundreds of species of both plant and animal life. GulfG u l f o of f Aden Sometimes geographers call Africa the “plateau continent.” That’s because a huge plateau covers most of Africa. In fact, in much of your trip through Africa, you Congo would be at least 1,000 feet above sea level. Within the plateau are huge basins, or depressions. Equator Basin Mt. Kenya These basins—the Djouf, Chad, Sudan, Congo, and Mt. Kilimanjaro Kalahari—are each more than 625 miles across. Each INDIANI N D I A N OCEAN basin, except the Chad, is home to a complex river system. ATLANTIC Africa also has several mountain ranges, including OCEAN the Atlas Mountains in the northwest, the Ahaggar Kalahari Mountains in the Sahara, and the Drakensberg Range Basin in the south. Most of Africa’s mountains are volcanic, including Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, at 19,340 feet. As you travel through Africa, you might wonder how all these geographic features came to be. Read on to find out. Drakensberg RangeRange Africa’s geography varies greatly from region to region. 4 5 113659_001-024_FSD3659_001-024_FSD 4 110/11/050/11/05 8:15:138:15:13 PMPM 13659_001-024_FSD 5 11/3/05 11:49:49 AM PPangaeaa n g a e a Around 160 million years ago, Pangaea began to break up. Gradually, South America, Antarctica, Australia, India, Iran, and Southeast Asia broke away from Africa and Arabia. The island of Madagascar also split off from Gondwanaland at that time. Then Arabia began to break away from the eastern side of Africa. This created the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, leaving only a small piece of land connecting Africa to Asia. This piece of land was called the Isthmus of Suez, and it later became the site of the Suez Canal. Built in 1869, the Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea LaurasiaLaurasia with the Red Sea. The crack that created the Red Sea also extends on land. On land this crack, or rift, created great rift valleys known as the East African Rift System. GondwanalandGondwanaland th r a EEurasiaurasia NNortho ic er AmericaAm How Africa Was Formed AAfricafrica Scientists believe that all seven of Earth’s continents IIndiandia h used to be part of one supercontinent named Pangaea. SSouthout rica Pangaea had two major sections: Laurasia was made AmericaAme up of North America, Europe, and northern Asia. Gondwanaland included Antarctica, Australia, southern Asia, South America, and Africa. It seems almost unbelievable, but scientists have good reason to think that Pangaea really existed. They have found evidence that all the continents were once connected; layers of rock found underground in northern Africa closely resemble rocks found in Europe. The Atlas Mountains in northern Africa are an extension of the Alps in southern Europe. And, if you look at a globe, you can see that the coastlines of eastern South America and western Africa fit together, like puzzle pieces. 6 7 113659_001-024_FSD3659_001-024_FSD 6 110/11/050/11/05 8:15:348:15:34 PMPM 113659_001-024_FSD3659_001-024_FSD 7 110/11/050/11/05 8:15:368:15:36 PMPM The East African Rift System At a length of 4,000 miles, the East African Rift System is one of the longest rifts on Earth. It begins in Jordan in southwestern Asia and slices south through eastern A F R I C A Africa, ending in Mozambique. The main branch of the East African Rift System is the Great Rift Valley, or Eastern Rift Valley. It has an average width of 30 miles, but at its widest point the valley spans The East African Rift System 60 miles. To the west of the Great Rift Valley lies the Western Rift Valley. If you were to climb up from either valley, you would face slopes with an average height of 2,000–3,000 feet. In Great Rift Valley some places, cliffs drop more than 6,000 feet to the valley floor! The widest space between the two rifts contains Lake Victoria. When the two rifts first formed, the edges were pushed up and out. A depression formed between them.