Hawaii

Okay Long Island and Hawaii, well they are both Islands! They also both have surfing, although Hawaii has much better surf, but here is some great video clips of Long Island surfing, followed by some comparisons to Hawaii surfing, you will notice that the surf is from pre hurricane waves, that is on Long Island before a large storm or a huricane hits the waves are always much better, so that is prime surf time.

Hawaii Surf

This one is a 65 foot wave at Jaws surfed by Mike Parsons, makes the Long Island surfing look like it is done in a bathtub.

Okay surfing aside Long Island and Hawii are opposite in regards to land ownership and urbanizaiton. With Hawaii being mostly large plots of land and relativly few landowners, Long Island is made up of smaller plots of land and has millions of landowners. Long Island is very urban compared to Hawaii which is mostly rural.

Now another thing that the two places have in common are birds, and much like Hawaii, Long Island is home to some nearly extinct birds that need preservation. The Piping Plover is in danger with only 309 pairs of these birds on the Atlantic Coast, a major breeding area is Long Island. Just like with Hawaii human encroachment and all that goes with it caused a third of thier birds to go extinct, Long Island has the same problem, but to a lesser degree. Also plants like the Sanplain gerardia are endangered and might go extinct due to human encroachment and development. (http://www.fws.gov/northeast/nyfo/es/lirecovery.htm)

Now on a lighter note, I feel strongly that any talk about Hawaii would not be complete without the following tribute to Jack Lord and Tom Selleck:



All kidding aside, the introductions to each of these classic television shows highlight many features that Hawaii has to offer, take a closer look at the views from the helicopter in the Magnum video, and the tourist industry and urbanization is very apparent from Hawaii 5-O.

The North Pacific Coast

The The North Pacific Coast  and Long Island have almost opposite physical features. With Long Island being very flat, the highest elevation being Jaynes Hill according to the NED, National Elevation Dataset, being 387 feet. Walt Whitman was born near this hill, and there is a plaque at the summit with some of his writing:

The contrast to the The North Pacific Coast with its vast mountain ranges, containing the highest elevation point in North America Mt. McKinley, Alaska at 20,327 feet is 19,940 feet higher than Long Islands highest point. Roughly 3.75 miles higher! Here is a video clip of Rex Pemberton reaching the summit of Mt. McKinley:

(mostly just because the view is awesome)



The North Pacific Coast is also the only place other than Hawaii that has active volcanic activity in the United States. There is no volcanic activity on Long Island at all. Here are some clips from Mt St. Helens eruption in 1980, located in the southern part of the Cascades.



This clip gives some great scenic information on the Cascades, as well as great information on Mt. St. Helens, it is a bit long but a great watch.

Now there are some similiar economic activities that occur in both The North Pacific Coast, and Long Island and one of the most obvious is probably fishing and related industries. The North Pacific Coast has Shellfish farms and so does Long Island, as well as fishing off the coastal waters. Here is a bit about some of the fare available on Long Island, as well as a quick comparison between East and West coast, although not totally specific to the North Pacific Coast and Long Island it is worth a watch.



California

What does the Long Island Vicinity and California have in common? Toursim, industry, fishing and gaming, farming, being a part of an incredibly urban and megalopolis environment, traffic problems and ubran sprawl and believe it or not FAULT LINES! California of course everyone knows is earthquake central in the United States, the dreaded San Andreas Fault line is something most Americans have knowledge of. What many people do not know is that there is a big fault line very close to Long Island called the Ramapo Fault System, that occasionally shakes up the Long Island area with small quakes, now it is not on Long Island but close enough that the quakes are felt quite well on the Island.

There is another fault like off the coast of Long Island under the Atlantic Ocean, the East Coast Boundary Fault, but it is mostly stable. Much of the big geologic activity in the fault lines along this Long Island area were 200 million years ago or more. This link is to a great article that has lots of information about the geologic makeup of the area, it is made available by the New York State Museum.

http://gretchen.geo.rpi.edu/roecker/nys/nys_edu.pamphlet.html

Luckily unlike California there is no direct fault line under Long Island, although I wonder if there were and the Island sunk into the sea as a result of a big quake, would Long Island be the new Atlantis? Just silly food for thought.

The Southwest Border Area: Tricultural Development

The Southwest Border Area and Long Island have one thing in common, native americans.  The southwest border area has some of the most well known tribes in the United States, the Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo,  roamed this area long before the Spanish arrived exploring the deserts and canyons of this land. Much like the 13 tribes controlled all of Long Island before the Dutch and English settlers arrived and pushed them out and eventually onto reservations. Unlike the small reservations on Long Island, the Southwest Border Area has some of the largest reservations with very large populations that exist in the United States.

The conditions of the reservations in the Southwest Border Area and on Long Island are different. The reservations on Long Island are in relative poverty compared to the surrounding suburbs, but not extreme poverty that exists on the reservations of the Southwest. Examples of the differences are the tourism that the Long Island Indians have, that generates revenue, like the Shinnecock Indians and thier Annual labor day festival.

In comparison this is a great 7 part series about the Navajo Reservation and the people.

Now you can only learn so much by watching video clips of Indian Reservations. Growing up on Long Island I had the opportunity to visit the reservations often and learn about the culture and see the conditions that the people were living in. I have also been to the Navajo and Hopi reservations among others and seen the conditions first hand, and I can tell you it is a night and day differences. One of the biggest problems that causes this differnce is the lack of economic oppotunity for the Reservations of the Southwest. Unlike Long Island where the reservations are smack in the middle of a vibrant diverse economy with jobs and opportunities that are outside the reservations, many of the Native Americans in the Southwest Border area are on reservations that are proverbally in the middle of nowhere with little economic engines located nearby, and they have land that is arid, and not as useful as the reservations on Long Island. Farming is possible on Long Island, but in the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona this opportunity is not easily available. Perhaps the biggest difference is due to the fact that the Native Americans live on State Reservations not Federal Reservations like the Native Americans in the Southwest Border Area.

Just like Long Island originally belonged to the Dutch before it became part of the British Empire and a colony so too the Southwest Border Area was under the dominion of the Spanish Empire before becoming part of the United States.

The Empty Interior

The Empty Interior and Long Island have almost opposite physical features. With Long Island being very flat, the highest elevation being Jaynes Hill according to the NED, National Elevation Dataset, being 387 feet. In contrast to the Empty Interior with the massive Rocky Mountains, which dwarf the elevations on the east coast of the United States and Long Island. Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado is a great place to see parts of the Rockies.

Here is a great flight clip of the central rockies, if you compare it to the flight clips I have posted in an earlier Long Island post, the differences are astounding.

Other than the massive mountain ranges that contrast Long Island, there are a few things in common with The Empty Interior and Long Island. Tourism as a source of income being one of the biggest.  The many national parks spread throughout the Empty Interior, as well as Ski areas, and fishing spots bring quite a bit of money into an otherwise lessened economic zone, not to mention Las Vegas! Well Long Island has The Hamptons, Fire Island and many small villages steeped in local and regional history going back to the 17th century.

The Empty Interior can offer a variety of tourist attractions:

Here is just a little taste of what Long Island can offer tourists:

The Empty Interior was mostly populated by peoples of northern european decent, and many of the people of Long Island also share this common ancestry.

The Great Plains and Praries

Although similar in landscape that both areas have large flat expanses. Also believe it or not a very common sight is seen often in both areas. Cyclic funnels of air, known as Tornados in the Great Plains, Long Island has tons of Waterspouts, I guess it is only a tornado when it is over land. I have seen tons of these in the waters growing up on Long Island, and it is a very cool thing, it rains down seaweed and fish over the land nearby which is freaky.  Here are some videos of waterspouts in the Long Island waters.

Another big thing in common between Long Island and the Great Plains and Prairies is the fact that they both have huge aquifers. The Ogalala aquifer irrigates so much of the land in the Great Plains. On Long Island there are 3 major aquifers, the Upper Glacial Aquifer, The Lloyd Aquifer and the Magothy Aquifer. Unlike the Ogalala which is "fossil" water a million years old, the aquifers of Long Island are only in the thousands of years old. The Department of Environmental Conservation of New York has some great information on these aquifers: http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/36183.html.

The Agricultural Core

Much like the interior plains of the Agricultural Core of America, Long Island has farming. There is a long history of farming, relegated however to the eastern portion of the Island due to urban expansion, in days past most of Long Island was used for farming. It is a three century old tradition on the Island and of vital economic importance to the area. Here is a great hour long program on farming on Long Island, link only, embedding is not possible.

http://www.wliw.org/productions/local-focus/farming-the-future-farm-life-on-long-island/325/

Of course over the course of time farming has changed. Some of the many crops grown on Long Island include, Corn (personnaly Long Island sweet summer corn rocks any other corn ever), flowers, vegetables like squash, bell peppers, tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, potatoes, cabbage, cranberries, many vinyards dot the eastern portion of Long Island. Unlike the core the crop variety is in greater abundance and in recent years many farms have chosen to specialize into niche markets to survive. Many directly supply restaurants and businesses on Long Island and in NYC.

My own family history is steeped in farming tradtions on Long Island, my grandmother and her family were farmers in the town I grew up in. On one of the prominent corners in town was Joseph Arata's produce market, the family lived upstairs and the downstairs was where they sold all the vegetables and dairy from the farms back in 1912, of course now it is retail storespace.

Unlike the core however most Long Island farms are like New England farms, and small and family run. Not as expansive as farms of the core, but still having impressive crop yields. A clip from the America's Heartland Series talks about farming on Long Island, and if you didn't catch it the oldest farm in New York state is featured, going on the 12th generation of the family running it dating back to 1661. Back when the current agricultural core was nothing but French fur trappers and Native Americans.



As you can see there is a long tradition of farming on the Island, and it has been able to adapt and stay alive, although shrinking, despite the urban encroachment of the suburban population.

The Southern Coastlands: On the Subropical Margin

Long Island has a few things in common with the first one being Hurricanes. Long Island is in the Hurricane Hazard Zone as shown by the National Hurricane Center:

Most people do not relate Long Island to hurricanes but they do follow the coast northward and Long Island has been hit in the past by these monster weather formations. In 1985 Gloria hit Long Island, if you are not from the area you probably didn't think much about it at all. I was there at the time and remember it all too well. I lived on Southern Long Island along the coast, not right on the water but less than a 1/2 mile from it. People were scared, talking about the great hurricane of 1938 and that they were worried because of all the development that has taken place since then, there were alot more houses and people to get damaged. Back in 38 my hometown was mostly farms, and not totally developed like in the 80's. There has been alot of debate over Gloria, it was originally a Category 3, but in hindsight it was downgraded to a Category 1 which is the smallest of hurricanes.

Despite this downgrade, where I was had winds in the Category 2 range with winds up to 110 miles per hour. If you think that is not bad think again. Thankfully Gloria hit at low tide so the flooding was minimized, but I will never forget looking out the front windows (before being promptly yelled at to get away from the windows) and seeing the street, and front yard totally underwater. My dad then told me to go open the basement door, and I took 1 step down into the dark, we had no power, then on the 2nd step my foot was totally underwater! The eye was the most exciting part, we got to go outside and see the neighborhood, there were cars crushed by trees and giant branches.

The aftermath of the hurricane was totally great I thought as a kid, we did not have school for a week, and there was all this chopping and cutting of wood to do. In retrospect not having power for 2 weeks must have totally sucked for my parents, I fondly remember it though as 2 weeks of fall BBQ out in the backyard.

Of course this is nothing compared to what the Southern Coastlands gets but we get a taste every once in awhile.  In my indtroductory post to Long Island, Irene was hitting the area and I posted a few pictures of my hometown if you want to take a look.

The following link has soem great pictures of past hurricanes on Long Island:

http://www.businessinsider.com/past-hurricane-new-york-pictures-2011-8?op=1

Here are some pictures of the aftermath of Gloria in 1985.

I also found a great clip from the 1938 hurricane aftermath on youtube.