The Great Plains

The Great Plains of North America is a somewhat triangular area covering 1.4 million square miles that extends for about 2,400 miles from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba southward through Texas into Mexico and approximately 1,000 miles from foothills of the Rocky Mountains eastward to Indiana. Rainfall increases from west to east, resulting in different types of prairies, with the shortgrass prairie in the rain shadow of the Rockies, mixed-grass prairie in the central Great Plains, and tallgrass prairie in the wetter eastern region. The Great Plains region covers, roughly, the eastern 2/5 of the state. The land is flat and dry, sloping gently upward from east to west to meet the Rocky Mountains. This eastward-sloping, treeless, semi-arid, shortgrass plateau's annual rainfall is between thirteen and twenty inches, and the region's continental climate creates an environment of extremes: excessive heat and cold, and violent weather patterns.

The Agriculture Core

Due to the location of Colorado, there are limited crops that are able to be grown. The main focus of crops deal with growing corn, hay, and wheat. "Today, 40 percent of private land in the United States is used for agriculture. While 24 percent of that land is in the Rockies, the region produces only eight percent of the total agricultural commodities in the United States" (USDA). The agricultural core covers many states and includes Colorado, the following picture depicts the Corn for Grain Harvest acres.

Because corn flourishes in Colorado there are many corn field mazes around the area that help bring tourism to the area and other a fun activity to help the corn field farms grow. Like the The “Crazed Cornfield Maze” which is a 20 acre corn field maze that will have you twisting and turning in tall corn! This is a great outdoor event for all ages.

The colorado Desert (ch10)

The Colorado Desert is a part of the much larger Sonoran Desert, which extends across southwest North America. It expands from the Mexican border in the South to the Mojave Desert in the North and from the Colorado River in the East to the peninsular mountain range in the West, which is approximately 7 million acres. It is the second largest least populous of the ten bioregions, with a population of about 375,000, according to the 1990 census figures. The Colorado Desert is of a much lower elevation than the Mojave Desert and much of the land lies below 1,000 feet. The Mountain peaks barely pass 3,000 feet and the common habitat includes sand, palm oasis, and desert wash. The summers are hot and dry and the winters are cool and moist. The Colorado River flows along the entire eastern area of the bioregion which it meets with Arizona. Specific species known to inhabit the area are animals like the Yuma antelope, ground squirrels, white singed doves, muskrats, deer, bobcats, and raccoons.

This picture depicts the sandy dunes throughout the desert.

Colorado is also home to thousands of snakes because of the hot weather and ideal sand pits which makes nice homes for snakes.

ch9 Dever Colorado

:The Mile High City:

Denver is centrally located and lies in the foothills of the Rocky Mountain region. Located on high plains at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, Denver has a sunny, cool, dry climate. The sun shines 300 days a year and the usually mild climate and nearby Rocky Mountain playground have made tourism one of the Mile High City's economic mainstays. With a lower cost of living compared to most major cities, exemplary health care and world class medical research facilities, massive rapid transit expansion plans, and abundant cultural and recreational opportunities, Denver is one of the nation's best cities.

The Rocky Mountains & Beer

The Rocky Mountains stretch more than 3,000 miles from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States. The major countries regions that are contain the mountains also include: Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Alberta, and Idaho. They were formed anywhere from 80 million to 55 million years ago by the Laramide orogeny. Since then, erosion by massive glaciers and water have carved the mountains into unbelievable valleys and peaks.

What could be better then then beautiful mountains, views, and landscapes? You guessed it...

BEER

Colorado is home to the largest single brewery facility in the world. The Coors Brewing Company is a regional division of the world's fifth largest brewing company.

...you can see from the picture, the size of the brewery.

Manufacturing

The Product Development and Manufacturing (PDM) Core offers product translational services to academic, government, and industry partners for the development and manufacture of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics used in preclinical animal studies and phase I and II human clinical trials. The PDM Core's product development department provides prelim product characterization and formulation, The PDM Core’s quality system, maintained by the Quality Control and Quality Assurance Departments, provides testing, validation, and auditing for GLP and cGMP-compliant projects, as required by the Code of Federal Regulations. Product release testing of manufactured products, including safety, stability, purity, potency, identity, and sterility testing, is performed as per the United States Pharmacopeia (USP), where applicable. Procedural validation is performed by documentation review and systematic inspections. Auditing services for GLP projects are available for outside projects.

Megalopolis

Huge areas of settlements can be found in the Front Range that goes from Denver to Casper, Wyoming and then down into Santa Fe, New Mexico that connect along interstate 25. However, it is not part of eastern Megalopolis. This region cannot contend with the eastern Megalopolis, but population is supposed to rise due to its high metropolitan setup.

-With retail businesses having a projected 5 percent increase in 2011 and the median home prices increasing around 2 percent, the recession did not hit Denver the hardest according to the metro Denver economist.

-People see potential as Denver being a strong economic city, so tons of development is going into the cities business infrastructure. Other pull factors include the safety of living and the cities environmental background that include denying the right to have the Olympics in 1967 because of environmental issues.

-Another thing that helps make Denver such a largely populated region is the fact they have a lot of sports teams that include the Colorado Rockies, Denver Nuggets, Denver Broncos and the Colorado Avalanche.

-Like every city in the country, sprawl is happening at a very rapid pace into mountains and nearby forest.