Vermont - USA

Vermont (ⁱ/vɜrˈmɑːnt/, [vɚːˈmɑːn(ʔ)] or [vɚˈmɑ̃(ʔ)]) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. Vermont is the 6th least extensive and the 2nd least populous of the 50 United States. It is the only New England state not bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Lake Champlain forms half of Vermont's western border, which it shares with the state of New York. The Green Mountains are within the state. Vermont is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north.

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. New England is bordered by New York state to the southwest, Quebec to the northwest, and New Brunswick and the Atlantic Ocean to the east.

In one of the earliest English settlements in North America, Pilgrims from England first settled in New England in 1620, to form Plymouth Colony. Ten years later, the Puritans settled north of Plymouth Colony in Boston, thus forming Massachusetts Bay Colony. Over the next 130 years, New England fought in four French and Indian Wars, until the British defeated the French and their native allies in North America.

In the late 18th century, the New England Colonies initiated the resistance to the British Parliament's efforts to impose new taxes without the consent of the colonists. The Boston Tea Party was a protest to which Great Britain responded with a series of punitive laws stripping Massachusetts of self-government, which were termed the "Intolerable Acts" by the colonists. The confrontation led to open warfare in 1775, the expulsion of the British authorities from New England in spring 1776, and the Declaration of Independence in July 1776.

In general, a rural area is a geographic area that is located outside the cities and towns. The Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines the word "rural" as encompassing "...all population, housing, and territory not included within an urban area. Whatever is not urban is considered rural."

Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas are commonly rural, though so are others such as forests. Different countries have varying definitions of "rural" for statistical and administrative purposes.

The land hemisphere, sometimes capitalised as the Land Hemisphere, is the hemisphere on the Earth containing the largest possible area of land. It is centered on 47°24′42″N 2°37′15″W / 47.411667°N 2.620833°W / 47.411667; -2.620833 (in île Dumet near Saint-Nazaire, France) or on 47°13′N 1°32′W / 47.217°N 1.533°W / 47.217; -1.533 (in the city of Nantes, France). The other half of the Earth is the water hemisphere.

The land hemisphere has just under seven-eighths of the land on the Earth, including Europe, Africa, North America, nearly all of Asia and most of South America. Europe is at the center of the land hemisphere. However, even in the land hemisphere, the ocean area still exceeds the land area (albeit only slightly). Thus, there is currently no hemisphere of Earth where the land area is larger than the ocean area. 29.2% of the Earth's surface is currently dry land, so should more than 85.6% of that land be covered by a single hemisphere, that hemisphere would be predominantly land. Previous supercontinents, such as Rodinia, likely represented land-dominated hemispheres.

Temperate deciduous forests or temperate broad-leaf forests are dominated by trees that lose their leaves each year. They are found in areas where warm, moist summers alternate with mild winters. The three major areas of this forest type occur in the northern hemisphere: eastern North America, eastern Asia, and Europe. Smaller areas occur in Australasia and southern South America. Examples of typical trees include oak, maple, beech, and elm. The diversity of tree species is higher in regions where the winter is milder, and also in mountainous regions that provide an array of soil types and microclimates. One of the world's great protected examples of this forest type is found in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Continental climate is a climate characterized by important annual variation in temperature due to the lack of significant bodies of water nearby. Often winter temperature is cold enough to support a fixed period of snow each year, and relatively moderate precipitation occurring mostly in summer, although there are exceptions such as the east coast areas of North America which show an even distribution of precipitation: this pattern is called Humid continental climate, but dry continental climates also exist. Regions with a continental climate exist in portions of the Northern Hemisphere continents (especially North America and Asia), and also at higher elevations in other parts of the world.

Only a few areas, in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest and in Iran, northern Iraq, adjacent Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia show a winter maximum in precipitation.

Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, precipitation, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods. Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these elements and their variations over shorter periods.

A region's climate is generated by the climate system, which has five components: atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, land surface, and biosphere.

The climate of a location is affected by its latitude, terrain, and altitude, as well as nearby water bodies and their currents. Climates can be classified according to the average and the typical ranges of different variables, most commonly temperature and precipitation. The most commonly used classification scheme was originally developed by Wladimir Köppen. The Thornthwaite system, in use since 1948, incorporates evapotranspiration along with temperature and precipitation information and is used in studying animal species diversity and potential effects of climate changes. The Bergeron and Spatial Synoptic Classification systems focus on the origin of air masses that define the climate of a region.

North American Atlantic Region is a floristic region within the Holarctic Kingdom identified by Armen Takhtajan and Robert F. Thorne, spanning from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts to the Great Plains and comprising a major part of the United States and southeastern portions of Canada. It is bordered by the Circumboreal floristic region in the north, by the Rocky Mountain and Madrean floristic regions in the west and by the Caribbean floristic region of the Neotropical Kingdom in the south of Florida. The flora of the region comprises two endemic monotypic families, Hydrastidaceae and Leitneriaceae, and is characterized by about a hundred of endemic genera (such as Sanguinaria, Leavenworthia, Gillenia, Neviusia, Dionaea, Yeatesia, Pleea). The degree of species endemism is very high, many species are Tertiary relicts, which survived the Wisconsin glaciation and are now concentrated in the Appalachians (esp. Blue Ridge Mountains) and the Ozarks. A number of genera (Sarracenia, Uvularia etc.) are shared only with the Canadian floristic province of the Circumboreal region. Moreover, as has long been noted (e.g. by Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini and especially by Asa Gray), a large number of relict genera (Liriodendron, Hamamelis, Stewartia etc.) are shared with the relatively distant Eastern Asiatic Region (comprising Japan and the east of China) and sometimes Southeast Asia. R. F. Thorne counted at least 74 genera restricted to eastern North America and Asia (mostly eastern and southeastern Asia). The fossil record indicates that during the Tertiary period a warm temperate zone extended across much of the Northern Hemisphere, linking America to Asia.

The Western Hemisphere or western hemisphere is mainly used as a geographical term for the half of the Earth that lies west of the IERS Reference Meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the Antimeridian, the other half being called the Eastern Hemisphere.

In this sense, the Western Hemisphere consists of the Americas, the western portions of Africa and Europe, the extreme eastern tip of Russia, numerous territories in Oceania, and a portion of Antarctica, while excluding some of the Aleutian Islands to the southwest of the Alaskan mainland.

The term is often used in political rhetoric to refer to only North America and South America (or the New World) and adjacent islands; however, the Western Hemisphere technically includes all of the aforementioned territories.

In an effort to define the Western Hemisphere as the parts of the world which are not part of the Old World, there also exist projections which use the 20th meridian west and the diametrically opposed 160th meridian east to define the hemisphere. This projection excludes the European and African mainlands and a small portion of northeast Greenland, but includes more of eastern Russia and Oceania (e.g., New Zealand).