[Geography Notes] on Piedmont Pdf for Exam

Piedmont is a region based in Italy which was formed for the shifting of streams in this region, thus after the debris getting deposited this place eventually became a serene place to visit. Piedmont serves as a border to France and Switzerland. This is the foothill of the Alps. Travelers visiting this place muses their vacation with sophisticated cuisine and wines like the Barolo, which is a specialty here. Piedmont is one of the other twenty regions of Italy. Piedmont also borders the Liguria region in the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna in the east and Aosta Valley in the north western region. For France and Switzerland, Piedmont serves borders to the west and northeast respectively.

We will know further about this beautiful landform in our prevailing section.    

More on Piedmont

Piedmont covers an area of 25,402 km2 (which is 9,808 sq mi), this makes it the second largest region of Italy after the place called Sicily.  It has a population of 4,322,805 (recorded on 30 June 2020). The capital city of Piedmont is a place called Turin. This place has lots of baroque architecture and the monumental landmark, Mole Antonelliana, attracts many tourists. The Automobile Museum is devoted to Turin’s main industry in this region.

From medieval Latin, the name ‘Piedmont’ arrived. In Latin it actually means ‘at the foot of the mountains’ referring to the mountain Alps. The great mountain Alps, surrounds the place from three sides. The geographical view of Piedmont is covered with 43.3% of mountainous, along with the extensive areas of hills which is 30.3% and plains of only 26.4%.

The countryside of Piedmont is quite diverse – it has rugged peaks of the massifs of Monte Rosa and the Gran Paradiso to the damp rice paddies of the Vercelli and Novara, it has gentle hillsides known as Langhe, Roero and Montferrat. 7.6% of these areas is under protection. Other tourist attraction places would be the 56 different national or the regional parks. Most famous among them is the Gran Paradiso National Park, which is situated between Piedmont and the Aosta Valley.  

Landform of Piedmont 

Of the farthest east of the Appalachian Mountains, is the province of Piedmont. This stretches about 1,000 miles between southern New York and Alabama. 

Piedmont is basically a transitional upland which bridges the higher country to the west and the low woods and the Atlantic-Gulf Coastal Plain eastward to the swamp, the Piedmont zone is normally a low line, rolling kind of plateau coupled with many shallow valleys. Several types of landforms are noteworthy in this type of region. The geographical feature of this region is very distinct and unique and the notable landforms defines the way the region was traversed earlier. They actually demonstrate the life lived by the Native Americans, and this similar trait shapes the rest of the European cities while they were being built.

In the west of this zone, lies the even more rugged terrain of the Appalachian Mountains. With its southern toe in Alabama and Georgia, while covering the northwestern extent in Pennsylvania this region borders the Valley and also borders the Ridge province.  Between these two, the Blue Ridge Mountains line the western Piedmont from northern Georgia to southern Pennsylvania.

The eastern boundary of the Piedmont constitutes one such great topographic frontiers of North America, which is known as the Fall Line. In this place, the rivers eventually turn into waterfalls and this cataracts off the older and more resilient rocks of this plateau, down to the low-lying of the Atlantic-Gulf of the Coastal Plain. 

Isolated summits are quite common in the Piedmont, which are composed of rock and are more resistant than the surrounding layers and at the end up which is being eroded and is weathered away, that leaves the tougher material as it outcrops. In the Northern region of America, the landforms are often known as monadnocks, which means “the mountain who stands alone” or the “smooth mountain.” 

At the northern part of this ending region, to the immediate vicinity of the New York City, the Palisades are situated which is one of the most famous Piedmont physical features. These Palisades are the belt of the columnar traprock located along the western shore of the Hudson River. They give origin to the igneous diabase sill into the weaker sedimentary layers of the Newark Basin, this is one of the structural depressions in the Piedmont, which is old about 200 million years ago.