North American Cordillera

The North American Cordillera is the mountain system along western North America, extending from Alaska through western Canada and the United States into Mexico. It includes the Rocky Mountains, Coast Mountains, and Sierra Nevada.

Rocky Mountains: A major mountain range extending from western Canada through the western United States into New Mexico. The Cordillera’s eastern backbone, formed through several episodes of mountain building.
Plate tectonics: The theory that Earth’s lithosphere is divided into moving plates whose interactions shape the planet’s surface. It provides the broad framework for explaining Cordilleran mountain building.
Nevadan orogeny: A Jurassic mountain-building episode in western North America associated with subduction and terrane accretion. It records an early phase of construction along the Cordillera’s western edge.
Rain shadow: A dry region on the leeward side of a mountain range, created when descending air has lost moisture on the windward side. Cordilleran ranges create sharp wet-to-dry transitions across western landscapes.
Coast Mountains: A mountain range along the Pacific coast of British Columbia and southeastern Alaska. They form a major coastal component of the Cordillera north of the United States.
Subduction: The descent of one tectonic plate beneath another into Earth’s mantle. Long-lived subduction along the western margin drove volcanism and crustal deformation.
Sevier orogeny: A Late Jurassic to Cretaceous mountain-building episode that formed a fold-and-thrust belt in western North America. Its thrust belt preserves the compressional deformation preceding Laramide uplift.
Western Cordillera: A physiographic region of western Canada consisting of mountains, plateaus, and intervening valleys. This regional classification describes part of the Cordillera’s Canadian extent.
Sierra Nevada: A mountain range in eastern California and western Nevada, characterized by a long western slope and steep eastern escarpment. This prominent California range belongs to the Cordillera’s southern United States section.
Accretionary wedge: A mass of sediment and rock scraped from a subducting plate and added to the overriding plate. These wedges record material added to the Cordillera’s Pacific margin.

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