#3221: Landscape Features

XKCD comic, described below.
Transcript
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[A small panel showing Cueball pointing toward the left and Ponytail standing to his right overlaps the top of a much larger panel containing a map.]

Cueball: What's up with this weird landscape?

Ponytail: Oh, it was caused by ...

[The larger panel shows a map of the United States, with southern Canada, northern Mexico, and most of Cuba and the Bahamas visible as well. An inset at lower left shows Alaska along with part of northwest Canada, with a smaller inset showing Hawaii. International borders and coastlines are indicated in black, and state borders are indicated in gray. Red lines divide the United States into irregularly shaped zones (the red lines indicating zones do not cross into the neighboring countries, except in the Alaska inset), with each zone being labeled with red text. Each text label begins with "..." to indicate that it is the conclusion of Ponytail's sentence. The following are the labels used:]

[Main map:]

... a plate tectonics speedrun

... volcanoes

... megafloods

... a supervolcano

... geology

... water and time

... glaciers

... rivers

... continents colliding

... ???

... ongoing disputes between limestone and water

[On the main map, the label "... glaciers" appears three times in various places in the same contiguous zone that runs from Washington state to Maine. The label "... farming" appears twice, representing two separate zones, one that runs from Montana to Louisiana and the other that runs from New Jersey to Mississippi. The label "... geology" appears twice on the main map, representing two separate zones, one that runs from Washington state to Texas and the other being a roughly circular region mostly in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas.]

[Alaska inset:]

... geology

... volcanoes

... glaciers

[Hawaii inset:]

... volcanoes


(Sourced from explainxkcd.com)

Title text:'Well, there's speculation that it's due to a mantle hotspot.' --a geologist who's trying to cover up the fact that they didn't hear your question


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