Brazil Geography

THE NORTH
The equatorial North is mainly composed of the Amazon Basin and is the country’s largest region, covering 45.3% of the national territory. The basin itself contains the world’s largest rainforest, which accounts for a whopping 30% of the entire world’s forested areas. Moreover, this region is home to an amazing 10 of the world’s 20 longest rivers (including a large section of the immense Amazon River): with so much water, it’s not surprising that most transportation in this part of the nation is by water rather than by road. In addition to the rainforest, this region contains the Guiana Highlands, which are alternately forested area and rocky desert. Within these highlands is Pico da Neblina (“Mountain of the Mists”), Brazil’s highest peak, which has an altitude of 3014m. The highlands are so remote and difficult to explore that this mountain was not discovered until the early 1950s. While the North is home to the majority of Brazil’s Terras Indígenas (indigenous reservations), it is nevertheless the nation’s least populated region.

NORTHEAST
To the southeast of the Amazon River’s mouth is the “bulge” of Brazil, the region known as the Northeast, which covers 18.3% of Brazil’s total area. The Northeast consists of a narrow coastal plain (formerly the site of sugarcane plantations and still the most densely populated area in the region) and the sertão (semiarid interior), which is subject to recurrent droughts. Except for an isolated mountain range within the Chapada Diamantina, the interior is on Brazil’s Great Plateau. Those mountains cover an area of 100-150 mi. (150-240km) and appear as an island of green because of their altitude, which at times reaches 5000 ft. (15,000m) and allows them to collect more moisture than the surrounding caatinga (dry, thick, thorny vegetation characteristic of the area). The states of Maranhão and Piauí are a transitional zone between this area and the North, sharing the characteristic biomes of both regions (rainforest and sertão). The turning point of the “bulge” is a cape known as São Roque; to the northeast lies the island of Fernando de Noronha, the smallest area in the world with its own time zone.

SOUTHEAST
The Southeast makes up only 10.9% of the nation’s total area but is home to 39% of Brazil’s population and has many dense urban areas (including the country’s two largest cities, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro). This region was originally covered by Mata Atlântica, the Atlantic rainforest that has now been almost entirely destroyed but once stretched all along the Brazilian coastline up to Rio Grande do Norte (in the Northeast). More than 95% of the forest was felled for agriculture, ranching, and urban development, and farming is still prevalent. The narrow coastlines of the Southeast are bordered on the west by an escarpment, which at times extends right to the ocean in parallel steps. Each step is separated by a valley, which makes for incredible scenery. Above this escarpment is a great plateau—upon which São Paulo is located—which extends through much of the nation and finally tapers off in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state.

SOUTH
Much of the characteristic geographic pattern of the South is similar to that of the Southeast: narrow, interrupted coastlines bordered on the west by an escarpment, with an inland plateau spreading westward. From the ocean, the escarpment looks like a mountain range, commonly referred to south of Rio as the Serra do Mar (Coastal Range). In the South, the convergence of Rio Paraná and Rio Iguaçu forms Iguaçu Falls. Higher than Victoria Falls and wider than Niagara Falls, the falls are formed from three sheets of water with a total width of 4.2km. In addition to the southern sea-level plains, which are covered by pampas (grasslands similar to those of Argentina), this region also contains pine-forested highlands and occasional patches of the original Mata Atlântica. The South is the smallest region of Brazil (accounting for only 6.8% of the nation’s area) but is almost as densely settled as the Southeast, with a population even more concentrated along the coast.

CENTER-WEST
The biome for which the Center-West is best known is the Pantanal, an area of wetlands about the size of the US state of Florida. The second largest region in Brazil and the world’s largest seasonally flooded marshes, this former inland sea is sparsely populated and submerged for most of the year. Despite the Pantanal’s size, most of the Center-West (which also contains the Distrito Federal) is actually covered by the drought-resistant grasses and sparse scrub trees of the cerrado, which can survive the dry season that most of the Center-West experiences in the middle of the year. Although much of this region has been cleared for farming, the cerrado blends into tropical forest as it approaches the North.