Brazil

Brazil is the 5th largest country in the world and is located on the Atlantic coast of South America. It has 7,400 km of coastline, and it dominates the continent - without containing any desert, high mountains, or Arctic environment.

The land
The bulk of Brazil's landmass is highlands, which vary from level-topped plateaus, to rolling hills, to deeply-incised valleys, to once-mighty mountain ranges.

The lowlands are composed largely of three principal areas: the Amazon lowlands, the west-central Pantanal, and the coastal lowlands. The Amazon lowlands are by far the largest. The lowlands flood every year in the plains along the major rivers, creating grasslands, shallow lakes, swamps, mangrove forests, and marshes.

The Great Escarpment resembles a plateau running 2,000 km along the east coast of Brazil. Southward from Rio de Janeiro, the cliffs can rise to 1,000 m in elevation before dropping off to the Atlantic Ocean. A little further to the east into the Atlantic, a string of islands and big pointed blocks of stone jut out (including the famous Sugar Loaf Mountain of Rio de Janeiro). North from Rio, the escarpment breaks into steep, deep valleys with high rounded peaks and vertical slabs of bare rock. Elsewhere, the escarpment ends in a rim, off which rivers cascade in waterfalls and rapids to the coastal lowlands.

The river systems and the rainforest
There are three major river systems in Brazil: the Amazon system, the Paraguay-Parana-Plata system, and the Sao Francisco system. The Amazon River starts in Peru, 150 km from the Pacific Ocean on the far other side of South America, and then meanders a staggering 6,200 km to the Atlantic. The Paraguay-Parana-Plata system is in the south, and the Sao Francisco flows northeast.

The climate is humid tropical and subtropical except for some semiarid lands in the northeast. The rainfall, humidity, and consistently high temperatures make possible the absolutely huge Amazon rainforest. This globally critical forest covers almost half of the country (6 million square km) and contains literally millions of species of birds, plants, insects, wildlife, and some forms of life that are still unknown to humankind.