Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0154/01547.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 44KB | 723 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01547}
$Pretitle{282}
$Title{Guyana
Chapter 2.    Physical Environment}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{William B. Mitchell}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{guyana
miles
coastal
plain
feet
river
interior
coast
drainage
rivers}
$Date{1969}
$Log{Figure 2.*0154701.scf
Figure 3.*0154702.scf
Figure 4.*0154703.scf
Figure 5.*0154704.scf
}
Country:     Guyana
Book:        Guyana, A Country Study
Author:      William B. Mitchell
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1969

Chapter 2.    Physical Environment

     The Guiana region (including Guyana, Surinam, French Guiana and parts
of Brazil and Venezuela) is an area bounded by the Orinoco River on the West
and Northwest, by the Amazon and Rio Negro on the South, and by the Atlantic
Ocean on the East and Northeast. Guyana occupies approximately 10 percent
of this area. Guyana, in one of the native Amerindian dialects, means "land
of waters." The country has an area of 83,000 square miles (equal in size
to the state of Idaho), and extends between 1 degree and 9 degrees North
latitude and from 56 degrees to 62 degrees West longitude. With a 270 mile
coastline facing the Atlantic Ocean on the northeast, Guyana is bounded on
the West by Venezuela and Brazil, on the East by Surinam (formerly Dutch
Guiana), and on the South by Brazil (see fig. 1).

     Although Guyana is more than 200 miles from the Caribbean, it can be
viewed as a Caribbean "sugar island" perched on the northeast shoulder of
South America but separated from the "mainland" by swamps, a few miles
inland. The great bulk of population, over 90 percent, resides on this narrow
"sugar island" along the northeastern coast of Guyana. The interior, except
for isolated mining, ranching and Amerindian settlements, is nearly
uninhabited and highly inaccessible. However, the vast interior of Guyana
has been a constant, and often politically influential, element throughout
Guyana's history; its real and potential resources are at once attractive,
promising, and problematical as Guyana's rapidly expanding population, now
over 700,000, outgrows the narrow coastal plain.

     Guyana, first settled by the Dutch in 1616, became a part of the British
Empire in 1814 and remained such until 1966. Even though Guyana is an
immigrant society, it is bypassed by all major migratory and trade routes,
although the Pilgrims considered the Guianas in 1620 before deciding to settle
in North America. A sugar plantation society for most of its history, Guyana
remains for the great bulk of its population, agricultural. It has over
700,000 people clustered on five percent of the land area, living for the
most part in small villages very close to the coastline. The interior is
inhabited by only 40,000 persons, of whom nearly 30,000 are native
Amerindians.

     The climate is typically equatorial with two rainy and two dry seasons
during most years, but temperatures are moderated by sea breezes which sweep
in from the Atlantic throughout the year. Rainfall is plentiful over nearly
all of Guyana, but vegetation is controlled more by soil type than by
climate. Temperature ranges are higher in the interior mountains and savannahs
but nowhere are they extreme. Guyana is to the south of the hurricane belt and
faces few recurrent weather threats although rainfall tends to fluctuate
widely from year to year and has a considerable effect on sugar and rice
production.

     Drainage in Guyana, along four principal rivers and their many
tributaries, flows generally from the south and west of the interior, where
elevations reach 9094 feet at Mount Roraima at the point of intersection of
the borders of Guyana, Venezuela and Brazil, toward the coastal plain of
the Northeast where the land is 4 feet below sea level in places. These rivers
are of little value as access routes to the interior due to rapids and falls
from 50 to 100 miles inland. Kaietem Fall on the Potaro River, a tributary
of the Essequibo, is nearly 250 feet wide and has a vertical drop of 741 feet.

Major Geographic Regions

     Guyana is divided into three main geographical zones, within which
there are several additional geological features. On the coast there is a
narrow belt of alluvial soils most of which lies below high-tide level and
is protected by a system of sea defenses and canals. This coastal plain
occupies approximately five percent of the total land area. South of this
zone, Guyana is covered by a lush equatorial forest extending to the borders
of Brazil and Venezuela over 70,000 square miles territory or 84 percent
of the total area. The third main geographical area is the savannah grassland
which lies behind the coastal belt in the northeast and beyond the forests
in the southwest. These savannahs occupy the remaining 11 percent of Guyana
and support only low grasses useful for land-extensive cattle grazing (see
fig. 2).

The Coastal Plain

     The coastal plain of northeastern Guyana was first settled in the early
18th century when the Dutch, having exhausted the riverside soils along
the near interior rivers, were forced to begin reclamation of the plain from
the sea tides and inland river swamps. The plain became heavily settled in the
19th century after the British gained control. They introduced large numbers
of East Indians to work with the sugar plantations after slavery was abolished
in 1833. Due to the extensive system of sea defenses, the coastal plain, if it
were not for the many palms and other tropical vegetation, looks much like the
coast of the Netherlands. The sea defenses include 140 miles of seawall, and
canals for irrigation and drainage.

[See Figure 2.: Natural regions and relief of Guyana.]

     The plain ranges from 3 to 4 miles wide and extends from the Corentyne
River on the border with Surinam to the Venezuelan border in the northwest,
but it is not settled beyond the Pomeroon River on the "near" northwest coast
where the plain narrows and the soils become less fertile. The northeastern
coastal plain, where 94 percent of the population lives has a total area of
2.5 million acres of which 2 million would be suitable for agriculture if
drained and irrigated. At present over 700,000 acres are under cultivation out
of one million acres that have already been reclaimed. The plain, much of it
below sea level by as much as 4 to 5 feet at high tide, is rarely cultivated
beyond 10 miles inland, and the first mile behind the seawall is generally
used for either pasturage or rice, which can survive the higher water table
and higher salinity of the soil.

     The coastal plain is made up largely of alluvial muds from the Amazon
River which have been carried and deposited along the northeast shoulder of
South America by the south equatorial current as it splits on the horn of
Brazil and travels along the coast past the Guianas. This mud, a rich clay
of high fertility, overlays the white sands and clays formed from the erosion
of the interior bedrock and carried seaward by the rivers of Guyana.

     The northeastern coastal plain is divided into four distinct sections,
and travel is made difficult by the three major Guyanese rivers. They are,
from east to west the Berbice, the Demerara and the Essequibo. The plain is
cut off from the interior of forest zone by a barrier of swamps which has
formed between the white sandy hills of the interior and the "back-dams"
of the coastal plain drainage and irrigation works. These swamps, prevented
from intruding into the croplands by the "back-dams," serve a useful purpose
as water conservancies or natural reservoirs during periods of drought.

The Forest Zone

     By far the largest of Guyana's regions, this 70,000 square mile
equatorial forest is also the most geologically complex. It includes nearly
all of Guyana's known mineral resources, of which bauxite and manganese are
now being exploited at several sites. Its vast hardwood lumber reserves are
largely inaccessible but still represent a great natural resource. Initial
surveys for hydroelectric power poten