Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0382/03827.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 33KB | 544 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03827}
$Pretitle{297}
$Title{Uruguay
Chapter 2.    Physical Environment}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{The Director Foreign Area Studies}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{rio
country
uruguay
miles
de
la
plata
atlantic
argentina
montevideo}
$Date{1971}
$Log{}
Country:     Uruguay
Book:        Area Handbook for Uruguay
Author:      The Director Foreign Area Studies
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1971

Chapter 2.    Physical Environment

     With an area of 72,172 square miles, the country is the smallest in South
America. With the exception of Canada, it is the only country in the Western
Hemisphere located entirely outside the tropics. Excluding Newfoundland, all
of its land surface lies to the east of the North American continent, and the
capital city of Montevideo is about 600 miles east of Bermuda. Its time zone
is two hours earlier than Eastern Standard Time.

     The perimeter of the wedge-shaped country, often described as compact and
homogeneous, is devoid of pronounced extrusions or intrusions (see fig. 1).
The low plateau of the interior is marked by gentle up-and-down features
except in the northeast, where the eroded hill ranges have sharp edges. The
coastal lowlands have gently uneven characteristics featured by rivers and
streams, sand dunes, small hill systems, and isolated knolls.

     Compactness of the country and the lack of high relief features have
combined to make easier the construction of a good transportation network, in
which all major roads and  railroads originate along the frontiers and
converge on Montevideo. This convergence is at once a cause and a consequence
of the development of a settlement pattern that has resulted in the
accumulation of almost half the population in the capital city, a
concentration unrivaled in the Western Hemisphere. In addition, population
density decreases in proportion to the distance from Montevideo, and the
principal cities of the interior center are located along access routes
leading to Montevideo.

     A transitional geological buffer between the landmasses of Argentina and
Brazil, abundantly watered Uruguay is in a technical sense almost an island.
Nearly all of its eastern perimeter is marked by a large tidal lagoon on the
north and by the Atlantic Ocean. The southern coast is bordered by the great
Rio de la Plata estuary, and on the west the country is separated from the
northern part of Argentina by the Rio Uruguay. About two-thirds of the
northern border corresponds to the course of major and minor rivers. Some
border questions between Uruguay and its two contiguous neighbors, Argentina
and Brazil, remain unsettled. None, however, represents serious problems and
irredentism is not an issue.

     About 70 percent of the country lies in the La Plata drainage basin, an
enormous area drained by the Uruguay and Parana river systems. Development of
the waterpower resources of this region is an important projected program in
which Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina. Paraguay, and Bolivia are to participate.

     Most of the countryside is made up of wide expanses of undulating
prairie, an extension of the humid pampa of Argentina, broken in places by low
ranges of hills pointing southwestward from the highlands of southern Brazil.
Narrow lowlands of the Rio de la Plata littoral and the Rio Uruguay flood
plain are devoted primarily to farming. The remainder of the country is a low,
broken plateau divided into cattle and sheep ranches. About 90 percent of the
territory is devoted to agricultural and pastoral undertakings. The topsoil is
generally thin, but 70 percent of the land is considered tillable. There is
little known mineral wealth except for iron deposits discovered in the 1960s,
which have not yet been developed (see ch. 19, Industry).

     The relatively rugged northwest is the only subtropical part of the
country. The remainder enjoys a moderate and pleasant temperate-zone climate
marred only by winter fogs and occasional high winds. It is, however, an
uncertain climate marked from time to time by droughts and floods.

     Because plateau and plain are broken up by barbed-wired fences dividing
them into ranches and farms, it is only in the northwest that a few of the
larger indigenous animal species survive. Wildfowl are numerous in the lagoons
and marshes of the Atlantic coast, however, and game and other bird species
abound on the plateaus and along the southern coast. The generally excellent
deep-sea and surf fishing are at their best in the vicinity of Punta del
Este.

     The rural settlement pattern corresponds to regional differences; farms
occupy the coastal lowland, and cattle and sheep ranches are found on the
interior plateau. In general, population density is the greatest near
Montevideo, the one great urban center, and least in parts of the country
remote from the capital.

Natural Featrues

Topography

     The country represents a transition from the pampas of Argentina to the
hilly uplands and valley intersections of southern Brazil's Parana plateau.
In general, it is a country of gentle hills and hollows.

     This rolling characteristic is general but less evident close to the
eastern, southern, and western borders. In the northeast corner, adjacent to
Laguna Merin, is a low plain area where rice is grown under irrigation.
Directly southward, a narrow alluvial Atlantic coastal plain is broken by sand
dunes, marshes, and coastal lagoons. Infertile stretches of sandy soil extend
inland for distances of up to five miles. At Punta del Este, the coastline
leaves the Atlantic to veer westward sharply for more than 200 miles along the
Rio de la Plata estuary to the mouth of the Rio Uruguay, the estuary's
westernmost extremity. The littoral is somewhat broader here and merges
almost imperceptibly with the grasslands and hills of the interior.

     Soils consist of sands, clays, loess, and alluvium deposited by the
numerous streams. The black soil is rich in potassium and enriched by decay
of the lush cover of vegetation. Soils of similar composition are found on the
flood plain of the Rio Uruguay, which forms the country's western frontier.
Along this flood plain,however, in the portion to the north of the mouth of
the Rio Negro there are extensions of the interior hill ranges that encroach
on the flood plain.

     The remaining three-fourths or more of the country consists of a rolling
plateau, featured by ranges of low hills that become more prominent in the
north as they merge into the highlands of southern Brazil. The geological
foundation of most of the region is made up of gneiss, red sandstone, and
granite, and an extension of the basaltic plateau of Brazil reaches southward
in a broad band west of the Rio Negro. Corridors between the hill ranges are
floored with clay and sedimentary deposits.

     Legend holds that when the ship of the discoverer Magellan first made
landfall in the Rio de la Plata, on sighting the conical hill west of the
site of what was to become Montevideo, his lookout called out in Portuguese
"Monte vide eu" (I see a mountain). This quite possibly is how the capital
city acquired its name, but the country as a whole is so lacking in lofty
relief features that its highest peak is Cerro Mirador in Maldonado Department
near the southern coast. Its height is 1,644 feet.

     The most important of the cuchillas (hill ranges) are the Cuchilla Grande
and the Cuchilla de Haedo. Only in these and in the Cuchilla Santa Ana along
the Brazilian frontier do altitudes with any frequency exceed 600 feet. Both
of the two major ranges extend southwestward from Brazil, one on the eastern
flank and one on the western, in directions roughly defining the course of the
country's principal river, the Rio Negro. To the east, the Cuchilla Grande
and its several spur ranges form the country's most extensive hill system and
its most important drainage divide. Here, ridges are frequently 1,000 feet or
more in elevation. West of the river in the northern portion o