Lab 5 Middle and South America

 

Lab_5 Middle and South America

This week in Geography1000 we discussed Middle and South America.  This area normally consists of the Isthmus of Panama, the Caribbean, and South America.  In this case, because Mexico shares so much culturally with this are it is included in Middle America.  Tectonic collisions have helped shape the landscape of Middle America with impressive mountain ranges including the Siera Madre Occidental, Oriental, and del Sur.  These plates also create earthquakes and volcanos in the Caribbean.  South America's Andes Mountains stretch from Venezuela to Chile and along with other ranges include altitudinal zones which allows for cultivation on numerous types of crops and livestock.  The rest of South America is fairly flat and includes the continent's longest river, the Amazon.  This river is the largest in the world in terms of discharge, equating to about 210,000 cubic meters of water every second.  Middle and South America are both marked with the ruins of lost civilizations such as the Inca, Aztec, and Mayans.  These people were either wiped out or assimilated in the culture of the invading Europeans. 

In Lab 5 we used ArcGIS to create a map about the Amazon Basin. Brazil's Legal Amazon was established in 1948 and covers 61% of Brazil’s national territory, was established to promote sustainable development and environmental protection in this ecologically significant area. There are 52 protected forests and 6 types of protected forest in the area.  The area also includes 115,609,577.2 hectares of Indigenous territories. Some of the protected forests that intersect with these territories include park, extractive reserve, and biological reserve.    

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