Brazil at a Glance

Official Name: Federative Republic of Brazil

Capital: Brasília

Official Language: Portuguese

System of Government: A Federative Republic with a multi-party political system. Brazil holds democratic elections for president, senators, representatives, state governors and legislators, mayors and municipal counsels. Brazil is the world leader in electronic online voting (100 million voters.)

Area: 3,286,470 square miles

Population: 170 million

Geography: Brazil is in east-central South America and occupies nearly 50% of the South American continent. Around 58% of Brazil is covered with forests, which include the largest rainforest in the world, located in the Amazon River basin. The country has eight river systems, which carry aproximately 20% of the world's fresh water.

Land Use: 58% forests, 22% pasture, 6% crops, 14% other use.

Biggest Cities: São Paulo (10.4 million), Rio de Janeiro (5.8 million), Salvador (2.4 million), Belo Horizonte (2.2 million), Brasília (2 million), Recife (1.4 million)

Human Feature:
Density: 52 persons per square mile
Urban/Rural: 80% urban, 20% rural
Sex Distribution: 49.9% male, 50.1% female
Age Breakdown: 35% under 15, 28% 15 to 29, 19% 30 to 44, 10% 45 to 59, 6%
60 to 74, 2% 75 and over

Money: The official currency is the real, which is divided into 100 centavos

Main Products: Aircraft, bauxite, beef, cellulose, cereals, coffee, cocoa, crude oil and petrochemicals, diamonds, furniture, gold, households appliances hydroelectric power engines, iron ore, manganese, motor vehicles, nickel, orange juice, phosphates, platinum, processed food, quartz crystals, rubber, shoes, silver, soybeans, steel, sugar, textiles, timber, tin, titanium, uranium, and zinc.

Geography

Brazil is the largest of the Latin American countries. Covering nearly half (47.3 percent) of the continent of South America, it occupies an area of 3,286,470 sq. miles (8,511,965 sq. km). It is the fifth largest country in the world after the Russian Federation, Canada, China, and the United States.

Except for a small number of islands, Brazil consists of a single. unbroken land mass. On a map of the globe, it can be seen that the eastern bulge of Brazil conforms to the concave curve of the west coast of Africa. According to the theory of continental drift, this is no accident; Africa and South America once abutted each other, but drifted apart over millions of years.

The Equator passes through the north of the country near Macapá; the Tropic of Capricorn passes through the south near São Paulo. Brazil's greatest width, 2,684 miles (4,319.4 km), is almost the same as its greatest distance from north to south, 2,731 miles (4,394.7 km).

Brazil has 10 neighbors: the Department of French Guiana and the countries of Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela, and Colombia bound Brazil on the north. Uruguay and Argentina are on the south, and on the west are Paraguay, Bolivia, and Peru.

Ecuador and Chile are the only two countries of continental South America that do not share a border with Brazil. The Atlantic Ocean extends along the entire eastern

side of the country, giving it a coastline of 4,578 miles (7,367 km).

Topography

The landscape of Brazil is dominated by two prominent features, the Amazon River with its surrounding lowland basin of 1,544,400 sq. miles (4.000,000 sq. km) and the Central Highlands, a plateau that rises southward from the great river.

Most of the Central Highlands consists of a tableland varying in altitude from 984 to 1,640 feet (300 to 500 meters) above sea level, broken by a number of low mountain ranges and cut by deep valleys.

The highlands ascend steeply in the east forming an escarpment, where several peaks attain an altitude of 8,202 feet (2,500 meters) or more, and then drop precipitously to a narrow Atlantic coastal plain.

A network of high moun tain ranges runs from the south of the country to the northeast forming a continental divide between the Atlantic Ocean and the interior. Brazil's highest peak, Pico da Neblina, reaching 9,888 feet (3,014 meters), is in the north, close to the Venezuelan border.

Rivers

Brazil has one of the most extensive river systems in the world with eight drainage
basins. : The Amazon and the Tocantins Araguaia basins in the north account for 56 percent of Brazil's total drainage area. The Amazon River, the world's largest river in volume of water and second longest after the Nile, is 4,087 miles (6,577 km) long, of which 2,246 miles (3,615 km) are in Brazilian territory. The river is navigable by ocean steamers as far as 2,414 miles (3,885 km) upstream, reaching
Iquitos in Peru.

The Paraná-Paraguai river system drains the area from the southwestern portion of the state of Minas Gerais southward until it reaches the Atlantic through the River Plate (Rio da Prata) near Buenos Aires, Argentina. Brazil's two southernmost states are drained through the Uruguay River also into the Prata.

The São Francisco River is the largest river wholly within Brazil, flowing for over 1,000 miles (1,609 km) northward before it turns eastward into the Atlantic. It rises, like the Paraná and the Tocantins, in the Central Highlands of the coun try.

The upper river is navigable for shallow draft riverboats in some areas, but only the last 172 miles (277 km) of the lower river is navigable for ocean-going ships.

The hydroelectric potential of Brazil, according to the data provided by Eletrobrás in 1994, is of 127,867.6 MW/year of energy. Of this 24.42% is in operation and/or under construction, 35.80% are in inventory and 39.78% are estimated.

Vegetation

The variety of climates together with soil and drainage conditions are reflected in Brazil's vegetation. In the Amazon Basin and in those places along the Atlantic coast where the rainfall is very heavy, there is tropical rain forest composed of broadleaf evergreen trees growing luxuriantly. The rain forest is made up of a great many different species, as many as 3,000 in a sq. mile (2.6 sq. km).

In the lowlands and plateaus of the eastern coast where rainfall is slightly less and the dry season is really dry, there is semi-deciduous forest, where the trees are smaller than in the rain forest and lose their leaves in the dry season. In the semi-arid northeast, the caatinga, a dry bush, predominates. The greater portion of the central part of Brazil is covered with a woodland savanna known as the cerrado.

This is a special type of land combining sparse scrub trees and dryness resistant grasses. In the south, needle-leafed pine woods (Paraná-pine or Araucária) cover the highlands; grassland covers the sea-level plains.

The Mato Grosso swamplands (Pantanal Mato-grossense), a plain which covers 88,803 sq. miles (230,000 sq. km) in the western portion of the center of the country, is covered in tall grasses, weeds, and widely dispersed trees.

Large patches of it are submerged during the rainy season.

The Amazon Basin and the Pantanal Mato-Grossense, already much altered by man's actions, constitute two of the world's largest biological reserves.

Fauna

Of the twelve categories of mammals that inhabit the tropics of the Western Hemisphere, eleven are present in Brazil, representing over 600 species.

This includes several species of the cat family such as the jaguar and smaller cats such as the puma, jaguarundi, and the ocelot.

Other mammals include: sloths, anteaters, tapirs, armadillos, marine dolphins, capybaras (a large aquatic rodent, some weighting up to 145 pounds [66 kilograms]), and 30 species of monkeys.

Brazil has a larger variety of birds than any other country, with 1,600 species
including many varieties of parrot.

There are at least 40 species of turtles, 120 lizards, 230 snakes, five species of alligators, 331 species of amphibians, and 1,500 species of freshwater fish.

Naturalists have cataloged over 1,000,000 invertebrates in Brazil of which more than 700,000 are insects.

A study conducted by the Brazilian Statistical Institute (IBGE) in 1990 identified 303 endangered species and sub-species in Brazil.

The Amazon forest contains the largest single reserve of biological organisms in the world. No one really knows how many species there are in the Amazon forest, but scientists estimate that there are between 800,000 and 5 million species living
there, amounting to 15 to 30 percent of all the species in the entire world.

As naturalists catalogue new species of freshwater fish, their findings suggest that
there may be as many as 3,000 kinds of fish in the Amazon's rivers and lakes.

Among the specialized fish found in the area are: the pirarucu, said to be the largest freshwater fish in the world with specimens measuring over 6.5 feet (2 meters) in length and weighing 275 pounds (125 kilograms); the tambaqui, a member of the fruit eating characin family which possesses teeth that can crack seeds as hard as those of the rubber tree and the jauari palm; and the piranha. The ferocity of the meat-eating piranha has been exaggerated.

Although it is true that some species in rare circumstances have killed large animals and even people, their behavior depends on the state of their habitat.

In main river channels and in larger lakes they appear to leave swimmers unmolested.

Only when they lack nourishment do they become aggressive.

Mineral Resources Brazil is known to possess extremely rich mineral deposits, although the country's resources have yet to be comprehensively surveyed.

Brazil has the world's sixth largest reserves of commercially recoverable iron ore, some 20.3 billion tons, 8.6 percent of the world total.

The iron content is high, varying from 50 to 70 percent for hematite and itabirite. Most of the deposits - nearly 95 percent - are concentrated in the states of Minas Gerais and Pará with Minas Gerais alone accounting for 75 percent. Brazil's identified deposits are sufficient to supply the world demand for iron (based on current levels and predictable growth) for the next 20 years.

In addition to iron ore, Brazil has the world's sixth largest reserves of manganese, with proven deposits of 53.8 billion tons, the world's third largest reserves of bauxite, 3.9 billion tons, and 5.2 percent of the world's reserves of nickel, 8.9 million tons, with the state of Goiás holding 74 percent of Brazil's deposits.

The recent confirmation of the existence of large, high-grade (1.3 percent) uranium reserves in the states of Minas Gerais and Goiás is of great significance.

Brazil possesses reserves of potassium, phosphate, tungsten (an element used for hardening steel), cassiterite (the chief source of tin), lead, graphite, chrome, gold, zirconium (a strong ductile metallic element with many industrial uses), and the rare mineral, thorium, a radioactive metallic element.

Brazil produces 90 percent of the world's supply of gems, such as diamonds,
aquamarines, topazes, amethysts, tourmalines, and emeralds.