Geography of Peru

is a country on the central western coast of South America facing the Pacific Ocean. It lies wholly in the Southern Hemisphere, its northernmost extreme reaching to 1.8 minutes of latitude or about south of the equator. Peru shares land borders with Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, and Chile, with its longest land border shared with Brazil.

Natural Regions

Despite the great diversity of Peruvian territory, the Spanish divided it into three main regions for political rather than geographical reasons: the Coast, adjacent to the Pacific Ocean; the Highlands, located in the Andean mountains; and the Amazon Jungle. This division, despite its evident limitations, lasted until 1941, when the third General Assembly of the Pan American Institute of Geography and History approved the creation of eight natural regions, proposed by the geographer Javier Pulgar Vidal, to establish a physiographic map more adjusted to the biogeographical reality of the territory. Thus conceived, the Peruvian map comprises the following regions:

La Chala or Coast: This region is found in the western lands, which are relatively flat and extend along the coast from sea level up to 500 meters in elevation. In this region, carob trees, palo verde, salt grass, mangroves, reeds, and wild canes grow along the rivers, and amancaes, wild tomatoes, mito, tara, and others grow on the hillsides. The coastal fauna includes sea lions, anchovies, and seabirds.
La Yunga: A region of fertile valleys and ravines where lúcumo, cherimoya, guava, avocado, citrus fruits, and sugar cane are cultivated, along with picturesque river canyons. Between 500 and 2300 meters on the western slope, it is known as Maritime Yunga, and between 1000 and 2300 meters on the eastern slope, it is called Fluvial Yunga. Fluvial Yunga has a warm climate with seasonal rains, while a desert climate predominates in Maritime Yunga. The flora includes molle, white agave, pitahaya, and chuná, and the fauna includes birds such as the chaucato and taurigaray.
Quechua: A region of temperate lands that extend across both Andean slopes between 2300 and 3500 meters in altitude. The landscape alternates between valleys and watersheds feeding into the same basin, with limited summer rains. The flora includes alder, lambran or rambash, gongapa, and arracacha, and maize, squash, passion fruit, papaya, wheat, and peach are cultivated. The fauna includes birds such as the gray thrush or chihuanco.
Suni or Jalca: Lands with a cold and dry climate, with abundant summer rains, located between 3500 and 4100 meters, characterized by glacial valleys and slightly undulating bottoms. The landscape is covered by grasses and shrubs like taya-taya, quishuar, and cantuta. Despite the climate, quinoa, cañigua, broad beans, olluco, and other crops thrive. The fauna includes the black thrush and guinea pig.
La Puna: Covers the high plateaus and Andean cliffs between 4100 and 4800 meters, where a cold climate prevails. During the day, temperatures are positive, but they drop below 0 °C at night. The typical vegetation includes cacti and, in lakes and swampy areas, totoras. The most common crops are barley, potato, and maca. The characteristic fauna includes llama, alpaca, vicuña, guanaco, condor, huallata, flamingo, duck, and other aquatic birds.
La Janca: Corresponds to the high frozen peaks, encompassing the domains of the condor, where the climate is glacial and vegetation is very scarce, reduced almost to yareta or yarita.
La Rupa Rupa or High Jungle: Forested foothills located between 400 and 1000 meters on the eastern slope of the Andes, characterized by narrow, elongated valleys and river canyons or pongos. The warm, humid, and rainy climate favors a diverse tropical flora and fauna, including the tapir, peccary, and jaguar.
Omagua, The Amazon or Low Jungle: A jungle plain that extends between 80 and 400 meters on the eastern Andean slope, through which the rivers of the Amazon basin flow, forming meanders, swamps, and lagoons. The flora includes trees like chonta, cedar, palms, shapaja, and shebo, and plants like orchids. The fauna includes capybara, giant armadillo, otter, and red deer, birds like toucan, hoatzin, jabiru, and macaw, as well as fish like paiche and other aquatic animals like the manatee and pipa toad.
Statistics

Peru has a total land area of 1,285,220 km² and a total water area of 5,000 km². In terms of maritime area, the country claims a continental shelf of, a territorial sea of and an Exclusive economic zone of.
Only 3% of Peru's land is arable, with 0.5% being suitable for permanent crops. Permanent pastureland accounts for 21% of Peru's land use, and forests and woodland accounting for 66% of the landscape. Approximately 9.5% of Peruvian land is attributed to population centers, coastal regions, and other space.
Natural hazards that Peru experiences include earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, landslides, and mild volcanic activity. The geographic positioning of Peru adjacent to the adjoining Nazca and South American tectonic plates - converging in the Atacama trench off the Pacific coast - serves as the catalyst to many of Peru's natural hazards.
Peru's environmental issues include deforestation ; overgrazing of the slopes of the coast and sierra leading to soil erosion; desertification; air pollution in Lima; pollution of rivers and coastal waters from municipal and mining wastes.
Peru is a party to the following international environmental agreements:
Antarctic Treaty, Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands, Whaling. Furthermore, the country has signed, but not ratified, the Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol.
Peru shares control of Lake Titicaca, world's highest navigable lake, with Bolivia.

Urbanization

The most populated city in the country is Lima, the capital of Peru. Lima's metropolitan area has a population of over 10 million. The country's second and third largest cities, Callao and Arequipa, have around 1.3 and 1.2 million people, respectively. Peru's developed urban cities are found in coastal regions and to the north. There are 32.1 million people who live in Peru. The percentage of urbanization in Peru is 79.2%, and holds a yearly increase of 1.57%. Lima forms part of the largest cities in the Americas, and holds 31.7% of the country's population. The dense concentration of the population size of Peru is 25 people/km² or 57/mi². Lima is a pull factor that draws millions of Peruvians from the suburbs to the capital. This urban inland migration is the result of sprawling around Lima. These sprawling places are known as “Pueblos Jóvenes”. The young towns and Lima make up the metropolitan area that extend.
The urban growth brings issues to the metropolitan area and the environment. Lima is the most polluted city in Latin America. The overcrowding and growth of urbanization has caused Peruvians to use its green spaces for garbage disposal. This leads to the pollution of the river Rimac that supplies water to the metropolitan area.
The rise of urbanization forgets the historic sites, ruins or “huacas”, which are being replaced for buildings, roads, etc. Lima is home of 400 sites of 46,000 in the country, the country itself only preserves 1%.
Approximately 1.3 million Venezuelans have emigrated to Peru in search of residency. This international migration is caused by various social, environmental and economic crises in their home country. This push factor migration has brought to Peru sustenance problems like instability and food shortage.

Climate

The combination of tropical latitude, mountain ranges, topography variations and two ocean currents gives Peru a large diversity of climates. Peru has a tropical climate with a wet and dry season.

Amazon Basin or Low Amazon

The eastern portions of Peru include the Amazon Basin or selva baja, a region that is larger in the north than in the south. Representing roughly 60% of Peru's national territory, this area includes the Amazon, Marañón, Huallaga and Ucayali Rivers.
Almost 60% of the country's area is located within this region, giving Peru the fourth largest area of tropical forest in the world after Brazil, Congo and Indonesia.

Andean mountain ranges

The Andes shelter the very largest variety of climates in the country. The climate is semi-arid in the valleys and moist in higher elevations and towards the eastern flanks. Rainfall varies from per year. The monsoonal period starts in October and ends in April. The rainiest months are January through March where travel can be sometimes affected.
The western slopes are arid to semi-arid and receive rainfall only between January and March. Below the mark, the temperatures vary between in the night versus in the day.
Between, the temperatures vary from in the night and from during the day. At higher elevations from, the Puna ecoregion, the temperature varies from during the night versus during the day.
The northernmost regions of the Andes around Cajamarca and Piura regions have Páramo climates.

Coast

The Peruvian coast is a microclimatic region. The region is affected by the cold Humboldt Current, the El Niño Southern Oscillation, tropical latitude, and the Andes mountain range.
The central and southern coast consists mainly of a subtropical desert climate composed of sandy or rocky shores and inland cutting valleys. Days alternate between overcast skies with occasional fog in the winter and sunny skies with occasional haze in the summer, with the only precipitation being an occasional light-to-moderate drizzle that is known locally as garúa. These regions are usually characterized by mildly cold lows and also mild highs. Temperatures rarely fall below and do not go over. An exception is the southern coast, where it does get a bit warmer and drier for most of the year during daytime, and where it can also get much colder during winter nights.
The northern coast, on the contrary, has a curious tropical-dry climate, generally referred to as tropical savanna. This region is a lot warmer and can be unbearable during summer months, where rainfall is also present. The region differs from the southern coast by the presence of shrubs, equatorial dry forests, mangrove forests, tropical valleys near rivers such as the Chira and the Tumbes. The average temperature is.