Geography
The state's geographical regions comprise the Atlantic Forest. The Recôncavo region radiating from the Bay (the largest in Brazil), the site of sugar and tobacco cultivation. And the Planalto, which includes the fabled sertão region of Bahia's far interior. Bahia is bordered, in counterclockwise fashion, by Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco and Piauí to the north, Goiás and Tocantins to the west, and Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo to the south. The State of Bahia is crossed from north to south by a mountain chain which is marked, in the map, as Chapada Diamantina. This same chain receives other names, like Serra do Espinhaço, in Minas Gerais, and Borborema, in Pernambuco and Paraíba.
In some parts, the chain has the shape of "Chapadões", plateaus with abrupt edges, the most visited of such chapadões are in the National Park of Chapada Diamantina, in the middle of the State. The chain divides Bahia in two clearly distinct geographical zones. To the east, where once existed the exuberant Atlantic Forest, the soil is fertile and, despite high temperatures, rainy seasons are regular.
The predominant vegetation in the west is "cerrado". These tough conditions caused the interior to be much less developed than the coast. The state is also crossed by the river São Francisco, the most important of Brazilian northeast. São Francisco River is a permanent river, which continuously supplies water to this arid region when many other smaller rivers dry out. The São Francisco starts in Minas Gerais and goes on until the Atlantic, making borders between Bahia and Alagoas. There are short stretches of the river which are navigable, but mainly for cargoes. The large blue spot at the north is a huge dam built to hold water for the hydroelectric plant of Itaparica.
Read more about this topic: Bahia
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Ktaadn, near which we were to pass the next day, is said to mean “Highest Land.” So much geography is there in their names.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)