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Location: Western South America, bordering the South Pacific
Ocean, between Chile and Ecuador
Geographic coordinates: 10 00 S, 76 00 W
Map references: South America
Area:
total: 1,285,220 sq km
land: 1.28 million sq km
water: 5,220 sq km
Area - comparative: slightly smaller than Alaska
Land boundaries:
total: 5,536 km
border countries: Bolivia 900 km, Brazil 1,560 km, Chile
160 km, Colombia 1,496 km (est.), Ecuador 1,420 km
Coastline: 2,414 km
Maritime claims:
continental shelf: 200 nm
territorial sea: 200 nm
Climate: varies from tropical in east to dry desert in west;
temperate to frigid in Andes
Terrain: western coastal plain (costa), high and rugged
Andes in center (sierra), eastern lowland jungle of Amazon Basin
(selva)
Elevation extremes:
lowest point: Pacific Ocean 0 m
highest point: Nevado Huascaran 6,768 m
Natural resources: copper, silver, gold, petroleum, timber,
fish, iron ore, coal, phosphate, potash, hydropower
Land use:
arable land: 3%
permanent crops: 0%
permanent pastures: 21%
forests and woodland: 66%
other: 10% (1993 est.)
Irrigated land: 12,800 sq km (1993 est.)
Natural hazards: earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, landslides,
mild volcanic activity
Environment - current issues: deforestation (some the result
of illegal logging); overgrazing of the slopes of the costa and
sierra leading to soil erosion; desertification; air pollution in
Lima; pollution of rivers and coastal waters from municipal and
mining wastes
Environment - international agreements:
party to: Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, Antarctic Treaty,
Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species,
Hazardous Wastes, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship
Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands, Whaling
signed, but not ratified: Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol
Geography - note: shares control of Lago Titicaca, world's
highest navigable lake, with Bolivia
Geography
Peru, country in west central South America, bounded on the north
by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil and Bolivia, on the
south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean.
The area of Peru, including several offshore islands, is 1,280,000
sq km (494,210 sq mi), making it third in size (after Brazil and
Argentina) of South American countries. Lima is the country's capital
and chief commercial center.
Climate
The climate of Peru varies widely, ranging from tropical in the
montaña to arctic in the highest mountains of the Andes. Average
temperatures decrease about 1.7 Celsius degrees (about 3 Fahrenheit
degrees) with every 450-m (1,500-ft) increase in elevation.
Permanent snow and ice fields cover peaks more than 5,000 m (16,500
ft) above sea level, and the highest elevation at which the land
is suitable for agriculture is about 4,400 m (14,500 ft).
Background:
Peru is the third largest country in South America. Only Brazil
and Argentina cover a greater area. Peru is a land of enormous contrasts
in landscape and climate.
The country lies in western South America, along the Pacific Ocean.
After a dozen years of military rule, Peru returned to democratic
leadership in 1980. In recent years, bold reform programs and significant
progress in curtailing guerrilla activity and drug trafficking have
resulted in solid economic growth.
Peru
COUNTRY PROFILE
Official Name: Republic of Peru (República del
Perú).
Short Name: Peru.
Term for Citizens: Peruvian(s).
Capital: Lima.
Date of Independence: Declared July 28, 1821,
from Spain; achieved, 1824.
GEOGRAPHY
Size: 1,285,216 square kilometers.
Topography: Western coast (Costa) mountainous
and arid. Andes mountains in center (Andean highlands or Sierra)
high and rugged. Less than one-fourth of Sierra, which includes
cold, high-altitude grasslands (the puna), natural pasture. Puna
widens into extensive plateau, Altiplano, adjoining Bolivia in southern
Sierra. Eastern lowlands consist of semi-tropical and rugged cloud
forests of eastern slopes (Montaña), lying between 800 and 3,800
meters; and jungle (Selva), which includes high jungle (selva
alta), lying between 400 and 800 meters, and tropical low jungle
(selva baja) of Amazon Basin, lying between 80 and 400
meters. Land use: 3 percent arable, 21 percent meadows and pastures,
55 percent forest and woodland, and 21 percent other, including
1 percent irrigated.
Climate: Varies from dry in western coastal desert
to temperate in highland valleys; harsh, chilly conditions on puna
and western Andean slopes; semi-tropical in Montaña; tropical in
Selva. Uninhabited areas over 5,500 meters high have arctic climate.
Rainy winter season runs from October through April; dry summer
in remaining months.
Data as of September 1992
Peru
ENVIRONMENT AND POPULATION
Natural Systems and Human Life
Peru is a complex amalgam of ancient and modern cultures, populations,
conflicts, questions, and dilemmas. The land itself offers great
challenges. With 1,285,216 square kilometers, Peru is the eighteenth
largest nation in area in the world and the fourth largest Latin
American nation. It ranked fifth in population in the region, with
22,767,543 inhabitants in July 1992. Centered in the heart of the
8,900-kilometer-long Andean range, Peru's geography and climates,
although similar to those of its Andean neighbors, form their own
peculiar conditions, making the region one of the world's most heterogeneous
and dynamic. Peru's principal natural features are its desert coast;
the forty great snow-covered peaks over 6,000 meters in altitude,
and the mountain ranges they anchor; Lake Titicaca, which is shared
with Bolivia, and at 3,809 meters above sea level the world's highest
navigable lake; and the vast web of tropical rivers like the Ucayali,
Marañón, and Huallaga, which join to form the Amazon above Peru's
"Atlantic" port of Iquitos .
The Costa, Sierra, and Selva (selva--jungle), each comprising
a different and sharply contrasting environment, form the major
terrestrial regions of the country. Each area, however, contains
special ecological niches and microclimates generated by ocean currents,
the wide range of Andean altitudes, solar angles and slopes, and
the configurations of the vast Amazonian area. As a consequence
of these complexities, thirty-four ecological subregions have been
identified.
Although there is great diversity in native fauna, relatively few
animals lent themselves to the process of domestication in prehistoric
times. Consequently, at the time of European arrival the only large
domesticated animals were the llamas and alpacas. Unfortunately,
llamas and alpacas are not powerful beasts, serving only as light
pack animals and for meat and wool. The absence of great draft animals
played a key role in the evolution of human societies in Peru because
without animals such as horses, oxen, camels, and donkeys, which
powered the wheels of development in the Old World, human energy
in Peru and elsewhere in the Americas could not be augmented significantly.
As far as is known, the enormous potential in hydrologic resources
in preconquest times was tapped only for agricultural irrigation
and basic domestic usage. Through the elaborate use of massive irrigation
works and terracing, which appeared in both highland and coastal
valleys in pre-Chavín periods (1000 B.C.), the environment of the
Andes was opened for intensive human settlement, population growth,
and the emergence of regional states.
The development of Andean agriculture started about 9,000 years
ago, when inhabitants began experimenting with the rich vegetation
they utilized as food gatherers. Each ecological niche, or "floor,"
begins about 500 to 1,000 meters vertically above the last, forming
a minutely graduated and specialized environment for life. The central
Andean area is, thus, one of the world's most complex biospheres,
which human efforts made into one of the important prehistoric centers
of plant domestication. Native domesticated plants number in the
hundreds and include many varieties of such important crops as potatoes,
maize (corn), lima beans, peppers, yucca or manioc, cotton, squashes
and gourds, pineapples, avocado, and coca, which were unknown in
the Old World. Dozens of varieties of fruits and other products,
despite their attractive qualities, are little known outside the
Andean region.
Conquest of the Aztec alliance in Mexico and the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu)
in the Andes gave impetus to one of the most important features
of the colonial process, the transfer of wealth, products, and disease
between the hemispheres. Andean plant resources, of course, contributed
significantly to life in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Although attention
has usually focused on the hoards of Inca gold and silver shipped
to Spain and thus funneled to the rest of Europe, the value of Andean
potatoes to the European economy and diet probably far exceeded
that of precious metals. By the same token, the Spanish conquerors
introduced into the New World wheat, barley, rice, and other grains;
vegetables like carrots; sugarcane; tea and coffee; and many fruits,
such as grapes, oranges, and olives. The addition of Old World cattle,
hogs, sheep, goats, chickens, and draft animals--horses, donkeys,
and oxen--vastly increased Andean resources and altered work methods,
diets, and health. The trade-off in terms of disease was one-sided;
measles, malaria, yellow fever, cholera, whooping cough, influenza,
smallpox, and bubonic plague, carried by rats, arrived with each
ship from Europe. The impact of these diseases was more devastating
than any other aspect of the conquest, and they remain major scourges
for the majority of Peruvians.
Data as of September 1992
Peru
The Coastal Region
Peru's coast is a bleak, often rocky, and mountainous desert that
runs from Chile to Ecuador, punctuated by fifty-two small rivers
that descend through steep, arid mountains and empty into the Pacific.
The Costa is a strange land of great dunes and rolling expanses
of barren sand, at once a desert but with periods of humidity as
high as 90 percent in the winter from June to September, when temperatures
in Lima average about 16 degrees Celsius. Temperatures along the
coast rise near the equator in the north, where the summer can be
blazingly hot, and fall to cooler levels in the south. If climatic
conditions are right, there can be a sudden burst of delicate plant
life at certain places on the lunar-like landscape, made possible
by the heavy mist. Normally, however, the mist is only sufficient
to dampen the air, and the sand remains bleakly sterile. These conditions
greatly favor the preservation of delicate archaeological remains.
The environment also facilitates human habitation and housing because
the climate is benign and the lack of rain eases the need for water-tight
roofing.
Humans have lived for over 10,000 years in the larger coastal valleys,
fishing, hunting, and gathering along the rich shoreline, as well
as domesticating crops and inventing irrigation systems. The largest
of these littoral oases became the sites of towns, cities, religious
centers, and the seats of ancient nations. Although migration from
the highlands and other provincial regions has long occurred, the
movement of people to the Costa was greatly stimulated by the growth
of the fishing industry, which transformed villages and towns into
frontier-like cities, such as Chimbote. In the early 1990s, over
53 percent of the nation's people lived in these sharply delimited
coastal valleys . As the population becomes ever more concentrated
in the coastal urban centers, people increasingly overrun the rich
and ancient irrigated agricultural lands, such as those in the Rímac
Valley where greater Lima is situated, and the Chicama Valley at
the site of the city of Trujillo. Although the region contains 160,500
square kilometers of land area, only 4 percent, or 6,900 square
kilometers of it, is arable. By 1990 population growth had increased
the density of habitation to 1,715 persons for each square kilometer
of arable land (see
table 5, Appendix). Throughout all the coastal valleys, human
settlements remain totally dependent on the waters that flow from
the Andes along canals and aqueducts first designed and built 3,000
years ago. Here, uncontrolled and unplanned urban growth competes
directly with scarce and vitally needed agricultural land, steadily
removing it from productive use.
Data as of September 1992
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