The Iberá Wetlands ( es, Esteros del Iberá, from
Guaraní Guarani, Guaraní or Guarany may refer to
Ethnography
* Guaraní people, an indigenous people from South America's interior (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia)
* Guaraní language, or Paraguayan Guarani, an official language of Paraguay
* ...
''ý berá'': "bright water") are a mix of
swamps,
bogs, stagnant
lake
A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...
s,
lagoon
A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into ''coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons'') ...
s, natural slough, and courses of water in the center and center-north of the .
Iberá is one of the most important freshwater reservoirs in
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...
and the second-largest
wetland
A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The p ...
in the world after
Pantanal
The Pantanal () is a natural region encompassing the world's largest tropical wetland area, and the world's largest flooded grasslands. It is located mostly within the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, but it extends into Mato Grosso and ...
in
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
. It is of
pluvial
In geology and climatology, a pluvial is either a modern climate characterized by relatively high precipitation or an interval of time of variable length, decades to thousands of years, during which a climate is characterized by relatively high ...
origin, with a total area of .
Since 1982, part of the wetland is included within a provincial protected area, the
Iberá Provincial Reserve, which comprises about , the largest of such areas in Argentina. There are ongoing plans to further up its protection status to
national park.
Image:Carpincho (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) Iberá.jpg, '' Capybara'' at Iberá
File:Esteros del Ibera Marshes.JPG, Esteros del Iberá Marsh
File:Esteros del Ibera Laguna.JPG, Esteros del Iberá Lagoon
See also
*
Iberá Provincial Reserve
References
External links
''Rewilding Ibera: Efforts made to save Argentina’s wetlands'' Al Jazeera Englisch, January 2021 (video, 4:25 mins)
Wetlands of Argentina
Ramsar sites in Argentina
Geography of Corrientes Province
Guaraní words and phrases
La Plata basin
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