The Pampas (from the qu, pampa, meaning "plain") are fertile
South American low
grasslands that cover more than and include the Argentine
provinces of
Buenos Aires,
La Pampa
La Pampa () is a sparsely populated province of Argentina, located in the Pampas in the center of the country. Neighboring provinces are from the north clockwise San Luis, Córdoba, Buenos Aires, Río Negro, Neuquén and Mendoza.
History
I ...
,
Santa Fe,
Entre Ríos, and
Córdoba; all of Uruguay; and Brazil's southernmost
state,
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul (, , ; "Great River of the South") is a Federative units of Brazil, state in the South Region, Brazil, southern region of Brazil. It is the Federative_units_of_Brazil#List, fifth-most-populous state and the List of Brazilian st ...
. The vast plains are a
natural region, interrupted only by the low Ventana and Tandil hills, near
Bahía Blanca
Bahía Blanca (; English: White Bay) is a city in the southwest of the provinces of Argentina, province of Buenos Aires Province, Buenos Aires, Argentina, by the Atlantic Ocean, and is the seat of government of the Bahía Blanca Partido. It had 3 ...
and
Tandil
Tandil is the main city of the homonymous Partidos of Buenos Aires, partido (department), located in Argentina, in the southeast of Buenos Aires Province, just north-northwest of Tandilia hills. The city was founded in 1823 and its name originate ...
(Argentina), with a height of and , respectively.
The climate is temperate, with
precipitation of that is more or less evenly distributed throughout the year, making the soils appropriate for
agriculture. The area is also one of the distinct physiography provinces of the larger
Paraná–
Paraguay plain division.
Topography
This region has generally low elevations, whose highest levels do not exceed 600 metres (1,970 feet) in altitude. The coastal areas and most of the Buenos Aires Province are predominantly plain (with some
wetlands) and the interior areas (mainly in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul and Uruguay) have low ranges of hills (like
Serras de Sudeste
Serras de Sudeste (English: ''Southeastern Mountain Ranges'') is a dissected plateau, also named Planalto Dissecado de Sudeste (''Southeastern Dissected Plateau'') or Escudo Sul-Rio-Grandense (''Shield of Rio Grande do Sul''), located in the sou ...
in Brazil and
Cuchilla Grande
Cuchilla Grande is a hill range that crosses the east part of Uruguay from north to south. It extends from the south part of Cerro Largo Department, through the departments of Treinta y Tres and Lavalleja and ends in Maldonado Department where it ...
in Uruguay). Low hills covered by grasslands are called ''coxilhas'' () in Portuguese and ''cuchillas'' () in Spanish, and it is the most typical landscape of the countryside areas in the northern parts of the Pampas. The highest elevations of the Pampas region are found in the
Sierra de la Ventana mountains, in the southern part of Buenos Aires Province, with 1,239 m (4,065 ft) at the summit of
Cerro Tres Picos
Cerro Tres Picos is the highest point of the Sierra de la Ventana mountain range in the province of Buenos Aires. As such, it is also the highest point in Buenos Aires province, as well as in the pampas region.
Geography
Location
The mountain ...
.
Climates
The climate of the Pampas is generally temperate, gradually giving way to a more
humid subtropical climate
A humid subtropical climate is a zone of climate characterized by hot and humid summers, and cool to mild winters. These climates normally lie on the southeast side of all continents (except Antarctica), generally between latitudes 25° and 40° ...
in the north (''Cfa'', according to the
Köppen climate classification); a cold
semi-arid climate (''BSk'') on the southern and western fringes (like
San Luis Province, western La Pampa Province and southern Buenos Aires Province); and an
oceanic climate
An oceanic climate, also known as a marine climate, is the humid temperate climate sub-type in Köppen classification ''Cfb'', typical of west coasts in higher middle latitudes of continents, generally featuring cool summers and mild winters ( ...
(''Cfb'') in the southeastern part (in the regions of
Mar del Plata
Mar del Plata is a city on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It is the seat of General Pueyrredón district. Mar del Plata is the second largest city in Buenos Aires Province. The name "Mar del Plata" is a s ...
, Tandil and the Sierra de la Ventana mountains, Argentina). Summer temperatures are more uniform than winter temperatures, generally ranging from during the day. However, most cities in the Pampas occasionally have high temperatures that push , as occurs when warm, dry, northerly winds blow from southern Brazil, northern Argentina or
Paraguay. Autumn arrives gradually in March and peaks in April and May. In April, highs range from and lows from . The first frosts arrive in mid-April in the south and late May or early June in the north.
Winters are generally mild, but cold waves often occur. Typical temperatures range from during the day, and from at night. With strong northerly winds, days of over can be recorded almost everywhere, and during cold waves, high temperatures can be only . Frost occurs everywhere in the Pampas, but it is much more frequent in the southwest than around the Parana and Uruguay Rivers. Temperatures under can occur everywhere, but values of or lower are confined to the south and west. Snow almost never falls in the northernmost third and is rare and light elsewhere, except for exceptional events in which depths have reached . Springs are very variable; it is warmer than fall in most areas (especially in the west) but significantly colder along the Atlantic. Violent storms are more common as well as wide temperature variations: days of can give way to nights of under or even frost, all within only a few days.
Precipitation ranges from in the northeast to about or less in the southern and western edges. It is highly seasonal in the West, with some places recording averages of 120 mm (4.7 in) monthly in the summer, and only 20 millimeters (0.8 in) monthly in the winter. The eastern areas have small peaks in the fall and the spring, with relatively rainy summers and winters that are only slightly drier. However, where summer rain falls as short, heavy storms, winter rain falls mostly as cold drizzle, and so the amount of rainy days is fairly constant. Very intense
thunderstorms are common in the spring and summer, and it has among the most frequent lightning and highest
convective
Convection is single or multiphase fluid flow that occurs spontaneously due to the combined effects of material property heterogeneity and body forces on a fluid, most commonly density and gravity (see buoyancy). When the cause of the convect ...
cloud tops in the world. The severe thunderstorms produce intense
hail
Hail is a form of solid precipitation. It is distinct from ice pellets (American English "sleet"), though the two are often confused. It consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is called a hailstone. Ice pellets generally fal ...
storms, both
floods and
flash flood
A flash flood is a rapid flooding of low-lying areas: washes, rivers, dry lakes and depressions. It may be caused by heavy rain associated with a severe thunderstorm, hurricane, or tropical storm, or by meltwater from ice or snow flowing o ...
s, and the most consistently active
tornado region outside the central and southeastern US.
Climate charts
Climate charts for different locations of the Pampas:
Wildlife
Human activity has caused major changes to the wildlife of the Pampas.
Most big or medium sized species such as the
puma
Puma or PUMA may refer to:
Animals
* ''Puma'' (genus), a genus in the family Felidae
** Puma (species) or cougar, a large cat
Businesses and organisations
* Puma (brand), a multinational shoe and sportswear company
* Puma Energy, a mid- and d ...
,
rhea,
Capybara
The capybaraAlso called capivara (in Brazil), capiguara (in Bolivia), chigüire, chigüiro, or fercho (in Colombia and Venezuela), carpincho (in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) and ronsoco (in Peru). or greater capybara (''Hydrochoerus hydro ...
,
plains viscacha,
maned wolf,
marsh deer and
Pampas deer have
lost their habitats especially due to the spread of agriculture and
ranching, and are only present in very few relicts of the pampas. Other species, such as the
Jaguar
The jaguar (''Panthera onca'') is a large cat species and the only living member of the genus '' Panthera'' native to the Americas. With a body length of up to and a weight of up to , it is the largest cat species in the Americas and the th ...
and the
Guanaco have been extirpated completely from this habitat.
Mammals that are still fairly present include
Brazilian guinea pig,
southern mountain cavy
The southern mountain cavy (''Microcavia australis'') is a species of South American rodent in the family Caviidae.
Description
Southern mountain cavies are tailless rodents with short, speckled, greyish-yellow fur, fading to pale grey on the un ...
,
coypu,
Pampas fox
The Pampas fox (''Lycalopex gymnocercus''), also known as grey pampean fox, Pampas zorro, Azara's fox, or Azara's zorro (in Spanish also called , anglicized as aguarachay, in Portuguese also called ), is a medium-sized zorro, or "false" fox, na ...
,
Geoffroy's cat,
lesser grison
The lesser grison (''Galictis cuja'') is a species of mustelid from South America.
Description
Lesser grisons have a long, slender body, short legs, and a bushy tail. They have a long neck and a small head with a flattened forehead and rounded ea ...
,
white-eared opossum
The white-eared opossum (''Didelphis albiventris''), known as the timbu in Brazil and comadreja overa in Argentina, is an opossum species found in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. It is a terrestrial and, sometimes, arboreal a ...
,
Molina's hog-nosed skunk,
big lutrine opossum
The big lutrine opossum (''Lutreolina crassicaudata''), also known as the little water opossum, comadreja colorada, thick-tailed opossum, or coligrueso is an opossum species from South America in the genus ''Lutreolina''.
Description
The big ...
,
big hairy armadillo
The big (or large) hairy armadillo (''Chaetophractus villosus'') is one of the largest and most numerous armadillos in South America. It lives from sea level to altitudes of up to 1,300 meters across the southern portion of South America, and c ...
and
southern long-nosed armadillo
The southern long-nosed armadillo (''Dasypus hybridus'') is a species of armadillo native to South America.
Description
Among the smallest of the long-nosed armadillos, individuals of the southern species measure about in head-body length, wit ...
.
Bird species of the pampas are
ruddy-headed goose,
pampas meadowlark
The Pampas meadowlark (''Leistes defilippii'') is a species of bird in the family Icteridae. It is found in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.
Its natural habitats are temperate shrubland, pampas grassland, subtropical or tropical dry lowland gras ...
,
hudsonian godwit
The Hudsonian godwit (''Limosa haemastica'') is a large shorebird in the sandpiper family, Scolopacidae. The genus name ''Limosa'' is from Latin and means "muddy", from ''limus'', "mud". The specific ''haemastica'' is from Ancient Greek and means ...
,
maguari stork,
white-faced ibis
The white-faced ibis (''Plegadis chihi'') is a wading bird in the ibis family, Threskiornithidae.
This species breeds colonially in marshes, usually nesting in bushes or low trees. Its breeding range extends from the western United States south ...
,
white-winged coot,
southern screamer,
dot-winged crake
The dot-winged crake (''Laterallus spiloptera'') is a Vulnerable species of bird in subfamily Rallinae of family Rallidae, the rails, gallinules, and coots.HBW and BirdLife International (2021) Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife In ...
,
curve-billed reedhaunter
The curve-billed reedhaunter (''Limnornis curvirostris'') is a species of bird in the family Furnariidae. It is found in marshy areas of north-eastern Argentina, south-eastern Brazil, and Uruguay. It occupies a similar ecological niche to some ...
,
burrowing owl and the rhea.
Invasive species include the
European hare,
wild boar and
house sparrow
The house sparrow (''Passer domesticus'') is a bird of the sparrow family Passeridae, found in most parts of the world. It is a small bird that has a typical length of and a mass of . Females and young birds are coloured pale brown and grey, a ...
.
File:Venado-Campo-UY-Ozotoceros bezoarticus.jpg, Pampas deer
File:Lycalopex gymnocercus.jpg, Pampas fox
File:Greater rhea (Rhea americana).JPG, Rhea
File:Southern screamer (Chauna torquata).JPG, Southern screamer
Vegetation
Historically, frequent
wildfires ensured that only small plants such as
grasses flourished, while
trees were less common. The dominant
vegetation types are grassy
prairie and grass
steppe
In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes.
Steppe biomes may include:
* the montane grasslands and shrublands biome
* the temperate grasslands, ...
, in which numerous species of the grass genus ''
Stipa'' are particularly conspicuous. "Pampas grass" (''
Cortaderia selloana'') is an iconic species of the Pampas. Vegetation typically includes perennial grasses and
herb
In general use, herbs are a widely distributed and widespread group of plants, excluding vegetables and other plants consumed for macronutrients, with savory or aromatic properties that are used for flavoring and garnishing food, for medicinal ...
s. Different strata of grasses occur because of gradients of water availability.
The
World Wildlife Fund divides the Pampas into three distinct
ecoregions
An ecoregion (ecological region) or ecozone (ecological zone) is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of l ...
. The
Uruguayan Savanna
The Uruguayan savanna, also known as the Brazilian-Uruguayan savanna, is a subtropical grassland and savanna ecoregion which includes all of Uruguay and southernmost Brazil, along with portions of Argentina along the Uruguay River, In Brazil, th ...
lies east of the
Paraná River
The Paraná River ( es, Río Paraná, links=no , pt, Rio Paraná, gn, Ysyry Parana) is a river in south-central South America, running through Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina for some ."Parana River". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Br ...
, and includes all of Uruguay, most of Entre Ríos and
Corrientes provinces in Argentina, and the southern portion of Brazil's state of Rio Grande do Sul. The
Humid Pampas
The Humid Pampas ( es, Pampa Húmeda) is an extensive ecoregion of flat, fertile grassland of loessic origin in Argentina. It has a precipitation average of 900 mm per year, in contrast with the Dry Pampas to the west, which average less than ...
include eastern Buenos Aires Province, and southern Entre Ríos Province. The
Semiarid Pampas includes western Buenos Aires Province and adjacent portions of Santa Fe, Córdoba, and La Pampa provinces. The Pampas are bounded by the drier
Argentine Espinal
The Espinal (NT0801) is an ecoregion of dry, thorny forest, savanna and steppe in Argentina. It has been extensively modified by large scale cattle ranching, but remnants of the original flora remain. It is threatened by the advance of the irriga ...
grasslands, which form a semicircle around the north, west, and south of the Humid Pampas.
Winters are cold to mild, and summers are hot and humid. Rainfall is fairly uniform throughout the year but is a little heavier during the summer. Annual rainfall is heaviest near the coast and decreases gradually further inland. Rain during the late spring and summer usually arrives in the form of brief heavy showers and thunderstorms. More general rainfall occurs the remainder of the year as
cold fronts and storm systems move through. Although cold spells during the winter often send nighttime temperatures below freezing,
snow is quite rare. In most winters, a few light snowfalls occur over inland areas.
Central Argentina boasts a successful agricultural business, with crops grown on the Pampas south and west of
Buenos Aires. Much of the area is also used for
cattle, and more recently, to cultivate vineyards in the
Buenos Aires wine region. The area is also used for farming honey using European
honeybees
A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect within the genus ''Apis'' of the bee clade, all native to Afro-Eurasia. After bees spread naturally throughout Africa and Eurasia, humans became responsible for the current cosmo ...
. These farming regions are particularly susceptible to
flooding during the thunderstorms. The weather averages out to be 60 °F (16 °C) year-round in the Pampas.
Population
*
**
Buenos Aires 17,196,396
**
Córdoba 3,683,937
**
Santa Fe 3,481,514
**
City of Buenos Aires 3,068,043
**
Entre Ríos 1,360,443
**
La Pampa
La Pampa () is a sparsely populated province of Argentina, located in the Pampas in the center of the country. Neighboring provinces are from the north clockwise San Luis, Córdoba, Buenos Aires, Río Negro, Neuquén and Mendoza.
History
I ...
352,378
*
**
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul (, , ; "Great River of the South") is a Federative units of Brazil, state in the South Region, Brazil, southern region of Brazil. It is the Federative_units_of_Brazil#List, fifth-most-populous state and the List of Brazilian st ...
11,247,972
*
**
All departments 3,518,552
*Total Population 43,909,235
Immigration
Starting in the 1840s but intensifying after the 1880s, European immigrants began to migrate to the Pampas, first as part of government-sponsored colonization schemes to settle the land and later as tenant farmers "working as either a sharecropper or as paid laborers for absentee landowners"
[Meade, Teresa A. History of modern Latin America: 1800 to the present. Wiley Blackwell, 2016.] in an attempt to make a living for themselves.
However, many immigrants eventually moved to more permanent employment in cities, as industrialization picked up after the 1930s. As a result, Argentina's history of immigration in Buenos Aires Province is typically associated with cities and urban life, unlike in Entre Ríos Province and Santa Fe Province, where European immigration took on a more rural profile.
See also
*
Dry Pampa
*
Estancia
An estancia is a large, private plot of land used for farming or raising cattle or sheep. Estancias in the southern South American grasslands, the ''pampas'', have historically been estates used to raise livestock, such as cattle or sheep. In Pu ...
*
Federal University of Pampa
*
Gaucho
*
Humid Pampas
The Humid Pampas ( es, Pampa Húmeda) is an extensive ecoregion of flat, fertile grassland of loessic origin in Argentina. It has a precipitation average of 900 mm per year, in contrast with the Dry Pampas to the west, which average less than ...
*
José Froilán González - the "Pampas Bull"
*
Luis Ángel Firpo - the "Wild Bull of Las Pampas"
*
Médanos (dunes)
*
Médanos wines
*
Riograndense Republic
The Riograndense Republic, often called the Piratini Republic ( pt, República Rio-Grandense or ), was a ''de facto'' state that seceded from the Empire of Brazil and roughly coincided with the present state of Rio Grande do Sul. It was procla ...
*
Southern Cone
The Southern Cone ( es, Cono Sur, pt, Cone Sul) is a geographical and cultural subregion composed of the southernmost areas of South America, mostly south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Traditionally, it covers Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, bou ...
*
South American jaguar
References
External links
"The Pampas"in the ''
Encyclopædia Britannica''
{{Authority control
Agriculture in Argentina
Climate of Argentina
Ecoregions of Argentina
Ecoregions of Brazil
Ecoregions of South America
Environment of Rio Grande do Sul
Grasslands of Argentina
Grasslands of Brazil
Grasslands of South America
Grasslands of Uruguay
Landforms of Buenos Aires Province
Landforms of Córdoba Province, Argentina
Landforms of Entre Ríos Province
Landforms of La Pampa Province
Landforms of Rio Grande do Sul
Landforms of Santa Fe Province
Landforms of Uruguay
Natural history of Uruguay
Natural regions of South America
Neotropical ecoregions
Physiographic provinces
Plains of Argentina
Plains of Brazil
Plains of South America
Quechua words and phrases
Regions of Argentina
Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands