The Río Verde is a river in the state of
Oaxaca
Oaxaca ( , also , , from nci, Huāxyacac ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca), is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of Mexico. It is ...
in
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
. It is formed by the confluence of the
Atoyaquillo and Colorado Rivers near the village of
Santiago Ixtayutla
Santiago Ixtayutla is a town and municipality in Oaxaca in south-western Mexico.
It is located in the Jamiltepec District in the west of the Costa Region
The Costa Region or Costa Chica lies on the Pacific coast of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, s ...
and flows south to its mouth at El Azufre on the
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
, on the western border of
Lagunas de Chacahua National Park
The Lagunas de Chacahuan National Park ( es, Parque Nacional Lagunas de Chacahua), created in 1937,
is a national park located in the Municipality of ChineseVilla de Tututepec de Melchor Ocampo in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, about 54 km w ...
. Its major tributary is the
Atoyac, which drains the
Oaxaca Valley
The Central Valleys ( es, Valles Centrales) of Oaxaca, also simply known as the Oaxaca Valley, is a geographic region located within the modern-day state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. In an administrative context, it has been defined as comprising ...
and flows into the Río Verde at
Paso de la Reina, where a proposal to build a large
hydroelectric
Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined and ...
dam project has been opposed by local communities. The combined length of the Atoyac and lower Verde rivers is and the river system as a whole drains a
watershed of , which has a mean natural
surface runoff
Surface runoff (also known as overland flow) is the flow of water occurring on the ground surface when excess rainwater, stormwater, meltwater, or other sources, can no longer sufficiently rapidly infiltrate in the soil. This can occur when th ...
of per year.
[ The watershed covers almost a fifth of Oaxaca state and is home to over a third of its population, and faces serious degradation issues as a result of pollution and ]overexploitation
Overexploitation, also called overharvesting, refers to harvesting a renewable resource to the point of diminishing returns. Continued overexploitation can lead to the destruction of the resource, as it will be unable to replenish. The term app ...
.
Well-studied Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. W ...
n civilizations flourished in the valleys of Oaxaca, Ejutla and Nochixtlán, all of which lie in the Verde–Atoyac basin. The floodplains of the lower Río Verde valley also began to support large populations and complex society in the Late Formative period
Several chronologies in the archaeology of the Americas include a Formative Period or Formative stage etc. It is often sub-divided, for example into "Early", "Middle" and "Late" stages.
The Formative is the third of five stages defined by Gord ...
(400–100 BC).Classic period
Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian (first human habitation until 3500 BCE); the Archaic (before 2600 BCE), the Preclassic or Formative (2500 BCE –&nbs ...
(550–800 AD).[ In the ]Postclassic period
Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian (first human habitation until 3500 BCE); the Archaic (before 2600 BCE), the Preclassic or Formative (2500 BCE – ...
development shifted away from the floodplains to the city-state of Tututepec
Tututepec is a Mesoamerican archaeological site. It is located in the lower Río Verde valley on the coast of Oaxaca that formed the nucleus of an extensive Mixtec state during the Late Postclassic period (ca. 12th to early 16th centuries). At i ...
, located in the foothills about 16 km east of Río Viejo.[
In the context of ]freshwater fish
Freshwater fish are those that spend some or all of their lives in fresh water, such as rivers and lakes, with a salinity of less than 1.05%. These environments differ from marine conditions in many ways, especially the difference in levels of s ...
biogeography
Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities often vary in a regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, ...
, the Verde–Atoyac basin is considered the southern extent of the Nearctic realm
The Nearctic realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting the Earth's land surface.
The Nearctic realm covers most of North America, including Greenland, Central Florida, and the highlands of Mexico. The parts of North America t ...
on the Pacific coast.
Hydroelectric plant
At least five activists were murdered in 2021
File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October–November 2021 ...
for their opposition to the construction of a hydroelectric plant on the river.
References
{{reflist, 30em
Rivers of Oaxaca