The Sierra Madre de Chiapas is a major

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have arise ...

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

. It crosses El Salvador, Guatemala,

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 ...

and Honduras. The Sierra Madre de Chiapas is part of the American Cordillera, a chain of mountain ranges that consists of an almost continuous sequence of mountain ranges that form the western "backbone" of North America,

, and

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 ...

Geography

The range runs northwest–southeast from the state of Chiapas in

, across western Guatemala, into El Salvador and Honduras. Most of the

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the Crust (geology), crust of a Planet#Planetary-mass objects, planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and volcanic gas, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Ear ...

es of Guatemala, part of the

Central America Volcanic Arc The Central American Volcanic Arc (often abbreviated to CAVA) is a chain of volcanoes which extends parallel to the Pacific coastline of the Central American Isthmus, from Mexico to Panama. This volcanic arc, which has a length of 1,100 kilometer ...

, are within the range. A narrow coastal plain lies south of the range, between the Sierra Madre and 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 contin ...

. To the north lie a series of highlands and depressions, including the Chiapas Depression, which separates the Sierra Madre from the Chiapas Plateau, the

Guatemalan Highlands The Guatemalan Highlands is an upland region in southern Guatemala, lying between the Sierra Madre de Chiapas to the south and the Petén lowlands to the north. Description The highlands are made up of a series of high valleys enclosed by mou ...

, and Honduras' interior highlands. The range forms the main drainage divide between the Pacific and Atlantic river systems. On the Pacific side the distance to the sea is short, and the streams, while very numerous, are consequently small and rapid. A few of the streams of the Pacific slopes rise in the

, and force a way through the Sierra Madre at the bottom of deep ravines. On the eastern side a number of the rivers of the Atlantic slopes attain a considerable volume and size. The Sierra Madre de Chiapas moist forests ecoregion covers the southern slopes of the mountains. The mountains intercept winds from the Pacific, creating fog, clouds, and

orographic precipitation Orography is the study of the topographic relief of mountains, and can more broadly include hills, and any part of a region's elevated terrain. Orography (also known as ''oreography'', ''orology'' or ''oreology'') falls within the broader discip ...

that sustain the ecoregion's cloud forests. The

Central American pine–oak forests The Central American pine–oak forests is a tropical and subtropical coniferous forests ecoregion in the mountains of northern Central America and Chiapas state in southern Mexico. Setting The Central American pine–oak forests occupy an are ...

ecoregion covers the Sierra's high peaks and northern slopes.

Regional names

It is known near Guatemala city as the Sierra de las Nubes, and enters Mexico as the Sierra de Istatan. Its summit is not a well-defined crest, but is often rounded or flattened into a table-land. The direction of the great volcanic cones, which rise in an irregular line above it, is not identical with the main axis of the Sierra itself, except near the Mexican frontier, but has a more southerly trend, especially towards El Salvador.

Volcanoes

The base of many of the volcanic igneous peaks rests among the southern foothills in the southern region of the range. It is, however, impossible to subdivide the Sierra Madre into a northern and a volcanic chain; for the volcanoes are isolated by stretches of comparatively low country; at least thirteen considerable streams flow down between them, from the main watershed to the sea. Viewed from the coast, the volcanic cones seem to rise directly from the central heights of the Sierra Madre, above which they tower; but in reality their bases are, as a rule, farther south. East of Volcán Tacana (4,092 metres) which marks the Mexican frontier, the principal volcanoes are

Tajumulco Tajumulco is a municipality in the San Marcos department of Guatemala. History Colonial era In 1690, Tejutla had a large area and included the modern municipalities of Comitancillo, Ixchiguán, Concepción Tutuapa, Sipacapa, Sibinal, Taju ...

(4,220 meters); Santa Maria (3,777 meters), which was in eruption during 1902, after centuries of quiescence, in which its slopes had been overgrown by dense forests; Atitlan (3,557 meters), overlooking Lake Atitlan; Acatenango (3,976 meters); Fuego (i.e. "fire," 3,763 metres), which received its name from its activity at the time of the Spanish conquest; Agua (i.e. "water," 3,765 meters), so named in 1541 because it destroyed the former capital of Guatemala with a deluge of water from its flooded crater; and Pacaya (2,550 metres), a group of igneous peaks which were in eruption in 1870. East of the Guatemalan border, the range forms the boundary between El Salvador and Honduras. In El Salvador, the volcanoes form a line well south of the range, where over twenty volcanoes form five clusters. Between the Sierra Madre and the Volcanic line lies a central plateau.

References

*{{cite EB1911 , wstitle=Chiapas , volume=6 , page=117 Madre de Chiapas Madre de Chiapas Central America Volcanic Arc Landforms of Chiapas Quetzaltenango Department Sacatepéquez Department San Marcos Department Sololá Department Geography of Mesoamerica Natural history of Chiapas Pacific Coast of Mexico Central American pine–oak forests

Geography

Regional names

Volcanoes

See also

References