El Ranco Provincelaw 20.294 /ref> ( es, link=no, Provincia del Ranco) is one of two
provinces
A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...
of the southern
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
an
region
In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics ( physical geography), human impact characteristics ( human geography), and the interaction of humanity an ...
Ranco Lake
Ranco Lake ( es, Lago Ranco) is located in Ranco Province of Chile. It is the largest lake of Los Ríos Region and the fourth largest in Chile. Administratively Ranco Lake is split into three communes; La Unión, Futrono and Lago Ranco. The l ...
shared by the
communes
An intentional community is a voluntary residential community which is designed to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork from the start. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, relig ...
Bueno River
Bueno River (Spanish: ''Río Bueno'') is a river in southern Chile. It originates in Ranco Lake and like most of Chile rivers it drains into the Pacific Ocean at the southern boundary of the Valdivian Coastal Reserve. Its lower flow forms the bo ...
, on which basin lies most of the province. La Unión is the provincial capital.
Administration
As a second-level
administrative division
Administrative division, administrative unit,Article 3(1). country subdivision, administrative region, subnational entity, constituent state, as well as many similar terms, are generic names for geographical areas into which a particular, ind ...
, the province comprises four communes, each with its own governing municipality. Alsono Pérez de Arce Carrasco is the provincial governor.
National Statistics Institute National Institute of Statistics may refer to:
*National Institute of Statistics of Bolivia
*National Institute of Statistics of Cambodia
*National Institute of Statistics and Census of Costa Rica
*National Institute of Statistics and Census of Nica ...
(''INE''), the province spans an area of and had a population of 97,153 inhabitants (49,485 men and 47,668 women), giving it a population density of . Of these, 51,273 (52.8%) lived in urban areas and 45,880 (47.2%) in rural areas. Between the 1992 and 2002 censuses, the population grew by 1% (924 persons).