9781422286432

“Land of Waters” 11

Floodwaters sweep through the rain forest in Guyana. The rain forest covers three-quarters of the country’s land area.

Three Regions The land of Guyana can be divided into three main ecological regions: a savanna , an equatorial rain forest, and a coastal plain. The Rupununi Savannas, a region of grassy plains, lie in the far south- west portion of Guyana—the furthest region from the Atlantic Ocean. The flat, grassy land of the Rapununi Savannas is still used by some cattle ranch- ers. One mountainous area, the Kanuku Mountains, is part of this region. Native people farm some of the land at the foot of the mountain range. The equatorial rain forest makes up more than three-fourths of the land area of Guyana. (A tropical rain forest is a woodland that receives at least 100 inches, or 254 centimeters, of rainfall annually.) It runs from the far south up