PATAGONIA

Herd of guanacos in eastern Patagonia, Valds Peninsula, Argentina. semiarid, scrub plateau in southern Argentina. It is the largest desert in the Americas, with an area of about 260,000 sq mi (673,000 sq km). Its approximate boundaries are the Ro Colorado in the north, the Atlantic Ocean in the east, the Ro Coig in the south, and the Andes in the west. The following article summarizes information about Patagonia; for full details, see South America: Patagonia. The Patagonian tableland is a region of vast, steppe-like (virtually treeless) plains. Along the Ro Negro, the land rises westward in a series of fairly level plains from about 300 ft (90 m) at the Atlantic coast to about 3,000 ft at the base of the Andes. South of the Ro Negro, the plains are more irregular. The Atlantic coast consists largely of high cliffs separated from the sea by a narrow coastal plain. Basaltic sheets cover the tableland east of Lakes Buenos Aires and Pueyrredn. Areas of hilly land are composed of resistant crystalline rocks. The deep, wide valleys bordered by high cliffs that cut the tableland from west to east are all beds of rivers including the Colorado, Negro, Chubut, Chico, and Santa Cruz, that flow from the Andes to the Atlantic. The northern zone of Patagonia is semiarid, with annual mean temperatures between 54 and 68 F (12 and 20 C); the rainfall varies from 4 to 17 in. (101 to 432 mm) annually. The southern zone has a cold, dry climate, with temperatures that are higher along the coast than they are inland and with strong west winds. The northern zone consists primarily of open bushland. Grasses flourish in the sandy areas, and irrigated crops including peaches, plums, almond, grapes, vegetables, and alfalfa are grown in the valleys. The varied animal life includes guanaco, llama, fox, skunk, mountain cats, puma, eagle, sparrow hawk, and a wide variety of snakes and lizards. Among the Patagonia's important natural resources are petroleum around Comodoro Rivadavia, Plaza Huincul, and Cartriel; iron ore at Sierra Grande in Ro Negro province; copper in Neuqun province; and uranium and manganese in Chubut province. The Southern and Central Andes and Patagonia. semiarid scrub plateau that covers nearly all of the southern portion of mainland Argentina. With an area of about 260,000 square miles (673,000 square kilometres), it constitutes a vast area of steppe and desert that extends from latitude 37 to 51 S. It is bounded, approximately, by the Patagonian Andes to the west, the Colorado River to the north (except where the region extends north of the river into the Andean borderlands), the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Strait of Magellan to the south; the region south of the straitTierra del Fuego, which is divided between Argentina and Chilealso is often included in Patagonia. The name Patagonia is said to be derived from Patagones, as the Tehuelche Indians, the region's original inhabitants, were called by 16th-century Spanish explorers. According to one account, Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese navigator who led the first European expedition into the area, coined that name because the appearance of the Tehuelche reminded him of Patagon, a dog-headed monster in the 16th-century Spanish romance Amads of Gaul. Additional reading Literature in English for Patagonia is scarce. Discussions can be found in the relevant sections of Herbert Wilhelmy and Wilhelm Rohmeder, Die La Plata Lnder: Argentinien, Paraguay, Uruguay (1963); and Preston E. James, Latin America, 4th ed. (1969); and in Philip Caraman, The Lost Paradise: An Account of the Jesuits in Paraguay, 16071768 (1975); and Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia (1977, reprinted 1988). Kempton E. Webb