Swapland

The Swampland is an ecosystem with about 230 thousand km², placed in the south of Mato Grosso and in the northwest of Mato Grosso of the South, both States of Brazil, besides also to include the north of Paraguay and east of Bolivia (that is called of Bolivian chaco), considered by UNESCO World Natural Patrimony and he/she Reserves of the Biosphere.
The Swampland matogrossense is one of the largest continuous humid extensions of the planet and it is located in the center of South America, in the basin hidrográfica of High Paraguay. Its area is of 138.183 km², with 65% of its territory in the state of Mato Grosso of the South and 35% in Mato Grosso. The area is an alluvial plain influenced by rivers that drenam the basin of High Paraguay, where it is developed a fauna and flora of rare beauty and abundance, influenced by four great biomas: Amazônia, Closed, Chaco and Atlantic forest. For its characteristics and importance this area was recognized by UNESCO, in the year 2000, as Reservation of the Biosphere, for being one of the most exuberant and diversified natural reservations of the Earth.
The river Paraguay and its tributaries travel the Swampland, forming extensive flooded areas that serve as shelter for many fish, as the colored, the gilding, the pacu, and also of animals, as the alligators, the capivaras and ariranhas, among other species. Many threatened of extinction animals in another parts of Brazil still possess vigorous populations in the area pantaneira, as the deer-do-swampland, the capivara, the tuiuiú and the alligator.
Due to low declividade of this plain in the sense north-south and east-west, the water that it drops in the heads of the river Paraguay, gets to spend four months or more to cross the whole Swampland. The ecosystems are caraterizados for closed and cerradões without periodic alagamento, fields flooded and set aquatic, as ponds of fresh water or salobra, rivers, vazantes and corixos. The climate is hot and humid, in the summer, and cold and dry, in the winter. Most of the soils of the Swampland is sandy and they support native pastagens used by the native herbivores and for the bovine cattle, introduced by the settlers of the area. Worried with the conservation of the Swampland Embrapa it installed, in 1975, in Corumbá, an unit of research for the area, with the objective of adapting, to develop and to transfer technologies for the sustained use of its natural resources. The researches he/she/it began with the pecuária bovine, main economic activity and, today, besides the pecuária, it embraces the most several areas, as vegetable, fishing resources, faunísticos and hídricos, climatology, soils, evaluation of the impacts caused by the human activities and partner-economy. The Swampland is a plain of approximately 230 thousand km², measure esteemed by the specialists that explain that difficultly it can be established an exact calculation of its dimensions, for in several points to be very difficult to establish where it begins and where finishes the Swampland and the areas that surround it, besides to each closing of cycle of drought stations and of waters the Swampland modifies.
The Brazilian portion is esteemed in about 150 thousand km² (60% in Mato Grosso of the South and 40% in Mato Grosso). Considered one of the largest plains of sedimentação of the planet, the Swampland extends for Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina, countries in that it receives other denominations, being Chaco the more acquaintance.
In that it weighs the name, there is a reduced number of marshy areas in the area pantaneira. Actually, it is an immense plain, divided in ten different sub-areas in Brazil, calls of swamplands: Cáceres, in the northwest; Poconé, in the north; Baron of Melgaço, in the northeast; Paraguay, in the west; Paiaguás or Taquari, in the center Nhecolândia, also in the center; Abobral, in the center-south; Aquidauana, in the east; Miranda, in the southeast; Nabileque, in the south.
Its constitution, only in the planet, it is resulted of the separation of the ocean there are millions of years, forming what one can call interior sea. The plain is waved slightly, stippled by rare isolated elevations, generally calls of mountains and hills, and rich in shallow depressions. Its limits are marked for varied systems of elevations as plated, mountains and massive, and it is cut by great amount of rivers of the most varied loads, all belonging to Rio Paraguay's Basin—the main ones are the rivers Cuiabá, Piquiri, São Lourenço, Taquari, Aquidauana, Miranda and Apa. The Swampland is surrounded, on the Brazilian side (north, east and southeast) for altitude lands between 600 and 700 meters; he/she extends to west until the buttresses of the mountain range of the you Walk and he/she is prolonged to the south for the plains central pampeanas.
The Swampland lives under the design of the waters: there, the rain divides the life in two very different periods. During the months of the drought—of May to October, approximately—, the landscape suffers radical changes: in lowering of the waters, they are discovered fields, banks of sand, islands and the rivers retake its natural beds, but not always following the course of the previous period. The waters are slippery for the depressions of the land, forming the corixos (channels that tie the waters of bays, ponds, flooded etc. with the close rivers).
In the covered extensive fields predominantly for gramíneas and vegetation of closed, the surface water gets to make scarce, limiting to the perennial rivers, with defined bed, to great close ponds to those rivers, calls of bays, and to some smaller ponds and taken a bath in areas more drops of the plain. In many local, he/she becomes necessary to appeal to underground waters, of the sheet freático or aqüíferos, being used manual bombs and or played by wind mills to guarantee the supply to the dwellings and bebedouros of domestic animals.
The first rains of the station drop on a dry and porous soil and they are absorbed easily. Of November to April the rains drop torrential in the heads of the rivers of the Basin of Paraguay, to the north. With the constant umedecimento of the earth, the plain quickly becomes green due to the rebrotação of countless resistant species to the lack of water of the precedent months. That great increase newspaper of the net hídrica in the Swampland, the low declividade of the plain and the difficulty of escoamento of the waters for the alagamento of the soil, they are responsible for floods in the lowest areas, forming bays of hundreds of square kilometers, what checks to the area an aspect of immense interior sea.
The cloudburst elevates the level of the permanent bays, it creates other, it overflows the rivers and it floods the fields in I spill it, and isolated hills stand out as true islands covered with vegetation—groupings of those islands are called mountain ranges by the pantaneiros—in the islands and mountain ranges the animals one takes refuge shelter in search of against the ascent of the waters.
In that time he/she becomes difficult to travel for the Swampland because a lot of highways are flooded and impassable. People's transport, animals and of goods it can only be done in the loin of load animals and embarkations—many rural properties and povoações (also known as corrutelas) located in low areas they are isolated of the centers of provisioning and the access to them, a lot of times, it can only be done by ship or airplane.
With the ascent of the waters, great amount of organic matter is carried by the current and transported at considerable distances. Represented, mainly, for masses of flotation and marginal vegetation and for dead animals in the enchente, those remains, during the vazante, they are deposited at the margins and beaches of the rivers, ponds and taken a bath and, after fast decomposição, they start to constitute the element fertilizador of the soil, capable to guarantee the enormous diversity of vegetable types there existent.
For among the varied vegetation they meet countless species of animals, adapted to that area of such contradictory aspects. That immense life variety, translated in constant movement in ways, colors and sounds is one of the most beautiful shows of the Earth. Because of that alternation among dry and humid periods, the landscape pantaneira is never the same, moving every year: beds of the rivers change its plans; the great bays alter its drawings.