Colombia

Relief

Few countries boast such striking physical variety as does Colombia. Its broken, rugged topography, together with its location near the Equator, creates an extraordinary diversity of climates, vegetation, soils, and crops. The Andean cordillera, one of the world’s great mountain ranges, dominates the landscape of the western part of the country, where most of the people live. North of the border with Ecuador the cordillera flares out into three distinct parallel ranges. Two great river valleys, those of the Magdalena and the Cauca, separate them and provide avenues of penetration from the Atlantic coastal lowlands into the heart of the country. Volcanic activity in the geologic past blocked the middle course of the Cauca River to form a great lake that once filled the western inter-Andean trough for some 120 miles (190 km) south of Cartago. The river eventually broke through the dam to leave the level floor of the Cauca valley at some 3,000 feet (900 metres) above sea level; today it is one of the nation’s most productive agricultural areas.

The Colombian cordilleras belong to the northern portion of the great Andean mountain system, which extends along the Pacific coast of South America. The Andes are among the world’s most youthful mountain ranges and among the highest. The geologic history of this northern sector is less well understood than that of the central and southern parts. It is clear, however, that the entire cordillera has been thrust up through the subduction of the crumpled eastern margin of the Nazca Plate and, to the north, the Caribbean Plate under the more rigid but lighter South American Plate, which has been forced westward by the spreading Atlantic seafloor. These tectonic forces, similar to those found elsewhere around the Pacific Rim, continue to operate, as is evidenced by the high frequency of often destructive earthquakes. At the Pasto Massif, near the Ecuadoran border, the mountains divide into the Cordillera Occidental (“Western Range”), which runs parallel to the Pacific coast, and the Cordillera Central (“Central Range”), which, with its numerous volcanoes, forms the backbone of the system in Colombia and runs generally southwest to northeast. At the Great Colombian Massif of the Cordillera Central, near the San Agustín Archeological Park, the Cordillera Oriental (“Eastern Range”) branches off in a more decidedly northeasterly direction.

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Of the three ranges, the nonvolcanic Cordillera Occidental, which forms the barrier between the Cauca valley and the rain-drenched Pacific coast, is the lowest and least populated. Two passes at elevations less than 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) between Cali and Buenaventura on the Pacific coast mark the lowest depressions in the range. Elsewhere the crest is much higher, reaching 12,992 feet (3,960 metres) at Mount Paramillo in the department of Antioquia. From there the Cordillera Occidental fingers north into the three distinct serranías of Abibe, San Jerónimo, and Ayapel, forested ranges that drop gradually toward the piedmont plains of the Caribbean littoral. A lesser topographic feature on the Pacific coast is the Baudó Mountains, separated from the Cordillera Occidental by the valley of the Atrato River, which empties into the Caribbean Gulf of Urabá; the Baudó Mountains represent a southward extension of the Isthmus of Panama.

The Cordillera Central is the highest of the Andean ranges of Colombia, rising to an average height of 10,000 feet (3,000 metres). It is a continuation of the Ecuadoran volcanic structure. Crystalline rocks are exposed at several places on its flanks and are the foci of localized gold and silver deposits. Sandstones and shales of the Paleogene and Neogene periods (about 65 to 2.6 million years ago) are also a part of the older basement that has been capped by ash and lava derived from some 20 volcanoes of the Quaternary Period (the past 2.6 million years). Several of the latter reach well into the zone of permanent snow, above 15,000 feet (4,600 metres). The highest are Mount Huila (18,865 feet [5,750 metres]), southeast of Cali, and the Ruiz-Tolima complex (some 17,700 feet [5,400 metres]) between Manizales and Ibagué. The fertile ash from their eruptions has produced the high, cool plateaus of Nariño department and the often steep slopes to the north that support much of Colombia’s coffee production. In November 1985 Mount Ruíz erupted, melting the snow and ice that covered it and sending great mudflows downslope, destroying the city of Armero and killing more than 25,000 in one of the country’s greatest catastrophes.

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North of Mount Ruíz, near Sonsón in the department of Antioquia, the volcanic Cordillera Central gives way to the deeply weathered, granitic Antioquia batholith (an exposed granitic intrusion), a tableland averaging some 8,000 feet (2,500 metres) above sea level. It is divided into two parts by the deep transverse cleft of the Porce River, which occupies the U-shaped valley in which is situated the expanding metropolis of Medellín, Colombia’s second city. The batholith contains gold-bearing quartz veins, which were the source of the placer gravels that gave rise to an active colonial mining economy. Beyond Antioquia the lower, remote San Lucas Mountains extend northward toward the confluence of the Magdalena and Cauca rivers.

The massive Cordillera Oriental, separating the Magdalena valley from the Llanos, is composed chiefly of folded and faulted marine sediments and older schists and gneisses. Narrow to the south, it broadens out in the high, unsettled massif of Sumapaz, with elevations up to 13,000 feet (4,000 metres). High plateaus were formed in the Quaternary Period by the deposition of sediments in depressions that had been occupied by lakes. The most important of these is the savanna area called the Sabana de Bogotá. Farther northeast beyond the deep canyons cut by the Chicamocha River and its tributaries, the Cordillera Oriental culminates in the towering Mount Cocuy (Sierra Nevada del Cocuy), which rises to 18,022 feet (5,493 metres). Beyond this point, near Pamplona, the cordillera splits into two much narrower ranges, one extending into Venezuela, the other, the Perijá Mountains, forming the northern boundary range between Colombia and Venezuela. The Perijás then descend northward toward the Caribbean to the arid La Guajira Peninsula, the northernmost extension of the Colombian mainland.

The isolated Santa Marta Mountains are an imposing fault-bounded granitic massif rising to 18,947 feet (5,775 metres) at the “twin peaks” of Cristóbal Colón and Simón Bolívar, the highest point in the country (for a discussion of the height of the Santa Marta Mountains, see Researcher’s Note: Heights of the “twin peaks” of the Santa Marta Mountains); the massif ascends abruptly from the Caribbean littoral to snow- and ice-covered summits. The Atlantic lowlands spread out southward behind it. Although it is a distinct geomorphic unit and not a part of the Andes, some geologists have suggested that it might be considered an extension of the Cordillera Central, from which it is separated by the Mompós depression in the lower Magdalena valley.

The steep and rugged Andean mountain masses and the high intermontane basins descend into plains that extend along the Caribbean and Pacific coasts and across the eastern interior toward the Orinoco and Amazon river systems. From the shores of the Caribbean Sea inland to the lower spurs of the three major cordilleras extends a slightly undulating savanna surface of varying width, generally known as the Atlantic lowlands (also called the Caribbean coastal lowlands). Dotted with hills and with extensive tracts of seasonally flooded land along the lower Magdalena and the Sinú rivers, it surrounds the inland portion of the Santa Marta Mountains. A much narrower lowland apron extends along the Pacific shoreline from the point of Cape Corrientes southward to the Ecuadoran border.

A wide range of features characterize the country’s two coastlines. Steep and articulated bays, inlets, capes, and promontories accentuate the shoreline on the Pacific side toward the Panama border and on the Caribbean side where the sea beats against the base of the Santa Marta Mountains. These features are interspersed with sandy beaches, along with barrier islands and brackish lagoons.

The eastern two-thirds of the country, lying beyond the Andes, differs from cordilleran Colombia in practically all aspects of physical and human geography. The eastern lowland extends from the Venezuelan boundary along the Arauca and Meta rivers in the north to the Peruvian-Ecuadoran border stream, the Putumayo, some 600 miles (1,000 km) to the south and from the base of the Cordillera Oriental eastward to the Orinoco-Negro river line, a distance of more than 400 miles (650 km). A region of great topographic uniformity, it is divided into two contrasting natural landscapes by a major vegetation boundary. In southern Colombia the Amazonian rainforest, or selva, reaches its northern limit. From the Guaviare River northward the plains between the Andes and the Orinoco River are mostly grass-covered, forming the largest savanna complex in tropical America. This part of the lowland is called the Llanos Orientales (“Eastern Plains”) or simply the Llanos.

In the central part of the plain, between the Guaviare and Caquetá rivers, the eroded rocks of the ancient Guiana Shield are exposed, producing a broken topography of low, isolated mountains, tablelands, and buttes with rapids in the streams. This slightly higher ground forms the watershed between the Amazon and Orinoco systems. Some 60 miles (100 km) south of Villavicencio the elongated, forested La Macarena Mountains rise 8,000 feet (2,500 metres) from the surrounding lowlands, an isolated tropical ecosystem.