São Luís Island also known as Upaon-açu Island (officially) or Maranhão Island is an

island An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been ...

in the state of Maranhão, Brazil with an area of 1,412.4 km² (545 sq mi), located between the

Baía de São Marcos The Baía de São Marcos is a bay of the Atlantic Ocean in Maranhão state of northeastern Brazil. The bay is an estuary approximately long and up to wide. It receives several rivers, including the Grajaú, Mearim, and Pindaré. The Mearim ...

and the

Baía de São José The Baía de São José () is a bay of the Atlantic Ocean in the state of Maranhão in northeastern Brazil. The bay is an estuary which receives several rivers, including the Itapecuru and Munim. São Luís Island, also known as Maranhão Isl ...

. There are four cities located in the island: São Luís, after which the island is named, São José de Ribamar, Paço do Lumiar, and Raposa. The city of São Luís also covers three more minor islands, Tauá Mirim, Tauá, and Medo. Raposa also has an island. The population of these four cities according to the mid 2021 estimate is 1,453,128, up from 1,309,330 at the 2010 Census.Source: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica (web) São Luís is the capital of the state. The Island was originally named Upaon-Açu (meaning "Big Island" in the

Tupi language Old Tupi, Ancient Tupi or Classical Tupi () is a classical Tupian language which was spoken by the indigenous Tupi people of Brazil, mostly those who inhabited coastal regions in South and Southeast Brazil. In the words of Brazilian tupinol ...

) by the Native inhabitants of the island. It is the most populous island in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

, and is among the 50 most populous islands in the world.

History

São Luis was founded in 1612 by Daniel de la Rivardière, a French officer commissioned by

Henry IV of France Henry IV (; 13 December 1553 – 14 May 1610), also known by the epithets Good King Henry (''le Bon Roi Henri'') or Henry the Great (''Henri le Grand''), was King of Navarre (as Henry III) from 1572 and King of France from 1589 to 16 ...

to establish a colony in this vicinity. The French colony was expelled in 1615 by the Portuguese, who, in turn, surrendered to the Dutch in 1641. In 1644 the Dutch abandoned the island, when the Portuguese resumed possession, and held the city to the end of their colonial rule in Brazil. The city became the seat of a bishopric in 1679.

Geography

The island of Upaon-Açu is located between two large estuarine systems that are the bays of São Marcos on the right side and São José on the left side in the central region of Golfão Maranhense. The two bays are interconnected in the southwest by the channels of the Strait of Mosquitoes and Strait of Coqueiros (separating the island of Upaon-Açu from the island of Tauá-Mirim). In the São Marcos bay, the watershed of the

Mearim river The Mearim River () is a river in Maranhão state of northern Brazil. The river originates in the southern part of Maranhão, and drains north into the Baía de São Marcos, an estuary that also receives the Pindaré and Grajaú rivers, which ar ...

and its tributaries flows, while in the São José/Arraial bay the watersheds of the Itapecuru and Munim rivers break. In this region, the amplitude of the

tides Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon (and to a much lesser extent, the Sun) and are also caused by the Earth and Moon orbiting one another. Tide tables ...

can exceed seven meters. The region presents numerous streams and tidal channels. Several agents have modeled relief such as those of climatic, hydrological and oceanographic origin, as well as intense wind, marine and fluvial activity, with vegetation characterized by remnants of the

Amazonian Forest The Amazon rainforest, also called the Amazon jungle or Amazonia, is a moist broadleaf tropical rainforest in the Amazon biome that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This basin encompasses , of which are covered by the rainf ...

Mangroves A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows mainly in coastal saline or brackish water. Mangroves grow in an equatorial climate, typically along coastlines and tidal rivers. They have particular adaptations to take in extra oxygen and remove sal ...

and Campo de Perizes, an extensive fluvial plain with predominantly herbaceous, located on the mainland. The climate is characterized as hot, semi-humid, tropical of equatorial zone, with two distinct seasons that go from damp (January to June) the drought (July to December), with average rainfall of 2,200 mm per year. Some of the conservation units of the island are: APA das Reentrancias Maranhenses; APA of Upaon-Açu-Miritiba-Alto Preguiças, APA of Itapiracó; APA of the Maracanã Region; and the Bacanga State Parks, the Jansen Lagoon and the Rangedor. On the Strait of Mosquitoes, there are road and railroad bridges linking the mainland to Upaon-Açu Island: the Marcelino Machado bridge, BR-135, composed of two parallel inlet and outlet bridges (456 and 454 meters in length); the metal bridge Benedito Leite, belonging to the São Luís-Teresina Railway; the duplicate bridge belonging to the Carajás Railway; the metal bridge that supports the Italuís waterway, which carries water from the river Itapecuru to the city of São Luís. There is also a ferry service between São Luís and Alcântara and São Luís International Airport. Also on the island are the Port of Alumar, the Port of Itaqui and the

Ponta da Madeira Ponta da Madeira is a Brazilian private port, a large iron ore loading port in São Luís, in the Northern part of Brazil, and one of the few terminals in the country suited for the ultra large Valemax ships. In 2020, the port of Ponta da Made ...

, to which mainly iron, copper and bauxite extracted from Carajás are transported through the

Carajás Railway The Carajás Railway (; EFC or EF-315) is a railway line linking the cities of Parauapebas, Pará and São Luís, Maranhão Maranhão () is a States of Brazil, state in Brazil. Located in the country's Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast Re ...

, which also transports soy, fuel, pulp and other products.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sao Luis Island Atlantic islands of Brazil Landforms of Maranhão