Amazônia Legal (), also known as Brazil's Legal Amazon (BLA), is the largest socio-geographic division in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, containing all nine states in the Amazon basin. The government designated this region in 1948 based on its studies on how to plan the economic and social development of the Amazon region.

Area

The official designation Amazônia Legal encompasses all seven states of the North Region ( Acre, Amapá, Amazonas,

Pará Pará is a state of Brazil, located in northern Brazil and traversed by the lower Amazon River. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Roraima. To the northwest are the borders of Guyana ...

, Rondônia, Roraima and

Tocantins Tocantins () is one of the 26 states of Brazil. It is the newest state, formed in 1988 and encompassing what had formerly been the northern two-fifths of the state of Goiás. Tocantins covers and had an estimated population of 1,496,880 in 20 ...

), as well as most of Mato Grosso in the Center-West Region and the western part of

Maranhão Maranhão () is a state in Brazil. Located in the country's Northeast Region, it has a population of about 7 million and an area of . Clockwise from north, it borders on the Atlantic Ocean for 2,243 km and the states of Piauí, Tocantins and ...

in the Northeast Region. Amazônia Legal is a 5,016,136.3 km² region with around 24 million inhabitants; in other words 59% of the geographic territory of Brazil is part of Amazônia Legal, but only 12.34% of the Brazilian population lives there. The administrative unit was initially established by Federal Law No. 5.173 (Art. 2). Although called ''Amazônia Legal,'' the region overlaps three different

biome A biome () is a biogeographical unit consisting of a biological community that has formed in response to the physical environment in which they are found and a shared regional climate. Biomes may span more than one continent. Biome is a broader ...

s: all of Brazil's Amazon biome, 37% of the

Cerrado The ''Cerrado'' (, ) is a vast ecoregion of tropical savanna in eastern Brazil, particularly in the states of Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Tocantins, Minas Gerais, and the Federal District. The core areas of the Cerrado biome are the ...

biome, and 40% of the

Pantanal The Pantanal () is a natural region encompassing the world's largest tropical wetland area, and the world's largest flooded grasslands. It is located mostly within the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, but it extends into Mato Grosso and ...

biome. The main characteristic of the region is the abundant and

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

vegetation Vegetation is an assemblage of plant species and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic characte ...

, including large sections of rainforest. Amazônia Ocidental comprises the states of: Acre, Amazonas, Roraima and Rondônia.

Demographics

A total population of 24.7 million inhabitants lives in the area,INSTITUTO BRASILEIRO DE GEOGRAFIA E ESTATÍSTICA (IBGE). 2000. Estimativas populacionais dos municípios em 2009. Acesso em 28/08/2012

/ref> including more than 300,000 Indigenous peoples in South America, indigenous people belonging to more than 170 ethnicities. Among these are many traditional extractive communities. Because of its remoteness, this region was the last to be colonized by Brazilians of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

an descent. It still has a very low

population density Population density (in agriculture: Stock (disambiguation), standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical ...

References

External links

The various Amazons - Instituto Sociambiental

Amazônia Legal
on Noticias Da Amazonia (in Portuguese)
Bolsa Floresta
{{DEFAULTSORT:Amazonia Legal Demographics of Brazil North Region, Brazil Amazon basin Central-West Region, Brazil

Area

Demographics

See also

References

External links