The Orinoco Delta is a vast

river delta A river delta is a landform, archetypically triangular, created by the deposition of the sediments that are carried by the waters of a river, where the river merges with a body of slow-moving water or with a body of stagnant water. The creat ...

of the Orinoco River, located in eastern

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

Location

The Orinoco Delta is one of the eight natural regions of Venezuela. It covers the whole of Delta Amacuro State and a few square kilometers of Monagas State and Sucre State, comprising all the mouths of the Orinoco. It is divided into two sections: the principal, at the northernmost part of the system, located between Caño Manamo and the left shore of Caño Araguao, where the majority of villages are established, including the state capital Tucupita; and the secondary, between the right shore of Caño Araguao and Río Grande. The Warao people live in the region.

Hydrology

The delta is fan-shaped, formed by the Orinoco River as it splits into numerous distributaries, called ''caños'', which meander through the delta on their way to the sea. The main distributary is called the Rio Grande, which empties south-southeast through the southern portion of the delta, and the second major distributary is Caño Manamo, which runs northward along the western edge of the delta. The area of this region is approximately . The Orinoco Delta is characterized by being non-centric,

lagoon A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into ''coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons'') an ...

lacking, and

ocean The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of Earth. The ocean is conventionally divided into large bodies of water, which are also referred to as ''oceans'' (the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Indian, Southern Ocean ...

ic, somewhat similar to the delta of the

Niger River The Niger River ( ; ) is the main river of West Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in south-eastern Guinea near the Sierra Leone border. It runs in a crescent shape through Mali, Nige ...

. Daily tides bring sea water up the "caños", causing the "macareo" or

pororoca The Pororoca (, ) is a tidal bore, with waves up to high that travel as much as inland upstream on the Amazon River and adjacent rivers. Its name might come from the indigenous Tupi language, where it could translate into "great roar". It could ...

and reversing the flow direction of water, at least on surface.

Environment

The predominant vegetation is in the Orinoco Delta swamp forests ecoregion. Along the coast and the river margins there are stretches of Amazon–Orinoco–Southern Caribbean mangroves, specifically the Guianan mangroves ecoregion. To the west, and closer to the coast, there are patches of the Orinoco wetlands ecoregion. The delta includes large areas of permanent

wetland A wetland is a distinct semi-aquatic ecosystem whose groundcovers are flooded or saturated in water, either permanently, for years or decades, or only seasonally. Flooding results in oxygen-poor ( anoxic) processes taking place, especially ...

s as well as seasonally-flooded freshwater swamp forests. The river margins of the delta are fringed with mangroves.

References

Sources

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External links

Venezuela Tourism Directory

Geo-Environmental Characterization of the Delta del Orinoco (University of Texas)
* * * River deltas

Delta Delta commonly refers to: * Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet * D (NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta"), the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet * River delta, at a river mouth * Delta Air Lines, a major US carrier ...

Biosphere reserves of Venezuela Orinoco basin Wetlands of Venezuela Geography of Delta Amacuro Geography of Monagas Geography of Sucre (state) Landforms of South America {{Venezuela-geo-stub