Quechua plains feed a continent of grain and cattle
The Pampas—from Quechua pampa, plain—cover more than 1.2 million square kilometres across Argentine provinces, all of Uruguay, and Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul. Temperate rains of roughly 600 to 1,200 millimetres a year, fairly even, made the soils a natural farm belt interrupted mainly by the low Ventana and Tandil ranges.
Northern edges meet the Atlantic Forest and the Gran Chaco; to the west lie the Pampas Mountains and Cuyo; to the south Patagonia begins. Elevations usually stay under 600 metres. Coastal Buenos Aires country is mostly flat, while southern Brazil and Uruguay rise into hills such as the Serras de Sudeste and Cuchilla Grande, and the Ventana and Tandil ranges break the Argentine plain.
The climate is broadly temperate but shades into humid subtropical conditions northward, cold semi-arid ones on the southern and western fringes such as San Luis and western La Pampa, and an oceanic type around Mar del Plata, Necochea and Tandil. Summer days usually reach 28 to 33°C, and hot, dry northerly winds can push cities close to 38°C. Rain can hit 1,400 millimetres a year in the north-east and fall towards 400 millimetres on the dry margins.
Winters are mild most of the time, with daytime highs around 12 to 19°C and nights of 1 to 6°C, but cold waves can hold afternoons to about 6°C. Frost reaches every part of the region, far more often in the south-west than near the Paraná and Uruguay rivers, and only the southern and western parts ever fall to minus 10°C or below. Snow is almost unknown in the northern third and usually light elsewhere, though exceptional falls have piled up 30 centimetres.
Farming pushed puma, rhea, capybara, maned wolf and Pampas deer into remnant patches, and jaguar and guanaco disappeared from the grasslands altogether. Survivors include the Pampas fox, Geoffroy’s cat and armadillos, alongside birds ranging from meadowlarks to the maguari stork.
Source: Pampas
