GEOGRAPHY

TERRAIN:

El Salvador is in Central America as it is bordering the North Pacific Ocean, between Guatemala and Honduras. To have an exact location the geographic coordinates are 13 50 N, 88 55 W. The broader aspect of El Salvador’s is combined with other surrounding countries as they are all referred to as Central America and the Caribbean. El Salvador itself is not an enormous country as the total consists of 21,041 sq km, this includes the land and the water, and when comparing its size to the United States of America, it is equivalent to a slightly smaller size than Massachusetts. Considering the bordering countries are Guatemala and Honduras, the total land boundaries it shares is a total of 545 km and the coastline boundary is 307 km. El Salvador’s terrain is mostly made up of mountains with a narrow coastal belt and central plateau. It has elevation extremes which consist of the lowest point being the Pacific Ocean of 0 meters and the highest point of elevation of the Cerro El Pital being 2,730 meters.

CLIMATE:

El Salvador has a tropical environment as the rainy season is on May to October and the dry season is from November to April. It is considered to be tropical on the coast and temperate in the uplands. The climate is differs within the season as it differs in any other country, however, El Salvador never really gets cold since it’s on the equator, meaning it will always be warmer and humid rather than cold and rainy.

NATURAL RESOURCES/NATURAL HAZZARDS:

The country is small, but it has some natural resources that are helpful to the country and others. The natural resources consist of having hydropower, geothermal power, petroleum and arable land. However, with these resources it includes having natural hazards, for example, volcanoes as there are frequent and sometimes destructive earthquakes, since the construction of the buildings and homes are inadequately built, giving the fact that the homes are built from sheets of metal, wood or cement. The other natural hazards are the hurricanes which not only affects the country but other countries surrounding it. El Salvador is most likely to struggle after natural disasters since its resources like water, food and electricity are hard to come by. Even though fruits are not a part of the natural resources, it does have an abundance of fruits that the people live off, as they eat it and sell it to make a profit.  There are other environmental issues that are a struggle for the people and their resources as deforestation, soil erosion, water pollution and contaminated soil from the disposal of toxic wastes seemingly is occurring often in this country.