Jason Baker, age 15, of Bowling Green, Ohio, for his question:
HOW LARGE IS THE PAMPAS IN ARGENTINA?
Argentina has a vast plain called the pampas that forms one of the major regions of the South American country. The pampas covers an area of almost 300,000 square miles and makes up about a fifth of the country's total area.
The word pampas comes form a Quechua Indian word meaning plains. Some people call the area pampa, rather than pampas.
The pampas extends about 300 miles northwest, west and south of Buenos Aires. Some of the richest soil in the Western Hemisphere lies in this region. The northern end of the plain lies in the interior of the continent and the southern part has cliffs that end in the sea.
Two distinct climatic zones divide the pampas. The western portion is known as the dry pampas. The moister eastern portion is called the humid pampas and is the most productive farming area of the entire continent.
The original vegetation of much of the dry and humid pampas is thought to have been monte, a covering of low scrubby trees and coarse grasses. When the Spanish explorers first arrived in the early 1500s, they saw the Indians burning the monte for purposes of hunting game and for warfare. The result of prolonged burnings, plus a possible reduction in rainfall over the past 1,000 to 2,000 years, was a decrease in the woody vegetation and an expansion of grasses.
For about 300 years, Spanish settlement was concentrated in a small area surrounding Buenos Aires. It wasn't until the mid 19th century that changes in the pampas began to take place. Government sponsored immigration provided new settlers and a development of the land. Aiding the growth was the introduction of railways.
First sheep ranchers dominated the pampas, followed by cattle ranchers. Cattlemen introduced alfalfa, which increased the grazing capacity of the lands by up to six times.
The next group on the pampas were the farmers, and crop growing began on a large scale.
Crop growing began on a large scale in the farming colonies established around the Santa Fe area. The Argentina corn belt developed with the city of Rosario as its center.
The population of the pampas is dominated by people of European background. Practically all of the original Indians were eliminated or pushed back into fringe areas. The few black slaves that were brought in many years ago have long since blended into the general population. The countries that supplied most of the original immigrants were Italy and Spain.
Most of the products of the pampas were channeled through the port of Buenos Aires, causing that city to grow into a great metropolis. About a third of all Argentines now live in greater Buenos Aires, which has become a great Latin American industrial center.
Cattle raising still predominates in the dry pampas to the west, but the eastern humid pampas, which is the economic and cultural heartland of Argentina, produces wheat, alfalfa, corn and flax. Farmers near the urban centers specialize in fruit and vegetable production.
With a large literate population and close economic and cultural ties with the rest of the world, agricultural methods on much of the pampas have been kept up to date.