Natural Region

The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System is a marine region, underwater ecosystem and geological structure that stretches from the Yucatán Peninsula down to Belize, Guatemala and Honduras. This underwater wilderness of coral provides homes and food to hundreds of species.

The Monte Desert is a region in South America lying entirely within Argentina. The Argentine Monte, or Low Monte, is an ecoregion of Argentina's dry thorn scrub and grasslands. It is one of the driest regions in the country. Human settlements are mainly near water supplies such as rivers or oases.

The Pampas is a natural region of vast fertile lowland plains in South America that extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Andes. This flat, fertile grassland biome can be divided into three distinct ecoregions: the Uruguayan Savanna, the Humid Pampas and the Semiarid Pampas.

The Pantanal is a natural region encompassing the world's largest tropical wetland. This gigantic seasonal floodplain lies mainly within Mato Grosso, and Mato Grosso do Sul in the Center-West Region of Brazil. However, small portions extend into northeastern Paraguay and southeastern Bolivia.

Páramo is a neotropical high mountain biome. Also referred to as Andean Moorland, this grassland ecosystem is found mainly in the northwest corner of South America: in the upper Andes of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.

The Patagonian Desert, also known as the Magellanic Steppe, is a semiarid scrub plateau covering nearly all of the southern portion of mainland Argentina. It is the largest desert in Argentina and is bounded by the Patagonian Andes and the country of Chile to the west.

The region known as Peruvian Amazonia, or La Selva, lies between the eastern foothills of the Peruvian Andes and the Amazon Basin rainforests. It's a place where the lower slopes of the western Andes intermingle with the lush, dense tropical lowlands.

Puna is a cold, high-elevation grassland region of the montane grasslands and shrublands biome. It is prevalent in the central Andes from northern Peru through western Bolivia into northern Chile and Argentina. Much of the region lies on the Altiplano Plateau.

The Rupununi is a natural region bordering the Brazilian Amazon in southwest Guyana. It is divided into northern Rupununi Wetlands and southern Rupununi Savanna by the Kanuku Mountains. The Rapununi River flows through the region before joining with the Essequibo River on its way to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Sonoran Desert, also called Desierto de Altar, is an arid region covering 120,000 sq mi. This North American desert ecoregion covers large parts of northwestern Mexico in Sonora, Baja California and Baja California Sur, as well as parts of the southwestern United States.