Landforms of Central America

Masaya Volcano National Park, consisting of a volcanic caldera with two volcanoes and five craters, was established in 1979 as Nicaragua's first national park. Volcán Masaya is one of Nicaragua's most popular tourist attractions due to the opportunity of direct contact with the crater.

The Maya Mountains are a range of hills in west-central Belize that take their name from the Maya people who built great centers in the region. The Cockscomb Range is a spur of the Maya Mountains and includes Victoria Peak, a national monument of Belize.

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 Middle America Trench is a major subduction zone, an oceanic trench in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico and Central America. It can be divided into a northern section called the Acapulco Trench and a southern section called the Guatemala Trench.

Chirripó National Park is named for its most prominent feature, Cerro Chirripó, the highest mountain in Costa Rica. The park hosts important areas of Talamancan montane forest and Costa Rican páramo, with high endemism and extremely high biodiversity.

Two chains of mountains run from northwest to southeast, almost the entire length of Costa Rica. Running from the northwest to the central part of the country is the Cordillera Volcánica Central. The Cordillera de Talamanca runs from the south-central part of the country to the southeast.

Nicoya Peninsula lies along the northern section of Costa Rica's Pacific coast. The Gulf of Nicoya separates the Nicoya Peninsula from the mainland of Costa Rica and encompasses a marine and coastal landscape of wetlands, rocky islands and cliffs.

The North American Plate is a tectonic plate that underlies much of North America and Central America and part of the Caribbean Sea. It shares a boundary with the Pacific Plate and Cocos Plate in the west and the Caribbean Plate in the south.

Ometepe Island is located in southwest Nicaragua, formed by two volcanoes rising out of Lake Nicargua. It is the lake's largest island. The two imposing volcanoes, Maderas and Concepcion, define its topography. The island was designated a Biosphere Reserve in 2010.

The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate, made up almost entirely of oceanic crust, that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. It is Earth's largest tectonic plate at an estimated 40,000,000 square miles in size. The plate forms a large portion of the Pacific Ring of Fire.