Valle de San Juan

The Valle de San Juan is a landscape in the Dominican Republic .

The high basin landscape is located between the Sierra de Neiba in the south and the Cordillera Central in the east and north. The most important place is the provincial capital San Juan de Maguana with approx. 55,000 inhabitants.

geology

The Valle de San Juan is mainly made up of limestone and slate . It consists of river terraces and river taps caused by retreating erosion. These tectonic processes often discharge in earthquakes or seaquakes.

Rivers

The Valle de San Juan is located in the rain shadow of the Central Cordillera, so that the rainfall rate is relatively low and especially the center of the high basin is very dry. The main part of the basin is drained by the Río San Juan , a tributary of the Río Yaque del Sur in a southeastern direction.

Agriculture

Large parts of the plain have been used as pastureland since the Spanish arrived on the island. There are still quite a few hatos (cattle ranches) today. In the last few decades an ever larger part of the land was made arable, especially along the rivers, with the help of an irrigation system, so that today small-scale agriculture has developed in which mainly maize, beans and rice are grown. Tobacco is grown in the southeast, coffee is grown on the slopes of the surrounding mountains. In addition, most of the honey produced on the Caribbean islands comes from the Valle de San Juan.

literature

Dominican Republic , Verlag Karl Baedeker, Ostfildern 2001