Subdivisions of Ecuador - Geography

Geography

Ecuador has a total area of 283,560 km2 (109,483 sq mi), including the Galápagos Islands. Of this, 276,840 km2 (106,889 sq mi) is land and 6,720 km2 (2,595 sq mi) water. Ecuador is one of the smaller countries in South America.

Ecuador lies between latitudes 2°N and 5°S, Ecuador is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, and has 2,337 km of coastline. It has 2010 km of land boundaries, with Colombia in the north (590 km border) and Peru in the east and south (1,420 km border).

The country has three main geographic regions, plus an insular region in the Pacific Ocean:

• La Costa, or the coast, comprises the low-lying land in the western part of the country, including the Pacific coastline.
• La Sierra, ("the highlands") is the high-altitude belt running north-south along the centre of the country, its mountainous terrain dominated by the Andes mountain range.
• La Amazonía, also known as El Oriente ("the east"), comprises the Amazon rainforest areas in the eastern part of the country, accounting for just under half of the country's total surface area, though populated by less than 5% of the population.
• The Región Insular is the region comprising the Galápagos Islands, some 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) west of the mainland in the Pacific Ocean.

Ecuador's capital is Quito, which is in the province of Pichincha in the Sierra region. Its largest city is Guayaquil, in the Guayas Province. Cotopaxi, which is just south of Quito, features one of the world's highest active volcanoes. The top of Mount Chimborazo (6,268 m above sea level) is considered to be the most distant point of the earth's surface from the center of the earth, given the approximately ellipsoid shape of the planet.