Natural wealth

Natural World Heritage

Five Argentine natural sites are on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

Source: UNESCO, World Heritage List.

National Parks

The 24 profiles record 39 national parks, from Calilegua, in the Yungas of Jujuy, to Tierra del Fuego, in the far south. Year of creation in brackets.

Source: National Parks Administration (SIB-APN).

Ramsar Sites

Argentina has 24 wetlands of international importance. Two are shared between provinces: the Paraná Delta (Santa Fe and Entre Ríos) and the Guanacache, Desaguadero and Bebedero Lagoons (San Juan, Mendoza and San Luis). Year of designation in brackets.

Source: National Undersecretariat of Environment, Ramsar Sites Network. Official year of designation and area.

Province by province, from north to south

Jujuy · Jujuy brings together four worlds in a single territory. The Puna, a high plateau above 3,000 meters, of salt flats, lagoons and vicuñas.

Salta · Salta brings together almost all the landscapes of northern Argentina. To the west, the Puna and its salt flats, guarded by the Llullaillaco volcano, 6,739 meters high, the highest point in the province.

Formosa · Formosa is the Gran Chaco in its purest form. To the east, the humid Chaco: marshes, lagoons and gallery forests along the Paraguay River, with Río Pilcomayo National Park and the Laguna Oca Biosphere Reserve at the gates of the capital.

Tucumán · Tucumán is the smallest province in the country and one of the most intense: within a few kilometers it goes from the sugarcane plains to the mountain rainforest and the peaks of the Aconquija, which exceed 5,000 meters.

Misiones · Misiones is rainforest. A wedge of red earth between the Paraná and Uruguay rivers, embraced by Brazil and Paraguay, which holds the largest remnant of Paraná Rainforest —the Atlantic Forest— in the country: giant trees, ferns, orchids, jaguars, toucans and hundreds of bird species.

Chaco · The Chaco has two faces. To the east, the humid Chaco: marshes, lagoons and palm groves, protected by the Chaco and Laguna El Palmar national parks and by the Chaco Wetlands, a Ramsar site of more than half a million hectares.

Corrientes · Corrientes is a land of water. It is embraced by the Paraná and Uruguay rivers, which separate it from Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay, and at its heart beats the Iberá, one of the great wetlands of South America: marshes, lagoons, floating islands and grasslands where the marsh deer, the caiman, the capybara and hundreds of bird species live.

Santiago del Estero · Santiago del Estero is the great plain of the dry Chaco: a forest of quebrachos, carob and mistol trees under an intense sun, crossed by the Dulce and Salado rivers, which give life to its wetlands.

Catamarca · Catamarca is a high-altitude land. In its west, the Andes bring together the country's largest concentration of peaks above six thousand meters —the Route of the Six-Thousanders, from Fiambalá— and Ojos del Salado, on the border with Chile, the highest volcano in the world, at more than 6,800 meters.

La Rioja · La Rioja is red stone, wind and silence. In Talampaya National Park, sandstone walls carved over millions of years hold Triassic fossils and petroglyphs of ancient inhabitants; together with Ischigualasto, in San Juan, it forms a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Córdoba · Córdoba is hills and plains. To the west rise the Sierras Grandes and the Sierras Chicas, with the Pampa de Achala and the Quebrada del Condorito, kingdom of the Andean condor, and Champaquí as the roof of the province.

San Juan · San Juan is desert turned into oasis. Between the Andes and the Precordillera, meltwater irrigates the valleys of Tulum, Ullum, Zonda, Calingasta, Iglesia and Jáchal.

Santa Fe · Santa Fe is the Paraná River. Along its eastern shore follow one another islands, streams and wetlands protected by Islas de Santa Fe National Park and by three Ramsar sites: Jaaukanigás, in the north; the Melincué lagoon, in the south; and the Paraná Delta.

Entre Ríos · Entre Ríos is, as its name says, a land between rivers: the Paraná to the west and the Uruguay to the east embrace it and turn it into an island of green rolling hills, streams and gallery forests.

Mendoza · Mendoza is desert tamed by the water of the Andes. Its oases —the North, the East, the Uco Valley and the South— are born of meltwater rivers and of a network of irrigation channels inherited from the Huarpe.

San Luis · San Luis is the hinge between Cuyo and the pampa plains. In its center and north rise the Sierras de San Luis and, to the east, the Comechingones, with Villa de Merlo, the Conlara valleys and dams such as Potrero de los Funes.

Autonomous City of Buenos Aires · Buenos Aires looks out onto the Río de la Plata, the widest estuary in the world. A city of the plains, its green lungs are the Palermo Woods, the Botanical Garden, the Costanera Sur Ecological Reserve —a Ramsar site steps from downtown— and thousands of jacarandas, tipas and silk floss trees that bloom along its avenues.

Buenos Aires · Buenos Aires is the most populous province in the country and the largest in the Pampas region: an immense plain of grasslands and lagoons, among the most fertile farmland on the planet.

La Pampa · La Pampa is the transition between the humid plains and Patagonia. To the east, fields of wheat, sunflower and pasture; in the center, the caldenal, the caldén forest, a tree that exists only in Argentina; to the west, the steppe, the salt flats and the dunes.

Neuquén · Neuquén is the gateway to Andean Patagonia. To the west, the Andes are covered with forests of pehuén —the sacred araucaria of the Mapuche people—, coihue and lenga, glacial lakes and volcanoes such as Lanín, the symbol of the province.

Río Negro · Río Negro crosses Patagonia from the Andes to the sea, and along the way it brings together very different landscapes and climates.

Chubut · Chubut runs from the Andes to the ocean in the heart of Patagonia. To the west, forests, lakes and mountains: Los Alerces National Park, a World Heritage Site, with alerce trees more than two thousand years old, and Lago Puelo National Park.

Santa Cruz · Santa Cruz is Patagonia at its largest scale: the country's second-largest province and one of the least populated.

Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and South Atlantic Islands · Tierra del Fuego is the end of the world and the beginning of everything. On the Isla Grande, shared with Chile, the northern steppe gives way to forests of lenga, ñire and guindo beech, peat bogs and lakes such as Fagnano, until the Andes, which here run from west to east, drop into the Beagle Channel.

Summary of the atlas’s 24 profiles. Each profile details its data and sources.