Nicaragua: Physical Geography

Nicaragua is the largest country in Central America by area, covering roughly 130,000 square kilometers between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Its territory divides into three distinct natural regions: a volcanic Pacific lowland in the west, a rugged interior of central highlands, and an extensive, sparsely populated Caribbean lowland in the east historically known as the Miskito Coast, which alone accounts for more than half of the country's land area.

The Pacific lowlands contain a chain of roughly 40 volcanoes, some still active, running along a structural rift that also holds Lake Managua and Lake Nicaragua, the largest lake in Central America and home to the volcanic Ometepe Island. Because the region sits where two major tectonic plates meet, it is prone to earthquakes as well as eruptions; Managua was heavily damaged by quakes in 1931 and again in 1972. East of the lowlands, the central highlands rise in a triangular block of ridges reaching roughly 900 to 1,800 meters, culminating at Mogoton, the country's highest point at 2,085 meters, near the border with Honduras.

The eastern Caribbean lowlands are generally flat, hot, and humid, drained by rivers such as the Coco, the country's longest, and the Rio Grande de Matagalpa, which empty into a coastline of lagoons, coral reefs, and the broadest continental shelf in Central America. Soils there are largely infertile outside the floodplains that line the major rivers, in contrast to the volcanic ash-enriched lowlands of the Pacific side, and the region remains far less densely settled than western Nicaragua.