Suriname: Physical Geography

Suriname sits on the northern coast of South America, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north, French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, and Brazil to the south. Covering about 163,820 square kilometers, it is the smallest sovereign country in South America, yet it is also one of the most densely forested, with tropical rainforest covering the great majority of its land area. Most of Suriname's roughly 600,000 people live along the narrow coastal strip in the north, leaving the country's vast interior sparsely populated.

The terrain shifts markedly from north to south. Along the coast lies a flat, often swampy plain dotted with tidal flats, giving way further inland to rolling hills and, in the far south, low mountain ranges. The country's highest point, Juliana Top, rises to about 1,230 meters in the Wilhelmina Mountains, while its lowest point sits roughly two meters below sea level on the coastal plain. Suriname is drained by a dense network of rivers, the longest of which, the Courantyne, runs for more than 700 kilometers along the border with Guyana, and the Suriname River has been dammed to form the Brokopondo Reservoir, one of the largest human-made lakes in the region.

Suriname has a tropical climate, hot and humid throughout the year and shaped by both rainforest and monsoon-type rainfall patterns; unlike much of the wider Caribbean, it lies outside the main hurricane belt. Forest and woodland cover the overwhelming majority of the country's land, supporting natural resources that include timber, bauxite, gold, and significant hydropower potential, while only a small fraction of the land is farmed. Deforestation tied to timber exports and pollution from small-scale mining along inland waterways remain the country's most pressing environmental concerns.