Portal:Brazil

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Welcome to the Brazil Portal Main Indices   Projects   Flag of Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil), is the largest and most populous country in South America, and the fifth largest in the world in both area and population. Its territory covers 8,514,876.599 km² between central South America and the Atlantic Ocean and it is the easternmost country of the Americas. It borders Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana and the département of French Guiana to the north, Uruguay to the south, Argentina and Paraguay to the southwest, Bolivia and Peru to the west, and Colombia to the northwest. The only South American countries not bordered by Brazil are Ecuador and Chile. The Brazilian coastline covers 7,367km (4,655 mi) along the Atlantic ocean. Numerous archipelagos are part of the Brazilian territory, such as Penedos de São Pedro e São Paulo, Fernando de Noronha, Trindade e Martim Vaz and Atol das Rocas. Tropical climate is predominant. In the south of the country, subtropical climate prevails. Brazil is traversed by the Equator and Tropic of Capricorn lines. It is home to varied fauna and flora and extensive natural resources. The Brazilian population tends to concentrate along the coastline in large urban centers. While Brazil has one of the largest populations in the world, population density is low and the inner continental land has large demographical empty spaces. It is a multiracial country composed of European, Amerindian, African and Asian elements, more often combined in the same individual than separated into different communities. The official language is Portuguese, and it is the only Portuguese-speaking country in all the Americas. Catholicism is the predominant religion, though Protestant communities have experienced significant growth in the last decades. Brazil has the largest Roman Catholic population in the world. Show new selections Credit: NASA Deforestation is the single largest environmental issue in Brazil, and has been for the past few decades. Brazil once had the highest deforestation rate in the world and as of 2005 still has the largest area of forest removed annually. Since 1970, over 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed. By the end of the 1980s the problem had become such a global issue not only with loss of the biodiversity and ecological disruption caused by removal of the forests but due to heavy emissions carbon dioxide released from its burning in the forest in Brazil and the loss of a valuable sink to absorb global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. At the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change deforestation in Brazil became a major concern at the Summit in Rio de Janeiro where in collaboration with various environmental groups working in the region to give the Brazilian government an incentive to reduce forest removal and curb the rate of deforestation. By 2005 forest removal had fallen to 9,000 km2 (3,475 square miles) of forest compared to 18,000 km2 (6,950 square miles) in 2003 Rio Grande do Norte is one of the states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country, on the edge of the South American continent. Because of its geographic position, Rio Grande do Norte has a strategic importance. It is the land of the folklorist Câmara Cascudo and is second in the world having the purest air, second only to Antarctica, according to NASA. Credit: Agencia Brasil Daniela Mercury (Portuguese pronunciation: [dɐ̃niˈɛlɐ ˈmɛʁkuɾi]; born on July 28, 1965 in Salvador, Bahia) is a Latin Grammy Award-winning Brazilian axé, samba-reggae and MPB singer, songwriter and record producer. Since her breakthrough, Mercury has become one of the best known Brazilian female singers, selling over 8 million albums in her home country and almost 12 million albums worldwide. Her mother is Liliana Mercuri, a social worker of Italian ancestry, and her father is Antônio Fernando de Abreu Ferreira de Almeida, a Portuguese industrial mechanic. Mercury spent her childhood in a house in the Brotas neighborhood with her four siblings: Tom, Cristiana, Vânia (who would also become a singer) and Marcos. When Mercury was eight years old she started to take dance lessons (classic ballet, African dances and jazz). At thirteen, she decided to become a singer (apparently influenced by the work of Elis Regina) and at sixteen, she started to sing in trio elétricos. Two years later, she entered the Federal University of Bahia's School of Dance. Simca Vedette Chambord 1961 Credit: Dino1948 ...that the French car Simca Vedette (pictured) was first marketed as a Ford and later manufactured as a Chrysler in Brazil? ...that Polyandrococos, a genus of palm trees endemic to Brazil, is so named partly because of its hairy tomentum? ...that only about 10% of Brazil's water resources is located in the Southeast Region, the agricultural and industrial heartland of the country, where 73% of the population resides? Ponta Negra is the name of one of the best known beaches in the city of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The large, crescent-shaped beach is located at the southern end of the Via Costeira, a major thoroughfare which follows the Atlantic coastline northward, linking the Ponta Negra area with the urban beaches of Praia dos Artistas, Praia do Meio, and Praia do Forte. Latin America Argentina Bolivia Colombia Chile Ecuador French Guiana Guyana Paraguay Peru Suriname Uruguay Venezuela The following Wikimedia sister projects provide more on this subject: