![]() The northern part rises gradually from the coastal zone to an average elevation of 500 meters, with crests as high as 1,000 meters to 1,800 meters. The Cuanza River divides the zone into two parts. The belt of hills and mountains parallels the coast at distances ranging from 20 kilometers to 100 kilometers inland. Portions of the northern coastal plain are covered by thick brush. Given this pattern of precipitation, the far south is marked by sand dunes, which give way to dry scrub along the middle coast. Even where, as around Luanda, the average annual rainfall may be as much as fifty centimeters, it is not uncommon for the rains to fail. The Atlantic Ocean's cold, northwardflowing Benguela Current substantially reduces precipitation along the coast, making the region relatively arid or nearly so south of Benguela (where it forms the northern extension of the Namib Desert), and quite dry even in its northern reaches. ![]() This region varies in width from about 25 kilometers near Benguela to more than 150 kilometers in the Cuanza River Valley just south of Angola's capital, Luanda, and is markedly different from Angola's highland mass. The coastal lowland rises from the sea in a series of low terraces. ![]() Sources: The Library of Congress Country Studies CIA World FactbookĪngola has three principal natural regions: the coastal lowland, characterized by low plains and terraces hills and mountains, rising inland from the coast into a great escarpment and an area of high plains, called the high plateau ( planalto), which extends eastward from the escarpment (see fig.
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