Lençóis Maranhenses National Park World Heritage Site

Official name

Lençóis Maranhenses National Park | UNESCO

Country

Brazil | Map

Continent

South America

Location

-2.5366° Lat, -43.6360° Lon | Map

Code

1611

Time Zone

America/Sao_Paulo (-03, -0300)

Current Time

Category

Natural

Description

Inscribed 2024. The property is located in northeastern Brazil, on the east coast of Maranhão, in a transition zone between three Brazilian biomes: Cerrado, Caatinga and Amazon. More than half of its area consists of a white coastal dune field with temporary and permanent lagoons. Beyond its important role in biodiversity conservation, the park boasts globally significant aesthetic and geological/geomorphological values. Along an 80 km coastline, with beaches followed by plains, the prevailing winds shape the dunes into long chains of barchans, filled in the rainy season to create lagoons of various colours, shapes, sizes and depths. The property reveals its best scenery when the lagoons reach their maximum volume, creating rare beauty. The vast expanse of both stable and shifting dunes, the largest in South America, presents remarkable evidence of the evolutionary progression of coastal dunes throughout the Quaternary period.