Qualla: Chapada das Mesas National Park

Chapada das Mesas National Park: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dante Laurini Jr, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name translates roughly as "tableland of the tables," which sounds redundant until you actually see the place. Flat-topped sandstone mountains rise out of the southern Maranhão scrub like books stacked on a shelf, and between them the Cerrado - South America's great tropical savanna - still exists in something close to its original state. That is increasingly rare. For decades the agricultural frontier has been chewing northward through Maranhão, turning native grassland into soybean fields at a pace that has alarmed ecologists. Chapada das Mesas National Park exists specifically to draw a line against that advance.

Image: Dante Laurini Jr | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chapada das Mesas National Park: A Line in the Savanna

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The park was created by federal decree on 12 December 2005, protecting 159,952 hectares in three municipalities - Riachão, Estreito, and Carolina - at the southern edge of Maranhão. Administration falls under the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, the federal a...

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chapada das Mesas National Park: Sandstone Tables and Waterfalls

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vitor 1234, CC BY-SA 3.0. The terrain climbs to 700 meters at its highest point, a modest elevation that nonetheless creates a landscape of dramatic verticality. The mesas - sandstone plateaus scoured by wind and water over millennia - rise abruptly from the surrounding plains, their cliffs streaked with ...

Image: Vitor 1234 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chapada das Mesas National Park: Creatures of the Cerrado

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antonio Azevedo Filho, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Cerrado supports a strange, specific cast of large animals, and the park shelters most of them. The giant anteater, Myrmecophaga tridactyla, shuffles across the grasslands tearing open termite mounds with claws adapted for nothing else. Three wild cats share the territory: th...

Image: Antonio Azevedo Filho | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chapada das Mesas National Park: Climate and the Seasons

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antonio José Maia Guimarães, CC BY-SA 3.0. Temperatures hover around an average of 26 degrees Celsius year-round, ranging from cool mornings in the fifteens to humid afternoons in the mid-thirties. Annual rainfall averages around 1,400 millimeters, concentrated in a distinct wet season from October through April. The dry ...

Image: Antonio José Maia Guimarães | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chapada das Mesas National Park: The Buffer That Holds

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Otávio Nogueira from Fortaleza, BR, CC BY 2.0. Most of what draws tourists to the Chapada das Mesas region - the cliffs with rock art, the accessible waterfalls, the small towns with guesthouses - lies outside the park proper, in modified landscapes where ranching and agriculture have long since reshaped the land. The park it...

Image: Otávio Nogueira from Fortaleza, BR | CC BY 2.0