Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Haiti: The Society and Its Environment
1,300 kilometers of coastline. The land area includes numerous
small islands and four large islands: lie de la Gonave (680
square kilometers) adjoining the Baie de Port-au-Prince, lie de
la Tortue (180 square kilometers) off the north coast, and lie a
Vache (fifty-two square kilometers) and Grande Cayemite
(forty-five square kilometers) off the southern peninsula.
Haiti has very few plains; they make up only 22 percent of
the national territory. Slopes in excess of 20 percent cover 63
percent of this rugged, mountainous land, and only 29 percent
of the country has less than a 10 percent slope. The northern
tier of the country includes the Plaine du Nord—the country's
largest coastal plain—an area of 2,000 square kilometers, and
the smaller Plaine des Moustiques and Plaine de l'Arbre in the
arid northwestern peninsula. The northern mountain range,
the Massif du Nord, is an extension of the Cordillera Central of
the Dominican Republic. It varies in elevation from 600 to
1,100 meters and extends from Haiti's eastern border into the
northwestern peninsula.
Haiti's geographic center includes the Central Plateau,
around eighty-five kilometers long and thirty kilometers wide.
To the southwest of the plateau lies the range of Montagnes
Noires with a maximum elevation of 1,400 meters, and the
lower Artibonite River Valley measuring around 800 square
kilometers. The Artibonite delta is the country's major riceproducing
area. Other important lowland areas include the
Plaine de l'Estere and Plaine des Gonaives. South of the Artibonite
Valley are the mountains of the Chaine des Matheux and
Chaine du Trou d'Eau—an extension of the Sierra de Neiba
range of the Dominican Republic.
The southern tier of Haiti includes the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac
and the Plaine de Leogane near Port-au-Prince, the Plaine des
Cayes, other small coastal plains, and the high mountain
ranges of the southern peninsula. The Plaine du Cul-de-Sac is a
natural depression twelve kilometers wide that extends thirtytwo
kilometers from the Dominican border to the coast of the
Baie de Port-au-Prince. The mountains of the Massif de la Selle
are an extension of the Sierra de Baoruco range in the neighboring
republic and run in an east-west direction in the upland
interior of the southern peninsula. The Morne de la Selle
(Montague Terrible) is the highest point in Haiti with an elevation
of 2,684 meters. In the southwestern portion of the peninsula,
the steep and rugged Massif de la Hotte rises to 2,347
meters on Pic de Macaya.
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