Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is a state located in the southern region of Brazil. It is the ninth largest by area. Located in the southernmost part of the country, Rio Grande do Sul is bordered clockwise by Santa Catarina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the Uruguayan departments of Rocha, Treinta y Tres, Cerro Largo and Artigas to the south and southwest, the Argentine provinces of Corrientes and Misiones to the west and northwest; the capital and largest city is Porto Alegre. The state has the highest life expectancy in Brazil, the crime rate is considered to be low. Despite the high standard of living, unemployment is still high and according to census data, it is one of the most difficult states in Brazil for foreigners to find jobs; the state has a gaucho culture like its foreign neighbors. It was inhabited by Guarani people; the first Europeans there were Jesuits, followed by settlers from the Azores. In the 19th century it was the scene of conflicts including the Farroupilha Revolution and the Paraguayan War.
Large waves of German and Italian migration have shaped the state. Rio Grande do Sul is bordered to the northeast by the Brazilian State of Santa Catarina, to the southeast by the Atlantic Ocean, on the southwest by Uruguay, to the northwest by the Argentine provinces of Corrientes and Misiones; the northern part of the state lies on the southern slopes of the elevated plateau extending southward from São Paulo across the states of Paraná and Santa Catarina, is much broken by low mountain ranges whose general direction across the trend of the slope gives them the appearance of escarpments. A range of low mountains extends southward from the Serra do Mar of Santa Catarina and crosses the state into Uruguay. West of this range is a vast grassy plain devoted principally to stock-raising — the northern and most elevated part being suitable in pasturage and climate for sheep, the southern for cattle. East of it is a wide coastal zone only elevated above the sea; the coast is one great sand beach, broken only by the outlet of the two lakes, called the Rio Grande, which affords an entrance to navigable inland waters and several ports.
There are two distinct river systems in Rio Grande do Sul – that of the eastern slope draining to the lagoons, that of the Río de la Plata basin draining westward to the Uruguay River. The larger rivers of the eastern group are the Jacuí, Sinos, Caí, Gravataí and Camaquã, which flow into the Lagoa dos Patos, the Jaguarão which flows into the Lagoa Mirim. All of the first named, except the Camaquã, discharge into one of the two arms or estuaries opening into the northern end of Lagoa dos Patos, called the Guaíba River, though technically it is not a river but a lake; the Guaíba River is broad, comparatively deep and about 56 kilometres long, with the rivers discharging into it affords upwards of 320 kilometres of fluvial navigation. The Jacuí is one of the most important rivers of the state, rising in the ranges of the Coxilha Grande of the north and flowing south and southeast to the Guaíba estuary, with a course of nearly 480 kilometres It has two large tributaries, the Vacacaí from the south and the Taquari from the north, many small streams.
The Jaguarão, which forms part of the boundary line with Uruguay, is navigable 42 km up to and beyond the town of Jaguarão. In addition to the Lagoa dos Patos and Lagoa Mirim there are a number of small lakes on the sandy, swampy peninsulas that lie between the coast and these two, there are others of a similar character along the northern coast; the largest lake is the Lagoa dos Patos, which lies parallel with the coastline and southwest, is about 214 kilometres long exclusive of the two arms at its northern end, 40 58 km long and of its outlet, the Rio Grande, about 39 km long. Its width varies from 35 to 58 km; the lake is comparatively shallow and filled with sand banks, making its navigable channels tortuous and difficult. The Lagoa Mirim occupies a similar position farther south, on the Uruguayan border, is about 175 kilometres long by 10 to 35 km wide, it is more irregular in outline and discharges into Lagoa dos Patos through a navigable channel known as the São Gonçalo Channel. A part of the lake lies in Uruguayan territory, but its navigation, as determined by treaty, belongs to Brazil.
Both of these lakes are evidently the remains of an ancient depression in the coastline shut in by sand beaches built up by the combined action of wind and current. They are of the same level as the ocean, but their waters are affected by the tides and are brackish only a short distance above the Rio Grande outlet. One-third of the state belongs to the Río de la Plata drainage basin. Of the many streams flowing northward and westward to the Uruguay, the largest are the Ijuí of the plateau region, the Ibicuí, which has its source near Santa Maria in the central part of the state and flows westward to the Uruguay a short distance above Uruguaiana, the Quaraí River which forms part of the boundary line with Uruguay; the Uruguay River itself is formed by the confluence of the Pelotas rivers. The Pelotas, which has its source in the Serra do Mar on the Atlantic coast, the Uruguay River forms the northern and western boundary line of the state down to the mouth of the Quaraí, on the Uruguayan frontier.
Rio Grande do Sul lies within the south temperate zone and is predom
Artigas Department
Artigas Department is the northernmost department of Uruguay, located in its northwestern region. Its capital is the city of Artigas, which borders on the Brazilian city of Quaraí. Artigas Department has an area of 11,928 square kilometres, making it the fifth largest in the country; the population is 73,378 inhabitants, according to the 2011 census. It is east by Brazil, from which it is separated by the Cuareim River. To the south, Artigas Department borders on Salto Department, to the west is Argentina, from which it is separated by the Uruguay River. Artigas is the only Uruguayan department; the department and its capital city are named after José Gervasio Artigas, leader of the Orientales during Uruguay's wars of independence. Owner region of a prehistoric past which became "no man's land" between the Spanish and Portuguese empires; the initial indigenous predominance was displaced by the native settlement and subsequent colonies of immigrants. Artigas department was created by law on 1 October 1884, on territory belonged to the department of Salto.
He was linked to first politician and police chief Artigas. Its capital Artigas comes at the end of the "Guerra Grande" in order to consolidate the borders with Brazil, with the name of San Eugenio del Cuareim, it was founded on September 12, 1852 by Don Carlos Catala, choosing as the best site located on the banks of the Cuareim River opposite the Villa San Juan Bautista on the other side of the river, a military settlement, transformed into what is today the city of Quaraí. With the name of Santa Rosa del Cuareim was founded the current Bella Union by Fructuoso Rivera and refugees Guarani after the campaign Eastern Missions against Brazil in 1829. In 1852 after winning the allies Colorados Brazil national, territory north of Cuareim was yielded to Brazil which prompted an evacuation of the population, it was refounded in 1853 under the name of Santa Rosa de la Bella Union Quareim. In 1929 the national government to mark the centenary of the campaign of Missions, sent a bill to the Senate, which established the name Bella Union, which for that time was a villa.
Two portions of the department's border with Brazil are disputed, but unlike many border disputes between Latin American countries, this issue has not strained Uruguay's relations with Brazil, which remain friendly. Two main geostructural regions can be found inside Artigas' limits: The central and eastern area, which includes a basaltic cuesta, some sedimentary plains near the Cuareim River. Found in the region are some hill ranges, such as Cuchilla de Belén; the western area, which consists of a narrow alluvial plain. Artigas Department's average temperature is the highest in the whole country. So are its precipitation levels; the unique climatic conditions of Artigas has made possible the development of an important agro-industrial centre around the city of Bella Unión. Several crops are planted, namely fruits and vegetables, sugar cane, rice. In the rest of the department, the main economic activity is livestock raising. Semi-precious gemstones, such as agates and amethysts, are found in the department, an entire industry has risen up around their extraction and manufacturing near the capital city of Artigas.
The proximity of the department to Brazil has made it possible for an important flow of trade to be established here, but this is unfavorable to Uruguayan economic interests. This compensates for the fact that the per capita income is the lowest of the country, the percentage of households in poverty is the highest in the country; as of the census of 2011, the Artigas Department had a population of 26,231 households. Demographic data for Artigas Department in 2010: Population growth rate: -0,006% Birth Rate: 15.48 births/1,000 people Death Rate: 7.05 deaths/1,000 people Average age: 28.2 Life Expectancy at Birth: Total population: 75.43 years Male. List of populated places in Uruguay#Artigas Department Uruguayan-Brazilian border dispute Highly detailed map of Artigas Department showing all populated places and full geographic details. See full size version in Commons. Domínguez, Carlos María. El norte profundo. Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. INE map of Artigas Department Nuestra Terra, Colección Los Departamentos, Vol.17 "Artigas"
Paraguay
Paraguay the Republic of Paraguay, is a country of South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, Bolivia to the northwest. Although it is one of the only two landlocked countries in South America, the country has coasts and ports on the Paraguay and Paraná rivers that give exit to the Atlantic Ocean through the Paraná-Paraguay Waterway. Due to its central location in South America, it is sometimes referred to as Corazón de Sudamérica. Spanish conquistadores arrived in 1524 after navigating northwards from the Río de la Plata to the Paraná River, up the Paraguay River. In 1537, they established the city of Asunción, the first capital of the Governorate of Paraguay and Río de la Plata. Paraguay was the epicenter of the Jesuit Missions, where the Guaraní people were educated and introduced to Christianity and European culture under the direction of the Society of Jesus in Jesuit reductions during the 17th century. However, after the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish territories in 1767, Paraguay became a peripheral colony, with few urban centers and settlers.
Following independence from Spain at the beginning of the 19th century, Paraguay was ruled by a series of authoritarian governments who implemented nationalist and protectionist policies. This period ended with the disastrous Paraguayan War, during which Paraguay lost at least 50% of its prewar population and around 25–33% of its territory to the Triple Alliance of Argentina and Uruguay. In the 20th century, Paraguay faced another major international conflict – the Chaco War – against Bolivia, from which the Paraguayans emerged victorious. Afterwards, the country entered a period of military dictatorships, ending with the 35 year regime of Alfredo Stroessner that lasted until he was toppled in 1989 by an internal military coup; this marked the beginning of the "democratic era" of Paraguay. With around 7 million inhabitants, Paraguay is a founding member of Mercosur, an original member of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Lima Group; the city of Luque, in Asuncion's Metropolitan Area, is the seat of the CONMEBOL.
The Guarani culture is influential and more than 90% of the people speak different forms of the Guarani language on top of Spanish. Paraguayans are known for being a happy and easy-living people and many times the country topped the "world's happiest place" charts because of the "positive experiences" lived and expressed by the population; the indigenous Guaraní had been living in eastern Paraguay for at least a millennium before the arrival of the Spanish. Western Paraguay, the Gran Chaco, was inhabited by nomads of whom the Guaycuru peoples were the most prominent; the Paraguay River was the dividing line between the agricultural Guarani people to the east and the nomadic and semi-nomadic people to the west in the Gran Chaco. The Guarcuru nomads were known for their warrior traditions and were not pacified until the late 19th century; these indigenous tribes belonged to five distinct language families, which were the bases of their major divisions. Differing language speaking groups were competitive over resources and territories.
They were further divided into tribes by speaking languages in branches of these families. Today 17 separate ethnolinguistic groups remain; the first Europeans in the area were Spanish explorers in 1516. The Spanish explorer Juan de Salazar de Espinosa founded the settlement of Asunción on 15 August 1537; the city became the center of a Spanish colonial province of Paraguay. An attempt to create an autonomous Christian Indian nation was undertaken by Jesuit missions and settlements in this part of South America in the eighteenth century, which included portions of Uruguay and Brazil, they developed Jesuit reductions to bring Guarani populations together at Spanish missions and protect them from virtual slavery by Spanish settlers and Portuguese slave raiders, the Bandeirantes. In addition to seeking their conversion to Christianity. Catholicism in Paraguay was influenced by the indigenous peoples; the reducciones flourished in eastern Paraguay for about 150 years, until the expulsion of the Jesuits by the Spanish Crown in 1767.
The ruins of two 18th-century Jesuit Missions of La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná and Jesús de Tavarangue have been designated as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. In western Paraguay Spanish settlement and Christianity were resisted by the nomadic Guaycuru and other nomads from the 16th century onward. Most of these peoples were absorbed into the mestizo population in the 19th centuries. Paraguay overthrew the local Spanish administration on 14 May 1811. Paraguay's first dictator was José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia who ruled Paraguay from 1814 until his death in 1840, with little outside contact or influence, he intended to create a utopian society based on the French theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract. Rodríguez de Francia established new laws that reduced the powers of the Catholic church and the cabinet, forbade colonial citizens from marrying one another and allowed them to marry only blacks, mulattoes or natives, in order to break the power of colonial-era elites and to create a mixed-race or mestizo society.
He cut off the rest of South America. Because of Francia's restrictions of freedom, Fulgencio Yegros and several other Independence-era
Rapids
Rapids are sections of a river where the river bed has a steep gradient, causing an increase in water velocity and turbulence. Rapids are hydrological features between a cascade. Rapids are characterised by the river becoming shallower with some rocks exposed above the flow surface; as flowing water splashes over and around the rocks, air bubbles become mixed in with it and portions of the surface acquire a white colour, forming what is called "whitewater". Rapids occur where the bed material is resistant to the erosive power of the stream in comparison with the bed downstream of the rapids. Young streams flowing across solid rock may be rapids for much of their length. Rapids cause water aeration of the river resulting in better water quality. Rapids are categorized in classes running from I to VI. A Class 5 rapid may be categorized as Class 5.1-5.9. While class I rapids are easy to navigate and require little maneuvering, class VI rapids pose threat to life with little or no chance for rescue.
River rafting sports are carried out. Fluid dynamics International Scale of River Difficulty - for classification of rapids Reach Rheophile - organisms that live in fast flowing water Riffle - A fast moving portion of a stream without the vigour of a rapid Mason, Bill. Path of the Paddle. Northword Press. ISBN 9781559710046. Rapids entry in National Geographic's encyclopedia
Río Negro Department
Río Negro Department is a department of the northwestern region of Uruguay. It has an area of 9,282 km2 and a population of 54,765, its capital is Fray Bentos. It borders Paysandú Department to the north, Tacuarembó Department to the east, Durazno Department to the southeast, Soriano Department to the south and has the Río Uruguay flowing at its west, separating it from Argentina; the first division of the Republic in six departments happened on 27 January 1816. In that year two more departments were formed. At the time, Paysandú Department included all the territory north of the Río Negro, which included the current departments of Artigas, Tacuarembó, Paysandú and Río Negro. On 17 June 1837 a new division of Uruguay was made and this territory was divided in three parts. In the new division, Paysandú Department included the current department of Río Negro, until it was split from it in 1868; the Río Negro flows along the southern border of the department, forming the natural border with the departments of Durazno to the southeast and Soriano to the south.
Tributary streams to flow through most of the department. From east to west, these are: Arroyo Salsipuedes Grande, which forms part of the border with Tacuarembó Department to the east, while its tributary Arroyo Juan Tomas forms a little part of the northeast border with Paysandú Department, Arroyo Tres Árboles with its tributary Arroyo Islas de Argüelles, Arroyo Rolón, Arroyo Grande, with its tributaries Arroyo de las Flores and Arroyo Averías Grande, Arroyo Don Esteban Grande, Arroyo Sanchez Grande, with its tributaries Arroyo Sanchez Chico and Arroyo Coladeras; the Río Negro discharges into Río Uruguay about 32 kilometres southwest of Fray Bentos. Notable along its course in respect to this department are two hydroelectric dams: the Rincón de Baygorria Dam, forming the Baygorria Reservoir and the Constitución Dam, forming the Paso de Palmar Reservoir. In both cases, the power installations are situated on the neighbouring departments of Durazno and Soriano respectively. A big part of the north border with Paysandú Department is formed by Arroyo Negro with two of its tributary streams flowing through the northwest of the department.
These are: Arroyo Bellaco. It discharges into Río Uruguay about 21 kilometres north of San Javier and opposite the city of Argentina Concepción del Uruguay, forming at its mouth a sandy beach named Playa Arroyo Negro. There is Arroyo Romàn Grande, which discharges directly into Río Uruguay. Several sandy islands are formed in the curve of Río Uruguay upstream of Fray Bentos between Uruguay and Argentina. On the northeast part of the department starts the big hill range Cuchilla de Haedo, which extends to the northeast forming its highest levels between the departments of Salto and Rivera; the hill Cerro del Quebracho is part of this range. The second and smaller hill range, in the west part of the department, is the Cuchilla de Navarro. Independent of these ranges, the hill Cerro Pelado is in the middle south, the hills Cerro Colorado and Cerro Malvenir are southeast of Fray Bentos; as of the census of 2011, Río Negro Department had a population of 20,975 households. Demographic data for Florida Department in 2010: Population growth rate: 0.529% Birth Rate: 15.82 births/1,000 people Death Rate: 7.38 deaths/1,000 people Average age: 31.5 Life Expectancy at Birth: Total population: 78.04 years Male: 74.78 years Female: 81.05 years Average per household income: 25,585 pesos/month Urban per capita income: 9,137 pesos/month2010 Data Source: Rural populationAccording to the 2011 census, Río Negro department has an additional rural population of 5,212.
Agriculture is the main source of industry in the western part of the department. The main agricultural products are flax, wheat, grains, amongst others; the eastern half of the department has many pastures for the grazing of sheep and cattle which are an important contributor to the economy of the department. The main industries are again based around agro-industry the most prominent being wineries and dairies; the department has a fluvial port located in Fray Bentos. Tourism is becoming popular in the department in the thermal spas around the area of Las Cañas. Botnia S. A. a subsidiary of Finnish corporation Botnia, is building a large cellulose factory in Fray Bentos to produce bleached eucalyptus pulp. The investment in the project is about 1 billion USD and the factory will directly or indirectly employ more than 8,000 people; the project, however, is not without opponents. On 30 April 2005 about 40,000 Argentinians from Entre Ríos, along with environmental groups from both countries, blocked an international bridge and demanded the Argentine government to intercede before the Uruguayan one to stop the building of the factory, claiming it will gravely pollute the Uruguay River.
On 20 December 2005 a World Bank study concluded that the factory would not have a negative impact on the environment or tourism in either country, this was not accepted by the environmental groups, who blocked again the bridge several times near the end of 2005. Guillermo Stirling was the Colorado Party's Presidential candidate in 2005 Gaston Ramirez football player for Southampton F. C Vladimir Roslik, a Russian-Uruguayan medical doctor tortured and killed by the Uruguayan military during their regime List of populated places in Uruguay#Río Negro Department Cellulose plant conflict between Argentina and Uruguay INE map of Río N
River
A river is a natural flowing watercourse freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, lake or another river. In some cases a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of water. Small rivers can be referred to using names such as stream, brook and rill. There are no official definitions for the generic term river as applied to geographic features, although in some countries or communities a stream is defined by its size. Many names for small rivers are specific to geographic location. Sometimes a river is defined as being larger than a creek, but not always: the language is vague. Rivers are part of the hydrological cycle. Potamology is the scientific study of rivers, while limnology is the study of inland waters in general. Most of the major cities of the world are situated on the banks of rivers, as they are, or were, used as a source of water, for obtaining food, for transport, as borders, as a defensive measure, as a source of hydropower to drive machinery, for bathing, as a means of disposing of waste.
A river begins at a source, follows a path called a course, ends at a mouth or mouths. The water in a river is confined to a channel, made up of a stream bed between banks. In larger rivers there is also a wider floodplain shaped by flood-waters over-topping the channel. Floodplains may be wide in relation to the size of the river channel; this distinction between river channel and floodplain can be blurred in urban areas where the floodplain of a river channel can become developed by housing and industry. Rivers can flow down mountains, through valleys or along plains, can create canyons or gorges; the term upriver refers to the direction towards the source of the river, i.e. against the direction of flow. The term downriver describes the direction towards the mouth of the river, in which the current flows; the term left bank refers to the left bank in the direction of right bank to the right. The river channel contains a single stream of water, but some rivers flow as several interconnecting streams of water, producing a braided river.
Extensive braided rivers are now found in only a few regions worldwide, such as the South Island of New Zealand. They occur on peneplains and some of the larger river deltas. Anastamosing rivers are quite rare, they have multiple sinuous channels carrying large volumes of sediment. There are rare cases of river bifurcation in which a river divides and the resultant flows ending in different seas. An example is the bifurcation of Nerodime River in Kosovo. A river flowing in its channel is a source of energy which acts on the river channel to change its shape and form. In 1757, the German hydrologist Albert Brahms empirically observed that the submerged weight of objects that may be carried away by a river is proportional to the sixth power of the river flow speed; this formulation is sometimes called Airy's law. Thus, if the speed of flow is doubled, the flow would dislodge objects with 64 times as much submerged weight. In mountainous torrential zones this can be seen as erosion channels through hard rocks and the creation of sands and gravels from the destruction of larger rocks.
A river valley, created from a U-shaped glaciated valley, can easily be identified by the V-shaped channel that it has carved. In the middle reaches where a river flows over flatter land, meanders may form through erosion of the river banks and deposition on the inside of bends. Sometimes the river will cut off a loop, shortening the channel and forming an oxbow lake or billabong. Rivers that carry large amounts of sediment may develop conspicuous deltas at their mouths. Rivers whose mouths are in saline tidal waters may form estuaries. Throughout the course of the river, the total volume of water transported downstream will be a combination of the free water flow together with a substantial volume flowing through sub-surface rocks and gravels that underlie the river and its floodplain. For many rivers in large valleys, this unseen component of flow may exceed the visible flow. Most but not all rivers flow on the surface. Subterranean rivers flow underground in caverns; such rivers are found in regions with limestone geologic formations.
Subglacial streams are the braided rivers that flow at the beds of glaciers and ice sheets, permitting meltwater to be discharged at the front of the glacier. Because of the gradient in pressure due to the overlying weight of the glacier, such streams can flow uphill. An intermittent river only flows and can be dry for several years at a time; these rivers are found in regions with limited or variable rainfall, or can occur because of geologic conditions such as a permeable river bed. Some ephemeral rivers flow during the summer months but not in the winter; such rivers are fed from chalk aquifers which recharge from winter rainfall. In England these rivers are called bournes and give their name to places such as Bournemouth and Eastbourne. In humid regions, the location where flow begins in the smallest tributary streams moves upstream in response to precipitation and downstream in its absence or when active summer vegetation diverts water for evapotrans
Last Glacial Period
The Last Glacial Period occurred from the end of the Eemian interglacial to the end of the Younger Dryas, encompassing the period c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago. This most recent glacial period is part of a larger pattern of glacial and interglacial periods known as the Quaternary glaciation extending from c. 2,588,000 years ago to present. The definition of the Quaternary as beginning 2.58 Ma is based on the formation of the Arctic ice cap. The Antarctic ice sheet began to form earlier, in the mid-Cenozoic; the term Late Cenozoic Ice Age is used to include this early phase. During this last glacial period there were alternating episodes of glacier retreat. Within the last glacial period the Last Glacial Maximum was 22,000 years ago. While the general pattern of global cooling and glacier advance was similar, local differences in the development of glacier advance and retreat make it difficult to compare the details from continent to continent. 13,000 years ago, the Late Glacial Maximum began.
The end of the Younger Dryas about 11,700 years ago marked the beginning of the Holocene geological epoch, which includes the Holocene glacial retreat. From the point of view of human archaeology, the last glacial period falls in the Paleolithic and early Mesolithic periods; when the glaciation event started, Homo sapiens were confined to lower latitudes and used tools comparable to those used by Neanderthals in western and central Eurasia and by Homo erectus in Asia. Near the end of the event, Homo sapiens migrated into Australia. Archaeological and genetic data suggest that the source populations of Paleolithic humans survived the last glacial period in sparsely wooded areas and dispersed through areas of high primary productivity while avoiding dense forest cover; the last glacial period is sometimes colloquially referred to as the "last ice age", though this use is incorrect because an ice age is a longer period of cold temperature in which year-round ice sheets are present near one or both poles.
Glacials are colder phases within an ice age. Thus, the end of the last glacial period, about 11,700 years ago, is not the end of the last ice age since extensive year-round ice persists in Antarctica and Greenland. Over the past few million years the glacial-interglacial cycles have been "paced" by periodic variations in the Earth's orbit via Milankovitch cycles; the last glacial period is the best-known part of the current ice age, has been intensively studied in North America, northern Eurasia, the Himalaya and other glaciated regions around the world. The glaciations that occurred during this glacial period covered many areas in the Northern Hemisphere and to a lesser extent in the Southern Hemisphere, they have different names developed and depending on their geographic distributions: Fraser, Wisconsinan or Wisconsin, Midlandian, Würm, Mérida, Weichselian or Vistulian, Valdai in Russia and Zyryanka in Siberia, Llanquihue in Chile, Otira in New Zealand. The geochronological Late Pleistocene includes the late glacial and the preceding penultimate interglacial period.
Canada was nearly covered by ice, as well as the northern part of the United States, both blanketed by the huge Laurentide Ice Sheet. Alaska remained ice free due to arid climate conditions. Local glaciations existed in the Rocky Mountains and the Cordilleran Ice Sheet and as ice fields and ice caps in the Sierra Nevada in northern California. In Britain, mainland Europe, northwestern Asia, the Scandinavian ice sheet once again reached the northern parts of the British Isles, Germany and Russia, extending as far east as the Taymyr Peninsula in western Siberia; the maximum extent of western Siberian glaciation was reached by 16,000–15,000 BC and thus than in Europe. Northeastern Siberia was not covered by a continental-scale ice sheet. Instead, but restricted, icefield complexes covered mountain ranges within northeast Siberia, including the Kamchatka-Koryak Mountains; the Arctic Ocean between the huge ice sheets of America and Eurasia was not frozen throughout, but like today was only covered by shallow ice, subject to seasonal changes and riddled with icebergs calving from the surrounding ice sheets.
According to the sediment composition retrieved from deep-sea cores there must have been times of seasonally open waters. Outside the main ice sheets, widespread glaciation occurred on the highest mountains of the Alps−Himalaya mountain chain. In contrast to the earlier glacial stages, the Würm glaciation was composed of smaller ice caps and confined to valley glaciers, sending glacial lobes into the Alpine foreland; the [, the highest massifs of the Carpathian Mountains and the Balkanic peninsula mountains and to the east the Caucasus and the mountains of Turkey and Iran were capped by local ice fields or small ice sheets. In the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau, glaciers advanced particularly between 45,000 and 25,000 BC, but these datings are controversial; the formation of a contiguous ice sheet on the Tibetan Plateau is controversial. Other areas of the Northern Hemisphere did not bear extensive ice sheets, but local glaciers in high areas. Parts of Taiwan, for example, were glaciated between 42,250 and 8,680 BCE as well as the Japanese Alps
Media related to Uruguay River at Wikimedia Commons