page_title: Tortuguero National Park
section_title: Geography
hierarchical_section_title: Tortuguero National Park / Geography
caption_attribution_description: English: Boat trip into the "canales de Parque Nacional Tortuguero" and tropical rain forest. In Tortuguero National Park, Limón Province, northeastern Costa Rica. In the Isthmian-Atlantic moist forest ecoregion, of the Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests biome.
context_page_description: Tortuguero National Park is a national park in the Limón Province of Costa Rica. It is situated within the Tortuguero Conservation Area of the northeastern part of the country.
  Despite its remote location, reachable only by airplane or boat, it is the third-most visited park in Costa Rica. The park has a large variety of biological diversity due to the existence within the reserve of eleven different habitats, including rainforest, mangrove forests, swamps, beaches, and lagoons. Located in a tropical climate, it is very humid, and receives up to 250 inches of rain a year.
  The park, a protected area within the northeastern Caribbean wetlands, was recognized under Ramsar Convention on 3 March 1991 for its rich biological diversity and ecosystems that support threatened flora and fauna species. Set in a natural wetland of the Caribbean coast, it forms a corridor with another protected area, the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve of Nicaragua. It is a key Ramsar Site.
context_section_description: The park is located on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, and covers an area of 77,032 acres (31,174 ha).  It is bounded with an elevation range of 0–230 metres (0–755 ft), indicative of a sea coastal region to low hilly topography. The Tortuguero National Park has over 20 miles of coastline, which provides sea turtles a protected place to lay their eggs.  Tortuguero is bordered on the north by the Barra del Colorado Wildlife Refuge (with habitats and climate similar to Tortuguero), to the south by the mouth of the Parismina River and the Cariari National Wetlands, the town of Tortuguero at the mouth of the Tortuguero River, and the Dr. Archie Carr Wildlife Refuge, which is a biological station to carry out turtle tagging program run by the Caribbean Conservation Corporation (Now known was the Sea Turtle Conservancy).
  While volcanic activity is reported as formation of a group of small islands, erosion has created the depressions which have a permeable base of "light grey, broken lava rocks, with harder rocks and grey or dark grey lavas overlying". Sandy soils resulting from sedimentation dominates the reserve with formation of parallel bars in the coastal area. The depressions are subject to filling by ephemeral floods; estuary lakes, grass marshes and wooded swamps caused by very heavy rainfall. Small tides of about 40 centimetres (16 in) height have also affected the coastal zone. The small rivers and streams that originate in the hills and flow through the park generally have water 3 metres (9.8 ft) deep. The lakes in the northern part of the reserve are fed by the Colorado River. The very humid tropical forest is influenced by excessive humidity, rapid drainage and thin soils, with over 330 days of cloud cover per year. Moisture-laden winds come from the Caribbean.
  The park has worked with the neighboring village of Tortuguero to help its inhabitants understand that preserving their natural resources is the key to encourage eco-tourism. With rich water resources from a precipitation of 250 inches (6,400 mm) per year, the drainage system of the park is fed by many rivers. There are a large number of interlinked canals, water ways  and navigable lagoons and lakes that create plains of sediment carried by the river system. The plains are interspersed with rolling hills of forest that were created in ancient days from volcanic cinder cones, of which the Tortuguero Hill and the Lomas de Sierpe of 1,000 feet (300 m) height could be mentioned.
  Enforcement of protection has remained a challenge. Swaths of the park have been semi-legally clear-cut, the damage which allows access to habitat of endangered sea turtles.
caption: Boat trip into the canals of Tortuguero
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