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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Ivory Coast
Index
The lagoon region (zone lagunaire) is a narrow
coastal
belt extending along the Gulf of Guinea from the Ghana
border to
the mouth of the Sassandra River. It consists of a strip
of low,
sandy islands and sandbars built by the combined action of
heavy
surf and ocean currents. These sand barriers, known as the
cordon littoral, have almost closed the rivers
flowing into
the gulf. The resulting series of lagoons ranges in width
from
about a hundred meters to seven or eight kilometers and
seldom
rises more than thirty meters above sea level, leaving the
area
subject to frequent flooding during rainy seasons.
Most of the lagoons are narrow, salty, and shallow and
run
parallel to the coastline, linked to one another and the
gulf by
small watercourses or canals. Where large rivers empty
into the
gulf, broad estuaries extend as much as ten to twenty
kilometers
inland. The sandy soil supports the growth of coconut
palms and
salt-resistant coastal shrubs. The dense rain forest that
once came
down to the water's edge along the continental side of the
lagoons
has been largely supplanted by clearings for farms and
towns and by
second-growth woodlands. In the few remaining undisturbed
areas,
dense mangrove thickets appear along the edges of marshy
inlets.
Data as of November 1988
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