Droughts in Brazil

The sertão (, plural sertões) is the "hinterland" or "backcountry" of Brazil. The word refers both to one of the four sub-regions of the Northeast Region of Brazil or the hinterlands of the country in general (similar to the specific association of "outback" with Australia in English). Northeast Brazil is largely covered in a scrubby upland forest called caatingas, from the Tupi language, meaning white forest. Leaves fall during dry season and most of the vegetation, mainly bushes and small trees, is reduced to bare branches and trunks in characteristic pale grayish, or off-white, hues. The re

The agreste (, "countryside") is a narrow zone of Brazil in the states of Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe and Bahia between the coastal forest zona da mata and the semiarid sertão. The agreste fades out after it reaches Rio Grande do Norte due to the break of the mountain chain that blocks air currents from the Atlantic Ocean. This barrier is what induces high rainfall in the coastal Atlantic forest zone.

1938 novel by Graciliano Ramos

natural calamity