Editing Venezuela (section)

=== Valleys ===
[[File:Valle de Mifafí 2.jpg|Valle de Mifafí, [[Mérida State]]|thumb]]
The valleys are undoubtedly the most important type of [[landscape]] in the Venezuelan territory,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Rojas|first=Arístides|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=abMvAQAAMAAJ&q=valles+de+venezuela|title=Primer libro de geografía de Venezuela según Codazzi|date=1897|publisher=Santana y cia|language=es|access-date=7 June 2021|archive-date=29 November 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231129032524/https://books.google.com/books?id=abMvAQAAMAAJ&q=valles+de+venezuela#v=snippet&q=valles%20de%20venezuela&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref> not because of their spatial extension, but because they are the environment where most of the country's population and economic activities are concentrated. On the other hand, there are valleys throughout almost all the national space, except in the great sedimentary basins of the Llanos and the depression of the [[Maracaibo Lake]], except also in the Amazonian peneplains.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|last=Zinck|first=Alfred|title=Valles de Venezuela|url=https://library.wur.nl/isric/fulltext/isricu_i00006627_001.pdf|access-date=7 June 2021|archive-date=7 June 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210607184129/https://library.wur.nl/isric/fulltext/isricu_i00006627_001.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> By their modeling, the valleys of the Venezuelan territory belong mainly to two types: valleys of [[fluvial]] type and valleys of [[glacial]] type.<ref>{{Cite book|last=A|first=América Bracho|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N9o7AAAAYAAJ&q=valles+de+venezuela|title=Geografía de Venezuela: III año|date=1984|publisher=Ediciones CO-BO|language=es|access-date=14 August 2021|archive-date=29 November 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231129032406/https://books.google.com/books?id=N9o7AAAAYAAJ&q=valles+de+venezuela|url-status=live}}</ref> Much more frequent, the former largely dominate the latter, which are restricted to the highest parts of the Andes. Moreover, most glacial valleys are relics of a past geologic epoch, which culminated some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

The deep and narrow Andean valleys are very different from the wide depressions of [[Aragua]] and Carabobo, in the [[Venezuelan Coastal Range|Cordillera de la Costa]], or from the valleys nestled in the Mesas de [[Monagas]]. These examples indicate that the configuration of the local relief is decisive in identifying regional types of valleys. Likewise, due to their warm climate, the Guayana valleys are distinguished from the temperate or cold [[Andes|Andean valleys]] by their humid environment. Both are, in turn, different from the semi-arid depressions of the states of Lara and Falcón.

The Andean valleys, essentially agricultural, precociously populated but nowadays in loss of speed, do not confront the same problems of space occupation as the strongly urbanized and industrialized valleys of the central section of the Cordillera de la Costa. On the other hand, the unpopulated and practically untouched [[The Guianas|Guiana]] valleys are another category this area is called the Lost World (''Mundo Perdido'').<ref name=":1" />

The Andean valleys are undoubtedly the most impressive of the Venezuelan territory because of the energy of the encasing reliefs, whose summits often dominate the valley bottoms by 3,000 to 3,500 [[meters]] of relative [[altitude]]. They are also the most picturesque in terms of their style of habitat, forms of land use, [[handicraft]] production and all the traditions linked to these activities.<ref name=":1" />