Country Snapshot: Geography

Mexico's terrain includes high, rugged mountains, low coastal plains, high plateaus, and desert.

About a quarter of the population lives in and around Mexico City.

Location

North America, bordering the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, between Belize and the United States and bordering the North Pacific Ocean, between Guatemala and the United States

Geographic Coordinates

23 00 N, 102 00 W

Map References

North America

Area

Total: 1,964,375 sq km

Land: 1,943,945 sq km

Water: 20,430 sq km

Country comparison to the world: 15

Area Comparative: Slightly less than three times the size of Texas

Land Boundaries

Total: 4,389 km

Border countries (3): Belize 276 km, Guatemala 958 km, US 3155 km

Coastline: 9,330 km

Maritime Claims

Territorial sea: 12 nm

Exclusive economic zone: 200 nm

Contiguous zone: 24 nm

Continental shelf: 200 nm or to the edge of the continental margin

Climate

Varies from tropical to desert

Terrain

High, rugged mountains; low coastal plains; high plateaus; desert

Elevation

Mean elevation: 1,111 m

Lowest point: Laguna Salada -10 m

Highest point: Volcan Pico de Orizaba 5,636 m

Natural Resources

Petroleum, silver, antimony, copper, gold, lead, zinc, natural gas, timber

Land Use

Agricultural land: 54.9% (2011 est.)

Arable land: 11.8% (2011 est.)

Permanent crops: 1.4% (2011 est.)

Permanent pasture: 41.7% (2011 est.)

Forest: 33.3% (2011 est.)

Other: 11.8% (2011 est.)

Irrigated land: 65,000 sq km (2012)

Population Distribution

Most of the population is found in the middle of the country between the states of Jalisco and Veracruz; approximately a quarter of the population lives in and around Mexico City

Natural Hazards

Tsunamis along the Pacific coast, volcanoes and destructive earthquakes in the center and south, and hurricanes on the Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean coasts

Volcanism: volcanic activity in the central-southern part of the country; the volcanoes in Baja California are mostly dormant; Colima (3,850 m), which erupted in 2010, is Mexico's most active volcano and is responsible for causing periodic evacuations of nearby villagers; it has been deemed a Decade Volcano by the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior, worthy of study due to its explosive history and close proximity to human populations; Popocatepetl (5,426 m) poses a threat to Mexico City; other historically active volcanoes include Barcena, Ceboruco, El Chichon, Michoacan-Guanajuato, Pico de Orizaba, San Martin, Socorro, and Tacana

Current Environmental Issues

Scarcity of hazardous waste disposal facilities; rural to urban migration; natural freshwater resources scarce and polluted in north, inaccessible and poor quality in center and extreme southeast; raw sewage and industrial effluents polluting rivers in urban areas; deforestation; widespread erosion; desertification; deteriorating agricultural lands; serious air and water pollution in the national capital and urban centers along US-Mexico border; land subsidence in Valley of Mexico caused by groundwater depletion

Note: The government considers the lack of clean water and deforestation national security issues

Notes

• Strategic location on southern border of US;
• Corn (maize), one of the world's major grain crops, almost certainly originated in Mexico;
• Mexico is one of the countries along the Ring of Fire, a belt of active volcanoes and earthquake epicenters bordering the Pacific Ocean, and up to 90% of the world's earthquakes and some 75% of the world's volcanoes occur within the Ring of Fire;
• The prominent Yucatan Peninsula that divides the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea is shared by Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Just on the northern coast of Yucatan, near the town of Chicxulub (pronounce cheek-sha-loob), lie the remnants of a massive crater (some 150 km in diameter and extending well out into the Gulf of Mexico). Formed by an asteroid or comet when it struck the earth 66 million years ago, the impact is now widely accepted as initiating a worldwide climate disruption that caused a mass extinction of 75% of all the earth's plant and animal species—including the non-avian dinosaurs.

Article written for World Trade Press by CIA Factbook, Current as of 5 May, 2021.
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