Lençóis Maranhenses National Park

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Unveiling the Stunning Beauty of Lençóis Maranhenses National Park

The Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, nestled in the northeastern corner of Brazil, offers a breathtaking spectacle that defies imagination. This expansive protected area, spanning over 155,000 hectares, lies along the eastern coast of Maranhão, where the diverse Brazilian biomes of Cerrado, Caatinga, and Amazon converge.

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UNESCO Description of the World Heritage Site

The property is located in northeastern Brazil, on the east coast of Maranhão, in a transition zone between three Brazilian biomes: Cerrado, Caatinga and Amazon. More than half of its area consists of a white coastal dune field with temporary and permanent lagoons. Beyond its important role in biodiversity conservation, the park boasts globally significant aesthetic and geological/geomorphological values. Along an 80 km coastline, with beaches followed by plains, the prevailing winds shape the dunes into long chains of barchans, filled in the rainy season to create lagoons of various colours, shapes, sizes and depths. The property reveals its best scenery when the lagoons reach their maximum volume, creating rare beauty. The vast expanse of both stable and shifting dunes, the largest in South America, presents remarkable evidence of the evolutionary progression of coastal dunes throughout the Quaternary period.

UNESCO Justification of the World Heritage Site

Criterion (vii): The Lençóis Maranhenses National Park is part of an incomparable landscape. It is formed by successive dune chains interspersed with temporary and perennial lagoons. Along the park’s 80 km of coastline, there is a beach between 600m and 2km. The sand deposited by tides on the beach is gradually eroded by the wind, shaping small barchans with heights ranging from 50 cm to one metre near the shoreline, reaching heights of up to 30 m as they migrate inland, downwind and atop dunes from previous generations. The barchan dunes form winding chains up to 75 km long and move over 20 km inland. During the rainy season, temporary lakes form between the dunes, only to vanish in the dry season, leading to a constant transformation of the landscape. With dune mobility at migration rates ranging from 4 to 25 meters per year, these lakes reemerge in new locations with altered shapes in the subsequent rainy season. The lakebeds are coated with a layer of brown or green algae and cyanobacteria, contributing to the ever-changing scenery and variety of shapes and colours, composing a landscape of unique beauty rarely found anywhere else in the world.

Criterion (viii): The sediments in the Barreirinhas Basin are subject to aeolian processes forming a field of fixed and mobile dunes, considered the largest in South America. This process is considered one of the best and largest examples of the development of coastal dunes along the Quaternary, and the only site worldwide with such extensive development of dynamic dunes and lagoons. The dunes form long chains of barchans arranged in the same direction and increasing in size as they advance inland. Temporary ponds are formed by the rise of the water table during the rainy season. The property stands out within the complex interplay of climatic, oceanographic, and geomorphological elements along the Brazilian coast, featuring unique dune and lagoon formations fed exclusively by rainwater. These features, shaped by coastal dynamics and various environmental interactions, serve as remarkable evidence of the evolutionary progression of coastal dunes over millennia, including insights into pre-vegetation fluvial landscapes, serving as a present-day analogue for understanding past fluvial processes. The geomorphological processes create pristine and nascent habitats for a diverse and specialised and pioneer flora and fauna.

Encyclopedia Record: Lençóis Maranhenses National Park

Lençóis Maranhenses National Park is a national park in Maranhão state in northeastern Brazil, just east of the Baía de São José. Protected on June 2, 1981, the 155,000 ha (380,000-acre) park includes 70 km (43 mi) of coastline, and an interior composed of rolling sand dunes. During the rainy season, the valleys among the dunes fill with freshwater lagoons, prevented from draining by the impermeable rock beneath. The park is home to a range of species, including four listed as endangered, and has become a popular destination for ecotourists.

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IUCN World Heritage Outlook

The 2025 Conservation Outlook on Lençóis Maranhenses National Park reports the following assessment:

Source: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) · View assessment