South America Physical Map
A free printable physical map of South America, with elevation shown in color and shaded relief. The labeled version names the mountain ranges, deserts, plains, rivers, seas and highest peaks. The blank version leaves them off for students to fill in.
Highest Point
Aconcagua, Argentina
22,837 ft
Lowest Point
Laguna del Carbón, Argentina
about 344 ft below sea level
Choose your version
Labeled or blank.
Both are free PDFs sized for US Letter paper.
Labeled
Ranges, deserts, plains, rivers, lakes, seas and the highest peaks, all named. Use it as a reference or an answer key.
downloadLabeled PDF
Blank
The same terrain with no names and a name line at the top, for students to label the features themselves.
downloadBlank PDFThe physical geography of South America
The Andes run the whole length of South America’s west coast, about 4,300 miles, which makes them the longest mountain range on land. East of the Andes, the Amazon Basin, the largest river basin in the world, covers the north-central part of the continent. Two old highlands rise on either side of it: the Guiana Highlands to the north and the Brazilian Highlands to the southeast. Grassy plains spread across the Llanos in the north and the Pampas in the south. The Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth, lies along the Pacific coast, and Patagonia fills the southern tip.
Major rivers
- Amazon
- Paraná
- Orinoco
- Madeira
- São Francisco
- Negro
Find it on the map
- The Andes hugging the Pacific coast
- The low, green Amazon Basin
- The high Altiplano between two ranges of the Andes
Built from real data, not stock images.
The terrain is drawn from a global elevation model (Mapzen terrain tiles, built from NASA SRTM and other public surveys). Coastlines, rivers, lakes and feature names come from Natural Earth. All eight of our US, continent and world physical maps use the same elevation colors, so they can be compared with each other.
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