Urema Valley
Urema Valley, or the Urema Graben, is a lowland area in Sofala Province in central Mozambique. It runs from the Zambezi River in the north to Sofala Bay in the south and forms a wide, crescent-shaped trough with a flat bottom and high sides. The valley floor sits about 12–80 meters above sea level and is roughly 40 km wide. Escarpments rise 300–400 meters to surrounding plateaus. The Cheringoma Plateau lies to the east and the Barue Plateau to the west, where Mount Gorongosa sits near the western edge. The valley is part of the southern end of the East African Rift, with the Shire River valley and Lake Malawi further south.
Much of the valley floor is covered by seasonal wetlands that fill during the rainy season from rivers draining the Barue Plateau. The northern end drains into the Zangue River, which flows to the Zambezi, while the Urema River runs south to the Pungwe River and forms Lake Urema, a large shallow seasonal lake. Gorongosa National Park sits in the central graben, including Lake Urema. The southern end hosts the estuary of the Pungwe and Buzi rivers with extensive mangroves, and Beira port lies on the eastern shore where the estuary meets Sofala Bay. The valley floor also has warm, dry mopane woodland, the Barue Plateau has humid Miombo woodlands, and the Cheringoma Plateau has a climate influenced by the Indian Ocean and coastal forest mosaic.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 16:16 (CET).