The Department’s relief is comprised by three morphological sets: the Eastern Range, foothills and floodplain. The Eastern Range, to the west, represents around one fifth of the department’s surface and includes elevations from 500m bordering the foothills, up to 5,380m, in Sierra Nevada del Cocuy; it is known by high mountains, paramos covered with pajanoles  and frailejon plants, steep and strongly broken slopes, and low watersheds with Sub-Andean forest.

 

The foothill area is comprised by cones, alluvial fans and terraces of flat to inclined relief, covered with savannah vegetation and equatorial forest. Finally, the alluvial plain spans from the foothills to the border with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, its shaping consisting of terraces and alluvial overflow plains covered with floodable savannah vegetation and gallery forest in flood-meadows of rivers and streams.

Arauca’s economy is mainly based on oil exploitation, livestock, agriculture, services and trade. The oil’s importance is reflected in its contribution to the departmental GDP that depends to a great extent on such activity. Livestock activity focuses on cattle breeding, raising and fattening to be marketed to Puerto Lopez, Bucaramanga and Cucuta.

 

Agricultural production is mainly intended to meet local demand. Among the most important crops we have banana, cacao, traditional corn, yucca, mechanized upland rice, coffee, rice, sugar cane and beans. Catfish, bocachico and cachama fishing is somewhat important and its production is distributed to Cucuta, Bucaramanga, Ibague, Cali and Bogota D.C.