THE EFFECT OF THE TOPOGRAPHY IN THE PRECIPITATION PATTERNS AT SAINT LUCIA AND BARBADOS ISLANDS

The island of Saint Lucia and Barbados are part of the Lesser Antilles Island located in the Eastern Caribbean. Even though, the geographical separations between Islands are only 174.2 km, they have opposite characteristics in its geological formation and physical geography that define in part its topography distribution. The island of Saint Lucia has volcanic origin and Barbados has a completely different origin that was mainly delineated by sedimentary process due to depositions of biogenic material comes from coral and other biogenic material formation. This study included an evaluation of possible relation between topography distribution and precipitation pattern in both island. Published data as maps, images and precipitation data were used to evaluate this possible relation. Descriptive statistic and graphs were used to evaluate data acquired from diverse databanks. Preliminary results showed that differences in topography distribution have influences in precipitation patterns in the areas. It was found that in Saint Lucia and Barbados occur different types of precipitation. In Saint Lucia the orographic precipitation is mainly observed apparently due to the presence of high peaks and diverse topography at the Island. Convective precipitation is more present at Barbados with precipitation values ranges from 40 to 90 inches annually, clearly lower than Saint Lucia that has 91-150 inches. This observation shows that Saint Lucia annually has a higher precipitation than Barbados.