Riau is a province of Indonesia, located in the center of Sumatra island along the Strait of Malacca. The provincial capital and largest city is Pekanbaru. Other major cities includes Dumai, Bagansiapiapi, Bengkalis, Bangkinang, Rengat and Siak Sri Indrapura.
Indonesian was based on the Riau version of Malay language.
Riau is one of the richest provinces in Indonesia. This province is rich with natural resources, particularly petroleum and natural gas, rubber, and palm oil.
The province was once heavily forested lowlands, but with palm oil plantations and logging being major industries it is losing around 2,000 square km of forest per year. In 2005 the forest cover was down to 33% (or 27.000 square km) from 78% (or 64.000 square km) in 1982.[2] Being a province with a predominantly low relief, the coastal regions are rapidly losing land to the ocean.
The Riau Islands were part of Riau until 2004, when they were made into a separate province.
The dialect of Indonesian spoken in this region is said by many linguists to be one of the simplest languages in the world, possessing neither noun declensions, nor temporal distinctions, nor subject/object distinctions, nor singular/plural distinction, nor word order of any kind. (source wikipedia.org and indonesia.go.id)
A. Geographic Profiles
Riau Provincial divides by land and water area. At water, area found 3,214 big and little islands. Some of 743 islands were have a name and majority little islands which widely spread at South China Sea are not inhabit. With estimate wide 329,867.61 km2, some of 71.33% are water area. Island zone of Riau Provincial that side of another country approximating with ZEE (Zone of Exclusive Economic) is 379.000 km2. The geographic of Riau Provincial spread out from Bukit Barisan until South China Sea. Laying between 1°15´ South Latitude until 4°45´ North Latitude or laying between100°03´-109°19´ East Longitude of Greenwich and 6°50´-1°45´ West Longitude of Jakarta. Fourth rivers come from Bukit Barisan upland and empty into Malaca Strait and South China Sea those influence by ebb. Those rivers are part of 15 rivers that have important influence for transportation like:
a) Siak River (300 km) and the depth between 8-12 m
b) Rokan River (400 km) and the depth between 6-8 m
c) Kampar River (400 km) and the depth between 6 m
d) Indragiri River (500 km) and the depth between 6-8 m
The borders of Riau Province are as follow:
a) North Side: Singapura Strait and Malaka Strait
b) South Side: Jambi Provincial and Berhala Strait
c) East Side: South China Sea
d) West Side: West Sumatera Provincial and North Sumatera Provincial
B. Climate and Rainfall
Riau region climate is wet tropical with rainfall average between 2000-3000 mm/year, which influence of dry season and rainy season. Average rain day per year approximating 160 days. Base of Metrology Station of Simpang Tiga, average temperature in Pekanbaru City optimize at 27,6 ° Celsius between 23,4-33,4° Celsius. The fog event was recorded at 39 times and the most frequency was on August is 6 times.
Resource : Riau.go.id
