Santa Bárbara is the name of the fourth canton

Cantons of Costa Rica

This is a list of the cantons of Costa Rica.Cantons are the second-level administrative division of Costa Rica. The country's seven provinces are subdivided into 81 cantons , and these are further subdivided into districts .A unique feature of the cantons is that they are the only administrative...

 in the province of Heredia

Heredia Province

Heredia is a province of Costa Rica. It is located in the north-central part of the country. As a result, the province covers areas as diverse as the agriculture rich Northern plains of San Carlos as well as the more metropolitan areas like the city of Heredia located in the Central Valley...

  in Costa Rica

Costa Rica

Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

. The canton covers an area of 53.21 km², and has a population of 31,152. The capital city of the canton is also called Santa Bárbara.

The elongated canton begins midway between the cities of Alajuela

Alajuela

Alajuela is the second largest city in Costa Rica after the capital, San José. It is also the capital of the namesake province. Because of its location in the Costa Rican Central Valley, Alajuela is nowadays englobed in the conurbation of Great Metropolitan Area...

 and Heredia

Heredia, Costa Rica

Heredia is a city located in the Heredia province of Costa Rica and is the capital of that province. It is currently undergoing a rapid process of industrialization and is located 10 kilometers north of the country's capital, San José....

, where the Río Segundo marks its southern boundary. It climbs through foothills northward to the Río Desengaño high in the Cordillera Central (Central Mountain Range).

The canton of Santa Bárbara is subdivided into 6 distritos (districts).

1. Santa Bárbara
2. San Pedro
3. San Juan
4. Jesús
5. Santo Domingo
6. Purabá

Geology

The Santa Bárbara cantón is constructed largely of volcanic rock from the Holocene Period of the Cenozoic

Cenozoic

The Cenozoic era is the current and most recent of the three Phanerozoic geological eras and covers the period from 65.5 mya to the present. The era began in the wake of the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous that saw the demise of the last non-avian dinosaurs and...

 Era.

Hydrology

The fluvial system of Santa Bárbara generally flows toward the Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

 via the Rio Grande de Tarcoles river basin.

Geomorphology

The Santa Bárbara cantón forms part of the larger Origen Volcánico geomorphic region, including the sub-units of Volcán Barva and the Central Valley's Relleno Volcánico.