It is divided into 17 municipalities and its capital city is Villahermosa. It has a coastline to the north with the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the state is covered in rainforest as, unlike most other areas of Mexico, it has plentiful rainfall year-round. For this reason, it is also covered in small lakes, wetlands and rivers. The state is subject to major flooding events, with the last occurring in , which affected eighty percent of the state. The state is also home to La Venta , the major site of the Olmec civilization, considered to be the origin of later Mesoamerican cultures.
Even though it produces significant quantities of petroleum and natural gas, poverty is still a concern. The state is located in the southeast of Mexico, bordering the states of Campeche , Chiapas , and Veracruz , with the Gulf of Mexico to the north and the country of Guatemala to the south and east. It is divided into seventeen municipalities. There are 36 communities designated as urban, with about 3, smaller towns and villages.
In , the state was officially divided into two regions and five sub-regions for socioeconomic development and geographic documentation. The two major regions are called the Grijalva and the Usumacinta. The Grijalva Region is named after the river on which most of the municipalities here are dependent.
It is the smaller of the two regions with a territory of 12, The environment of the state consists of extensive low-lying floodplains, mountains and valleys. There are also areas with savanna , beaches and mangrove forests. Much of the rainforest has suffered degradation due to over logging and conversion of territory into farmland.
The east is formed by low humid plains formed by sediment deposited by a number of rivers. In the Chontalpa zone and in parts of the municipalities of Cental and Jonuta, there are swampy depressions extremely vulnerable to flooding from both riverflow and from excessive rainfall. Tabasco has These basins encompass numerous rivers and streams which all eventually flow into the Gulf of Mexico.
