BRAZIL POSTCARDS COLLECTION

AMAZON RAINFOREST

Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana

(World's Largest Tropical Rainforest)

(World's Largest River by Volume)

(World's Longest River in the World)
(World's Largest River by Discharge)

Thanks to SL Liew

Received: Oct. 14, 2016

Caption at the back: Caboclos sailing in the igapó, lands flooded at the time of the full one the rivers.

     Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This basin encompasses 7,000,000 square kilometres (2,700,000 sq mi), of which 5,500,000 square kilometres (2,100,000 sq mi) are covered by the rainforest. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations. The majority of the forest is contained within Brazil, with 60% of the rainforest, followed by Peru, Colombia, and with minor amounts in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. The Amazon represents over half of the planet's remaining rainforests, and comprises the largest and most biodiversity tract of tropical rainforest in the world, with an estimated 390 billion individual trees divided into 16,000 species.

    The Amazon is the world's largest tropical rainforest, larger than the next two largest rainforests — in the Congo Basin and Indonesia — combined. The Amazon Basin is roughly the size of the forty-eight contiguous United States. The region consists of a number of ecosystems ranging from natural savanna to swamps.

     The Amazon River is by far the world's largest river by volume or in terms of discharge, and the second longest river in the world after the Nile. It has over 1,100 tributaries, 17 of which are longer than 1000 miles.  The River once flowing west-ward instead of east-ward as it does today. The rise of the Andes caused it to flow into the Atlantic Ocean.

     The region is home to about 2.5 million insect species, tens of thousands of plants, and some 2,000 birds and mammals. To date, at least 40,000 plant species, 2,200 fishes, 1,294 birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles have been scientifically classified in the region. One in five of all the bird species in the world live in the rainforests of the Amazon, and one in five of the fish species live in Amazonian rivers and streams. Scientists have described between 96,660 and 128,843 invertebrate species in Brazil alone.