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)
(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.
