THE AMAZON RIVER The Amazon River in South America is the second longest river in the world after the Nile. It is 4,080 miles long and runs from the Andes Mountains in Peru through Brazil to the Atlantic Ocean. It contains more water than any other river in the world- more than the Mississippi, the Nile and the Yangtze combined. In one second the Amazon pours more than 55 million gallons, or 600,000 cubic meters of water, into the Atlantic Ocean, which dilutes the ocean's saltiness for 100 miles from shore. This river system is one of the world's most important river systems. The Amazon River makes up for 1/5 of the earth's fresh water. Each year the Amazon River empties tons of solid particles into the Ocean. This contains lots of fish food. The Amazon is the widest river in the world. Many kilometers from its mouth it can be as wide as 11 kilometers, and 40 kilometers in the wet season; at the place where it meets the Atlantic, it is as much as 325 kilometers. It is interesting that it is widening by as much as 2 meters a year due to waves from ships breaking down the banks. Compare the Amazon to the width of the Bow River in Calgary, which is only 350 feet, or 107 meters wide, as it leaves the city limits. This means that the Amazon is from 100 to 3,000 times wider near its mouth than the Bow River in Calgary! The Amazon got its name from the Spanish explorers. Female warriors called "Icamiabas", meaning "women without husbands" attacked Francisco Orellana. Orellana named the river "Rio Amazonas" after these women whom he compared to the Amazons of ancient Greek mythology. The Amazon River basin is the home of so many animals- especially "extreme" creatures, like catfish which, in the U.S., grow up to 40 lbs., but in Brazil have been measured up to 200 lbs. There is also the anaconda, the largest snake in the world and the piranha, the most ferocious fish in the world. The Amazon River has 2,000 different species of fish, an extreme number for any given area. |
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The Wealth of the Rainforests
The Amazon rainforest covers over 1.2 billion acres representing two-fifths of the enormous
South American continent and is found in nine South American countries: Brazil, Columbia,
Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and the three Guyanas. With 2.5 million square miles of
rainforest, the Amazon Rainforest represents 54 percent of the total rainforests left on the planet.
The life force of the Amazon Rainforest is the mighty Amazon River. It starts as a trickle high in
the snow-capped Andes mountains and flows over 4,000 miles across the South American
continent until it enters the Atlantic ocean at Belem, Brazil where it is 200 to 300 miles across,
depending on the season. Even 1,000 miles inland, it is still 7 miles in width. The river is so
deep that ocean liners can travel 2,300 miles inland, up its length. The Amazon River flows
through the center of the rainforest and is fed by 1,100 tributaries, seventeen of which are over
1,000 miles long. The Amazon is by far the largest river system in the world and over two-thirds
of all the fresh water found on earth is in the Amazon basin's rivers, streams and tributaries.
With so much water its not unusual that that the main mode of transportation throughout the
area is by boat. The smallest and most common boats used today are still made out of hollowed
tree trunks, whether they are powered by outboard motors or more often by man-powered
paddles. Almost 14,000 miles of Amazon waterway are navigable and several million miles
through swamps and forests are penetrable by canoe. The enormous Amazon River carries
massive amounts of silt from run-off from the rainforest floor. Massive amounts of silt
deposited at the mouth of the Amazon river has created the largest river island in the world,
Marajo Island, which is roughly the size of Switzerland. With this massive fresh water system,
it not unusual that the life beneath the water is as abundant and diverse as the surrounding
rainforest's plant and animal species. Over 2,000 species of fish have been identified in the
Amazon Basin - more species than the entire Atlantic Ocean.
The Amazon Basin was formed in the Paleozoic period, somewhere between 500 and 200
million years ago. The extreme age of the region in geologic terms has much to do with the
relative infertility of the rainforest soil and the richness and unique diversity of the plant and
animal life. There are more fertile areas in the Amazon River's flood plain, where the river
deposits richer soil brought from the Andes, which only formed 20 million years ago. The rich
diversity of plant species in the Amazon Rainforest is the highest on earth. Experts show that one
hectare (2.47 acres) may contain over 750 types of trees and 1500 species of higher plants and it
is estimated that one hectare of Amazon rainforest contains about 900 tons of living plants.
Altogether it contains the largest collection of living plants and animal species in the world. The
Andean mountain range and the Amazon jungle are home to more than half of the world's species
of flora and fauna and one in five of all the birds in the world live in the rainforests of the
Amazon.. To date, some 438,000 species of plants of economic and social interest have been
registered in the region and many more have yet been cataloged or even discovered.
Once a vast sea of tropical forest, the Amazon rainforest today is scarred by roads, farms,
ranches and dams. Brazil is gifted with a full third of the world's remaining rainforests and
unfortunately, it is also one of the world's great rainforest destroyers, burning or felling over 2.7
million acres each year. Today, more than 20 percent of rainforest in the Amazon has been razed
and is gone forever. This ocean of green nearly as large as Australia, is the last great rainforest in
the known universe and it is being decimated like the others before it. Why? Like other
rainforests already lost forever, the land is being cleared for logging timber, large scale cattle
ranching, mining operations, government road building and hydroelectric schemes, military
operations, and the subsistence agriculture of peasants and landless settlers. Sadder still, in many
places the rainforests are burnt simply to provide charcoal to power industrial plants in the area. |
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