The Amazon Rainforest

Located in South America, the Amazon Basin is 7,3 million square km wide. The Amazon Rainforest is about 6 million square km, and its majority is contained within Brazil (60% of the forest), Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, 9 countries in total. Also known as Amazonia, the Amazon Rainforest is located in the area along the equator where the climate is hot and humid, some ideal conditions for a dense evergreen rainforest. This rainforest is one of Earth main source of oxygen.

The Amazon river has the highest discharge (from 70,000 to 280,000m3/sec during flood season). From the Andes Apurimac where it starts all the way to the Atlantic it is 7025 km long and up to 10km wide. It can be navigated up to Manaus.

The Amazon river and its tributaries (rio Negro, Japura, Purus, Madeira, Tapajos, Xingu, Araguaia, Tocantins…) water the Amazonia from the Guianas plateau North, to the Andes West and the Brazilian plateau South.

In the last 10 years, the Amazon Rainforest lost 500,000 square km (about the size of France), which became pasture for cattle, or farmland for Soybean cultivation. The Brazilian Amazonia annual deforestation rate is the largest globally.