Where is the Amazon rainforest located in the world?
The amazon rainforest is in Brazil, North to the Pampas and East to the Andes Mountains. How do the Andes Mountains and amazon rainforest affect development?
How many mountains are there in the Amazon rainforest?
The Amazon Rainforest does not have many mountains because unlike the Andes region the land in the Amazon Rainforest is mainly flat. Except for the highest mountain peak in Brazil Pico da Neblina and nearby Mount roraima
Why does the Amazon rainforest have no mountains?
The Amazon Rainforest does not have many mountains because unlike the Andes region the land in the Amazon Rainforest is mainly flat. Except for the highest mountain peak in Brazil Pico da Neblina and nearby Mount roraima Home Study Guides Science Math and Arithmetic History
What are the characteristics of the Amazon rainforest?
Brazil: Amazonia. The Amazon basin has the greatest variety of plant species on Earth and an abundance of animal life, in contrast to the scrublands that border it to the south and east. The Amazonian region includes vast areas of rainforest, widely dispersed grasslands, and mangrove…. climate: Recycled rainfall.
Are the mountains in the Amazon?
The Amazon River begins in the Andes Mountains at the west of the basin with its main tributary the Marañón River and Apurimac River in Peru. The highest point in the watershed of the Amazon is the second biggest peak of Yerupajá at 6,635 metres (21,768 ft).
Are there any mountains in the rainforest?
Mountains are a landform that is formed by the Earth's tectonic plates crashing into one another. The highest Tropical Rainforest mountain is the Pica da Neblina located in the Amazon Rainforest. It was proven by scientist that there were more biodiversity on a tropical mountain than a temperate mountain.
Is Andes Mountains in Amazon rainforest?
The zone where the Amazon rainforest meets the Andes mountains is the most biodiverse place on Earth. Large amounts of rainfall and altitudinal gradients create a variety of microclimates and niches that are exploited by a wide range of species.
Where is Amazon mountain?
Amazon rainforestAmazon rainforest Portuguese: Floresta amazônica Spanish: Selva amazónicaLocationBolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana (France), Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and VenezuelaCoordinates3°S 60°WArea5,500,000 km2 (2,100,000 sq mi)4 more rows
Does Amazon have lakes?
The Amazon basin has few large lakes completely surrounded by uplands. However, some slow-flowing river channel water bodies can be considered lakes in function. There are two basic lake types in the Amazon Basin separated by elevation. Andean lakes are found at elevations usually above 3,500 m.
Does the Amazon rainforest have waterfalls?
The Amazon is one giant rain forest, so it is not surprising that there are dramatic waterfalls throughout the region, particularly during the wet season. The contrast of cascading water, rocky outcrops and tropical greenery make Amazonian waterfalls a visual treat.
How much of the Amazon rainforest is left?
Estimated loss by yearPeriodEstimated remaining forest cover in the Brazilian Amazon (km2)Percent of 1970 cover remaining20173,315,84980.9%20183,308,31380.7%20193,298,55180.5%20203,290,12580.3%33 more rows
Is the Amazon rainforest on fire?
2019 Amazon rainforest wildfiresBurned area906,000 hectares (2,240,000 acres; 9,060 km2; 3,500 sq mi)CauseSlash-and-burn approach to deforest land for agriculture and effects of climate change and global warming due to unusually longer dry season and above average temperatures around worldwide throughout 201910 more rows
Does anyone live in the Amazon rainforest?
The Amazon is home to more than 30 million people living across a vast region subdivided into nine different national political systems.
Has Amazon been fully explored?
As Vicente Pinzon in 1500 discovered the existence of the river, and Orellana in 1542 its length and course, so, even today, after a span of more than four centuries, there remains for discovery through the advanced sciences of our generation, a multitude of practical uses for the natural assets of the Amazon Basin.
Is the Amazon man made?
While previously thought to have been an empty wilderness in pre-contact times, it has become increasingly clear that the Amazon has, first, a deep and ancient pattern of human settlement dating back to 12,000 years ago, and second, that much of the Amazon “jungle” that we know today is, in fact, an anthropogenic ...
Is there a river under the Amazon?
Covering more than 7 million square kilometres in South America, the Amazon basin is one of the biggest and most impressive river systems in the world.
How many rivers are in the Amazon forest?
The Amazon has over 1,100 tributaries, 17 of which are over 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) long. Here is a list of the more notable ones. Click on the name to read more about them on Wikipedia. Why do rivers meander/curve?
Is Amazon a river?
The Amazon River is located in the northern portion of South America, flowing from west to east. The river system originates in the Andes Mountains of Peru and travels through Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Brazil before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean.
What kind of animals are unique to the Amazon?
The Amazon is one of Earth's last refuges for jaguars, harpy eagles, and pink river dolphins, and it is home to sloths, black spider monkeys, and poison dart frogs. It contains one in 10 known species on Earth, 40,000 plant species, 3,000 freshwater fish species, and more than 370 types of reptiles.
How large is the Amazon Rainforest?
The Amazon Rainforest stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the tree line of the Andes in the west. The forest widens from a 200-mile (3...
How many species does the Amazon Rainforest contain?
The Amazon Rainforest is the world’s richest and most-varied biological reservoir, containing several million species of insects, plants, birds, an...
How quickly is the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil being deforested?
Brazilians have settled large portions of the Amazon, clearing the land for lumbering, grazing, and agriculture. Between 1970 and 2016, Brazilian A...
What is the Amazon rainforest?
The Amazon rainforest, alternatively, the Amazon jungle or Amazonia, is a moist broadleaf tropical rainforest in the Amazon biome that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This basin encompasses 7,000,000 km 2 (2,700,000 sq mi), of which 5,500,000 km 2 (2,100,000 sq mi) are covered by the rainforest.
What is the name of the drainage basin that splits the Amazon rainforest?
Aerial view of the Amazon rainforest. During the mid-Eocene, it is believed that the drainage basin of the Amazon was split along the middle of the continent by the Purus Arch. Water on the eastern side flowed toward the Atlantic, while to the west water flowed toward the Pacific across the Amazonas Basin.
Why is remote sensing important?
Given the objectivity and lowered costs of satellite-based land cover and -change analysis, it appears likely that remote sensing technology will be an integral part of assessing the extents, locations and damage of deforestation in the basin. Furthermore, remote sensing is the best and perhaps only possible way to study the Amazon on a large scale.
How many people died in the Amazon rubber boom?
During the Amazon rubber boom it is estimated that diseases brought by immigrants, such as typhus and malaria, killed 40,000 native Amazonians.
Why do leaves expand in the rainforest?
Leaves expand during the dry season when sunlight is at a maximum, then undergo abscission in the cloudy wet season. These changes provide a balance of carbon between photosynthesis and respiration.
Why do tribes use remote sensing?
The use of remote sensing for the conservation of the Amazon is also being used by the indigenous tribes of the basin to protect their tribal lands from commercial interests. Using handheld GPS devices and programs like Google Earth, members of the Trio Tribe, who live in the rainforests of southern Suriname, map out their ancestral lands to help strengthen their territorial claims. Currently, most tribes in the Amazon do not have clearly defined boundaries, making it easier for commercial ventures to target their territories.
Where is the majority of the rainforest?
The majority of the forest is contained within Brazil, with 60% of the rainforest, followed by Peru with 13%, Colombia with 10%, and with minor amounts in Bolivia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela. Four nations have " Amazonas " as the name of one of their first-level administrative regions, and France uses the name " Guiana Amazonian Park " for its rainforest protected area. The Amazon represents over half of the planet 's remaining rainforests, and comprises the largest and most biodiverse tract of tropical rainforest in the world, with an estimated 390 billion individual trees divided into 16,000 species.
What is the richest rainforest in the world?
The Amazon Rainforest is the world’s richest and most-varied biological reservoir, containing several million species of insects, plants, birds, and other forms of life, many still unrecorded by science. The luxuriant vegetation encompasses a wide variety of trees. Major wildlife includes jaguars, manatees, tapirs, capybaras and other rodents, ...
What are the arthropods in the Amazon rainforest?
Among the arthropods of the Amazon Rainforest are spiders (including orb weavers and tarantulas), scorpions, centipedes, millipedes, butterflies, wasps, rhinoceros beetles, ponerine ants, mantids, and walkingsticks. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. See all videos for this article.
What is the process of deforestation in the Amazon River?
Deforestation of the Amazon River basin has followed a pattern of cutting, burning, farming, and grazing. This process is then repeated on adjacent plots of land, steadily pushing back the borders of the Amazon Rainforest.
How much of the Amazon basin is Brazil?
Brazil holds approximately 60 percent of the Amazon basin within its borders, and some 1,583,000 square miles (4,100,000 square km) of this was covered by forests in 1970.
How wide is the Amazon forest?
The forest widens from a 200-mile (320-km) front along the Atlantic to a belt 1,200 miles (1,900 km) wide at the Andean foothills. Brazil holds approximately 60 percent of the Amazon within its borders.
What is the largest river basin in the world?
Amazonia is the largest river basin in the world, and its forest stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the tree line of the Andes in the west. The forest widens from a 200-mile (320-km) front along the Atlantic to a belt 1,200 miles (1,900 km) wide where the lowlands meet the Andean foothills. The immense extent and great continuity of this rainforest is a reflection of the high rainfall, high humidity, and monotonously high temperatures that prevail in the region.
How many fires are there in the Amazon?
However, some 75,000 fires occurred in the Brazilian Amazon during the first half of 2019 (an increase of 85 percent over 2018), largely due to encouragement from Brazilian Pres. Jair Bolsonaro, a strong proponent of tree clearing.
What are the darkest green areas in the world?
The darkest green areas show where forest—mostly tropical humid rainforests—thrive and have not been severely changed or degraded by human activity. Lighter green areas in Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and southern and eastern Brazil are generally tropical savanna (called Cerrado in Brazil).
How does the Amazon rainforest work?
The Amazon rainforest is also an enormous carbon sink —an area that draws down carbon from the atmosphere. It also pumps huge quantities of water into the air through a process called transpiration. Enough moisture rises out of the Amazon to supply vast “flying rivers” and about half of the rain that falls back down on the region, explained Thomas Lovejoy, a professor at George Mason University and a senior fellow at the UN Foundation for Science, Economics, and the Environment.
What color is the Savanna?
Savanna converted to cropland is generally pink, especially if fields are fallow or have exposed soil. 2018 JPEG. “In a natural-color image without near-infrared, most of the forests and even some Cerrado areas to the southeast would end up having a similar green hue.
How big is the Amazon basin?
The Amazon basin is exceptional. It spans at least 6 million square kilometers (2.3 million square miles), nearly twice the size of India. It is home to Earth’s largest rainforest, as well as the largest river for the volume of the flow and the size of the drainage basin. The rainforest, which covers about 80 percent of the basin, ...
Why is the Amazon so enigmatic?
In spite of its vast size and clear significance to the planet, there is much about the Amazon that remains enigmatic because it is such a complex and challenging place to study. It is just as hard to manage. Surrounded by mountainous plateaus on most sides, much of the basin is remote and difficult to access. It covers about one-third of South America; it spans eight countries and many more state and tribal borders; and it features a mosaic of intersecting and overlapping ecosystems.
What are the brown areas of the savanna?
Rivers and reservoirs appear navy blue. The brown areas are seasonally flooded wetlands, notably the Llanos de Moxos, a seasonably flooding savanna in Bolivia, and the Araguaia River floodplain in the Cerrado.
How many people live in the rainforest?
It is also home to more than 30 million people, including hundreds of indigenous groups and several dozen uncontacted or isolated tribes.
How did the Amazon rainforest affect the world?
The Amazon rainforest groups spread their cultures and languages in a wealthy society that had some millions of individuals at the time the first Europeans reach the continent and started the colonization. These societies shared rituals and had commerce with each other in a large social net that would be disrupted with colonization. But, in the Amazon rainforest the impact of colonization remained with low until the second half of the twentieth century when governments started a massive campaign of Amazon colonization. These campaigns, principally in Brazil , were very effective, creating roads, cities and giving benefits for migration. This is where the problems for the Amazon rainforest began, just in the last 50 years from a history of some millions of years. In the last half century 15% of the Amazon rainforest was deforested mostly by fires.
What is the history of the Amazon rainforest?
History of the Amazon Rainforest. Many millions of years ago, in the Paleozoic era, all the land was part of a unique continent, the Pangaea. Salt water washed the Amazon region and possibly reached Peru and Bolivia . The end of the Paleozoic marks the incorporation of the Amazon River basin to the continent but only on ...
What happened at the end of the Paleozoic?
The end of the Paleozoic marks the incorporation of the Amazon River basin to the continent but only on the Cenozoic period great transformations took place and produced something similar to where the forest is located today. It’s in this period that South America and Africa split from each other and started to create the Atlantic Ocean .
How much of the Amazon rainforest was deforested?
In the last half century 15% of the Amazon rainforest was deforested mostly by fires. Today the world has come to realize the Amazon rainforest problems and everywhere people are concerned about what they should do to help avoiding its destruction.
How effective were the campaigns in Brazil?
These campaigns, principally in Brazil , were very effective, creating roads, cities and giving benefits for migration. This is where the problems for the Amazon rainforest began, just in the last 50 years from a history of some millions of years. In the last half century 15% of the Amazon rainforest was deforested mostly by fires.
Why did the sea levels drop?
Later the sea levels lowered, because of the last glacial period, and sedimentation and erosion finished drawing what we see today in maps, creating many lakes and the first river courses.
Which mountain chain changed the flow of the Amazon River basin from a western direction to an eastern direction?
The other great transformation was the appearance of the Andes mountain chain which after great geological processes changed the flow of the Amazon River basin from a western direction to an eastern flow toward the Atlantic Ocean .
What are the processes that make up the flow of water?
The core of this process is weathering and erosion. The flow of water drives a complex suite of reactions that break down bedrock into soils and bio-available minerals. Where inclines create moving currents, rivers move rocks and soil downstream and break them down further. These chemical and physical processes liberate and transport mineral nutrients like the phosphorus, calcium, iron, zinc and potassium that virtually all of Earth’s organisms need to survive. The river also sweeps up decaying organisms, plant matter, and detritus along its banks — essential carbon and nitrogen to fertilize downstream plants and nurture the microorganisms that many other things eat. Encalada explains that these nutrients are “critical for the productivity of the downstream ecosystems. Phytoplankton and the entire food chain depend on these nutrients, and they are also important for the productivity of nutrient-limited forests that need that input for growth.”
How did the Andes affect the climate?
As you’ve mentioned, in recent geologic time weathering of the Andes has hugely shaped ecosystems and human food availability, but did you know weathering and erosion of mountains by rivers dictated global climate some 2.2 billion years ago?! Back then, Earth’s equator was covered in mountains. As rivers eroded the mountains into rubble, like in the Andes, it removed a bunch of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. With less carbon dioxide, the planet cooled until it looked like a giant snowball. This global cooling couldn’t happen today because of the placement of our continents and the presence of land plants, but it would be super cool to see whether data from this study could help us better understand how “snowball earth” got started.
What do Andean sediments do?
Andean sediments make up the river banks and islands that people live on throughout the Amazon, and dictate how rivers meander across landscapes and behave across seasons. Even as far as the Atlantic, thousands of miles to the east, Andean sediments supply sands to beaches and mangroves along the coast. When the steady deposition is blocked, these dependent regions will begin to waste away, just as they already have in other dammed and leveed rivers like the Mississippi.
What percentage of the Amazon River is broken down rock?
Today, broken down Andean rock accounts for 93 percent of the roughly 1 billion tons of sediment carried by the Amazon River each year, and the vast majority of its nutrients. As the muddy torrents exit the mountains, they run out of momentum on the flat floodplain and begin to drop their load. The accumulating material raises the river bed and slowly nudges the water into new terrain, building up the landscape in its wake. The modern Amazon rainforest resides on ground made up of ancient mountainsides, scrounging minerals from sediments on their journey to the sea.
How does rain affect the Andean highlands?
The blocked water will be missed as well. Each rainy season, monsoon rains in the Andean highlands lead to swollen rivers that can rise 30 to 40 feet from their dry season level. As water and sediments flood over the banks, they bring a nourishing pulse to thousands of square miles of rainforest. Fish swarm into the flooded forests to gorge on fallen fruits and reproduce, dispersing seeds and renewing the richness of Amazonian fisheries so significantly that the biggest fish yields consistently follow the largest floods. Hydropower dams often cripple this seasonal ebb and flow in favor of more consistent output, which would drown lower floodplains under a permanent flood and strand the upper banks in a perpetual drought.
What is the role of rivers in the Andes?
Their research highlights the rivers in the Andes and tropical mountain ranges worldwide and their outsized role in shaping tropical lowlands. They argue that this important biological and geological role has several key attributes: the extreme gradient of climates they pass through, the dynamic environment created by their volatile flows, and their extraordinary ability to export nutrients and sediments downstream.
What is the role of freshwater fisheries in the Amazon Basin?
Freshwater fisheries act as one of the primary sources of income and protein for the 30 million plus inhabitants of the Amazon Basin. These natural safety nets for indigenous people and rural poor owe much of their richness to the flood pulses and nutrients coming down from the Andes. Consequently, they too are expected to suffer from the planned disruptions.
Overview
Geography
Nine countries share the Amazon basin—most of the rainforest, 58.4%, is contained within the borders of Brazil. The other eight countries include Peru with 12.8%, Bolivia with 7.7%, Colombia with 7.1%, Venezuela with 6.1%, Guyana with 3.1%, Suriname with 2.5%, French Guiana with 1.4%, and Ecuador with 1%.
The rainforest likely formed during the Eocene era (from 56 million years to 33.9 million years ag…
Etymology
The name Amazon is said to arise from a war Francisco de Orellana fought with the Tapuyas and other tribes. The women of the tribe fought alongside the men, as was their custom. Orellana derived the name Amazonas from the Amazons of Greek mythology, described by Herodotus and Diodorus.
History
In the Amazonas, there has been fighting and wars between the neighboring tribes of the Jivaro. Several tribes of the Jivaroan group, including the Shuar, practised headhunting for trophies and headshrinking. The accounts of missionaries to the area in the borderlands between Brazil and Venezuela have recounted constant infighting in the Yanomami tribes. More than a third of the Yanomamo males, on average, died from warfare.
Biodiversity, flora and fauna
Deforestation
Conservation and climate change
See also
• Amanyé
• Atlantic Forest
• Bandeirantes
• Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest
• Environmental impact of meat production