Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Amazon Rainforest, large tropical rainforest occupying the Amazon basin in northern South America and covering an area of 2,300,000 square miles (6,000,000 square km). It is the world’s richest and most-varied biological reservoir, containing several million species.
The Amazon rainforest, [a] also called 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), [2] of which 6,000,000 km 2 (2,300,000 sq mi) are covered by the rainforest. [3]
1. The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest. Covering over 5.5 million square kilometres, it’s so big that the UK and Ireland would fit into it 17 times! 2. The Amazon is found in South America, spanning across Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. 3.
Water vapor released from the Amazon creates vast “flying rivers” in the atmosphere, which influence rainfall and thus agricultural production in central and southern South America. And the billions of tons of carbon stored in the Amazon rain forest is of global importance to slowing climate change.
The Amazon is in crisis as forests are threatened by deforestation, fires, and degradation; surface water has been lost; and rivers are increasingly disconnected and polluted. This immense pressure—if not slowed or stopped—will irreversibly damage the Amazon and the overall planet in the very near future.
Not only does the Amazon encompass the single largest remaining tropical rainforest in the world, it also houses at least 10% of the world’s known biodiversity, including endemic and endangered flora and fauna, and its river accounts for 15-16% of the world’s total river discharge into the oceans.
Here’s why the Amazon rain forest is key to protecting Earth from the detrimental effects of climate change. By Emma Bryce. A deforested and burnt area is seen on a stretch of the trans-Amazonian...