Amazon River
The Amazon River
Is one of longest and largest rivers in the world. It is also an ancient river; the Amazon started 11 million years ago as a transcontinental river and took on its current form around 2.4 million years ago. Coursing through the most biologically diverse biomes in the world, the Amazon is a critically important river system. Here are some interesting geographical facts about the Amazon River. The Amazon River located in South America is the world’s second longest river. At 3,976 miles (6,400 km) in length, it only narrowly loses the title for the world’s longest river to the Nile River in Egypt, which is 4,132 miles (6,650 km) in length. The Amazon River is the largest in terms of drainage and waterflow. The Amazon River has an average dischargeof roughly 7,381,000 cubic feet per second (209,000 cubic meters per seconds) with an outflow into the Atlantic Ocean. This discharge is greater than the next seven rivers combined. The Amazon also has the largest drainage basin in the world at 2,720,000 square miles (7,050,000 square kilometers), and accounts for one-fifth of the world’s total river flow.
It Begins on the Andes Mountains of Peru. It flows east for 4000 miles across the continent and empties into the Atlantic. This massive river system has more than 1000 tributaries, or small rivers that drain into a larger river. Seven of these tributaries are more than 1000 miles long.
The Amazon River creates the largest river basin of 2700000 square miles, and includes the world’s largest tropical rainforest. The Amazon river is home to thousands of plants and animal species.
Annual flooding of the river from melting snow and rain in the Andes usually occurs between June and October. This deposits rich nutrients or substances that support life in the lowland forest soils. These nutrients support the biodiversity of the rainforest.