The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about 7,050,000 km² (2,720,000 sq mi), or roughly 40 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.

Most of the basin is covered by the Amazon Rainforest, also known as Amazonia. With a 5,500,000 km² (2,100,000 sq mi) area of dense tropical forest, this is the largest rainforest in the world.

Geography

The Amazon basin is bounded by the Guiana Highlands to the north and the Brazilian Highlands to the south. The Amazon River, which rises in the Andes Mountains at the west of the basin, is usually considered to be the second longest river in the world. However, a team of Brazilian scientists claim that the Amazon is the longest river in the world. It covers about 6,400 km before draining into the Atlantic Ocean. The Amazon and its tributaries form the largest volume of water. The Amazon accounts for about 20% of the total water carried to the oceans by rivers. Some of the Amazon rainforest is deforested because of the increasing of cattle ranches and soy beans field.

The Amazon Basin is a major sedimentary basin located roughly at the middle and lower course of the Amazon River, south the Guiana Shield and north of the Central Brazilian Shield. The basin develops on a rift that originated possibly about 550 million years ago during the Cambrian. Parts of the rift were reactivated during the opening of the South Atlantic.

The basin has an elongate shape with a SWW-NEE orientation. It long axis runs from the vicinity of Manaus to the area near the confluence of Xingu River with the Amazon River.

References