Overview

AMAZONmapa1

  • also known as the Amazon basin, is located in South America (Brazil 68%, Peru 13%, Bolivia 11,2%, Colombia 5,5%, Ecuador 1,7%, Venezuela 0,7%, Guyana 0,1%, Suriname and French Guyana the rest);
  • covers an area of over 7,350,000 km², which represents about 40% of the south American continent;
  • is inhabited by over 33 million people, around 9% of whose are indigenous divided into 350 ethnic groups (about 60 of them live in voluntary isolation, mostly in Brazil and Peru ;
  • stores 20% of the world’s fresh water.

Fig. 1. Geographical location of the Amazon, Orinoco and Paraná basins .

RIVER AMAZON

  • is, with its length of 7,062 km and average flow rate of 219,000 m³/sec, the longest and largest river of the world.
  • At 3 000 km before its estuary, its width is 1,600 m, the delta is 330 km wide and ripples the Atlantic as far as 240 km.
  • The high and low tide can be observed as far as 1,000 km inland. The tidal wave pororocá (in tupí language „huge destructive noise“) can reach up to 5 m in height and reaches as far as 30 km inland.
  • The four sources of the Amazon river were discovered in 2000 by Czech scientist Prof. RNDr. Bohumír Janský, CSc. and his colleagues from the Charles University in Prague . At the source of the Amazon at 5150 m a.s.l. was located a nameless lake, which was named by the members of the expedition as Laguna Bohemia .

The_Maranon_or_Amazon_River_with_the_Mission_of_the_Society_of_Jesus

Figure 2. One of the first detailed maps of Amazon by Samuel Fritz (1654-1728), originally printed in Quito (Ecuador) in the year 1707. Source: World Digital Library www.wdl.org

1. Amazonský deštný les, peneplén (parovina), Ucayali, Peru (JL).
2. Amazonský deštný les, peneplén (parovina), Ucayali, Peru (JL).
3. Amazonský deštný les, peneplén (parovina), Ucayali, Peru (JL).
4. Amazonský deštný les, peneplén (parovina), Ucayali, Peru (JL).
5. Amazonský deštný les, peneplén (parovina), Ucayali, Peru (JL).
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6. Amazonský deštný les, peneplén (parovina), Ucayali, Peru (JL).
7. Amazonský deštný les, peneplén (parovina), Ucayali, Peru (JL).
8. Amazonský deštný les, peneplén (parovina), Ucayali, Peru (JL).
9. Amazonský deštný les, peneplén (parovina), Ucayali, Peru (JL).
10. Amazonský deštný les, peneplén (parovina), Ucayali, Peru (JL).
11. Amazonský deštný les, peneplén (parovina), Ucayali, Peru (LH).
12. Amazonský deštný les, peneplén (parovina), Ucayali, Peru (LH).
14. Soutok Amazonky a Itaya, Loreto, Peru (LB).
15. Řeka Ucayali, horní tok Amazonky, Ucayali, Peru (LH).

References

Recommended reading

Hemming, J., 2008. Tree of Rivers: The Story of the Amazon. Thames & Hudson, London, UK.

Kricher, J., 2015. A Neotropical Companion: An Introduction to the Animals, Plants, and Ecosystems of the New World Tropics. Illustrated by Andrea S. LeJeune. Princeton University Press.

Hoorn, C., Wesselingh, F., 2011. Amazonia, landscape and species evolution: a look into the past. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK.

Loadman, J., 2005. Tears of the tree: the story of rubber-a modern marvel. Oxford University Press, New York, USA.

authors of the text: Jiří Lipenský, Ludvík Bortl, Alexandr Rollo, Hana Vebrová, and Marie Kalousová
authors of the pictures: Jiří Lipenský (JL), Ludvík Bortl (LB), and Lukáš Huml (LH)

 

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