Amazon Basin
Geographical Features
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 6,915,000 km2, or roughly 40 percent of the South American continent. The Basin is located in 42.1167° N, 42.2167° E and in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.The Amazon River started to form over 2000 million years ago when the highlands were formed on Gondwanaland. Amazon was found in 1996. When the South American plate collided with the Nazca plate, the impact formed the Andres Mountains in Peru The Mountain Range blocked the mouth of the Amazon River causing a huge lake to form in the middle of South America. |
Flora
The Amazon is particularly rich in trees and plants, with more than 40,000 species that play important roles in regulating the global climate and sustaining the local water cycle. All of the plants have adapted to the abundant rain and often nutrient-poor soils. To defend themselves from herbivores some have developed tough leaves, resins or latex outer coats enabling them to resist many predators. Fauna The River has many different types of animals such as: more than 1,400 species of mammals, about 1,500 types of birds, little amount of reptiles, more than 1,000 species amphibians, over 2,200 species of fish and over 90% of the animals that live in the Basin are insects. The river is the home to:
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