· Natural Wonders · 2 min read ·
Amazon River: The Mightiest Lifeline of the Global Biosphere
Largest river on Earth by discharge volume, carrying 20% of the world’s river flow through South America and sustaining the planet’s largest rainforest ecosystem.
Major river in Northern South America
The Amazon River in South America is the largest river in the world by discharge volume of water, and the second-longest or longest river system in the world, a title which is disputed with the Nile.
For nearly a century, the headwaters of the Apurímac River on Nevado Mismi in Peru had been considered the Amazon basin’s most distant source, until a 2014 study found the farthest source to be the headwaters of the Mantaro River on the Cordillera Rumi Cruz in Peru. The Mantaro and Apurímac rivers join, and with other tributaries form the Ucayali River, which in turn meets the Marañón River upstream of Iquitos, Peru, forming what countries other than Brazil consider to be the main stem of the Amazon. Brazilians call this section the Solimões River above its confluence with the Rio Negro forming what Brazilians call the Amazon at the Meeting of Waters (Portuguese: Encontro das Águas) at Manaus, the largest city on the river.
The Amazon River has an average discharge of about 215,000 to 230,000 cubic meters per second (7,600,000 to 8,100,000 cu ft/s)—approximately 6,591 to 7,570 cubic kilometers (1,581 to 1,816 cu mi) per year, greater than the next seven largest independent rivers combined. Two of the top ten rivers by discharge are tributaries of the Amazon river. The Amazon represents 20% of the global riverine discharge into oceans. The Amazon basin is the largest drainage basin in the world, with an area of approximately 7,000,000 square kilometers (2,700,000 sq mi). The portion of the river’s drainage basin in Brazil alone is larger than any other river’s basin. The Amazon enters Brazil with only one-fifth of the flow it finally discharges into the Atlantic Ocean yet already has a greater flow at this point than the discharge of any other river in the world. It has a recognized length of 6,400 kilometers (4,000 mi), but according to some reports, its length varies from 6,575 to 7,062 kilometers (4,086 to 4,388 mi).
