Amazon River
The Amazon River (also called Paraná-Uassú or Paranaguasú by Tupi-Guarani tribes) is a river in South America that flows through Peru (source), Colombia and Brazil (mouth). It is the world's longest and mightiest river, and contains more water than the Nile, Yangtze, and Mississippi combined, accounting for about one-fifth of the planet's liquid freshwater. The Amazon, which has the largest river basin largest in the world, around 7.4 million square kilometers, it represents approximately one fifth of the planet's river flow. In fact, this river has the largest hydrographic basin in the world, even counting only the region that crosses Brazil, which accounts for a fifth of its volume. Studies carried out by Brazilian and Peruvian researchers in 2007 and 2008 suggested that it was the river of greater length. In 2010, it was finally confirmed that it was the longest river in the world, with a length of 7,062 km from its source in the Quebrada de Apacheta, Arequipa region, Peru.
In its upper reaches, on the confluence of the Negro River, the Amazon is called Solimões in Brazil; however, in Peru, Colombia, as well as the rest of the Spanish-speaking world, the river is generally called the Amazon downstream from the confluence of the Marañón and Ucayali rivers in Peru. The Ucayali-Apurímac river system is considered the main source of the Amazon, with its main tributary being the glacial stream Carhuasanta that flows from the Mismi mountain.
The width of the Amazon is between 1.6 and 10 km (kilometers) in its low stage, but it expands (during the wet season) to 48 km or more. The river enters the Atlantic Ocean in a wide estuary 240 km wide. The mouth of the main system is 80 km. Due to its vast dimensions, it is sometimes called the Rio Mar. The first bridge in the Amazon river system (over the Rio Negro) was inaugurated on October 24, 2011 near Manaus, Brazil.
The river provides great commercial benefits to Amazonian cities such as Iquitos, Leticia, Manaus and Belém.
General information
Toponymy
The word Amazonas comes from Río de las Amazonas, given to the Marañón river by Francisco de Orellana after confronting a local ethnic group in which men and women defended themselves equally. Orellana derived the name from the Greek myth of the Amazon warriors of Asia and Africa, narrated by Herodotus and Diodorus. However, it is very likely that the word Amazonas was a paronomastic false friend deformation of an indigenous word whose pronunciation to Spanish ears was similar to Amazonas, an indigenous word meaning ' ship breaker'; this especially among the Marayoara, who could observe the tremendous bore (pororoca) that this river causes when it comes into contact with the Atlantic Ocean at its mouth.
Before the conquest, the river did not have a unique name; On the contrary, the indigenous people used names such as Paranaguazú (Great Relative of the Sea), Guyerma; Solimões, etc. In 1500, Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, commander of a Spanish exploring expedition, became the first European to venture down the river after discovering that its waters were navigable and drinkable. Pinzón called the watercourse the Río Santa María de la Mar Dulce, which was finally abbreviated to Mar Dulce (a name that was also given at that time to the Río de la Plata). For some years after 1502 it was also known as Río Grande and Orellana. Pinzón's companions baptized the outfall as río Marañón, voice of Probable indigenous origin. It is also possible that the name derives from the Spanish maraña, representing the enormous difficulties that those men encountered when exploring the area. In any case, the designation has persisted to this day in the Brazilian state of Maranhão and in the river of the same name in Peru.
Course of the river
The highest and most distant source of the Amazon has been located in the Cordillera Chila, on the slopes of the snowy Mismi, in Arequipa, Peru. Among the various names that the Amazon River receives throughout its course, the following stand out successively: Lloqueta, Apurímac, Ene, Tambo, Ucayali, Marañón and Amazonas. When the river enters Brazil it is renamed the Solimões River for a good stretch. Then it returns to adopt the name of the Amazon River at the confluence with the Negro River. After the confluence between the Apurímac and the Ucayali, the river leaves Andean territory behind and enters a gently undulating floodplain. It also crosses the Peruvian-Colombian border and then makes the tripartite border with Brazil
Already in Brazil, the Negro River joins its flow to the muddy Amazon, observing the notorious contrast of colors of the waters, which practically do not intermingle for about 230 km, due to the difference in densities and temperature and, above all, at the similar depth and speed of the two river currents at the point of confluence.
At some points, for long distances, the river divides into two main courses with lateral channels connected by a complicated system of rivulets, which intersect the Igapo islands (which rarely exceed 5 m elevation above the minimum level in smaller islets). In the Óvidos narrows, 600 km from the sea, the river narrows, flowing in a single current 1.6 km wide and 300 m deep, with an average speed of 7 km/h.
From the island of Canaria in the Gran Curva towards the Negro river. 1000 km downstream, only very low land is found, similar to that of the mouth. Vast tracts of land are completely inundated, even deeply, with only the tops of the trees peeking out of the water.
From near the mouth of the Negro River to Serpa, on the opposite bank of the Madeira River, the banks of the Amazon are low, beginning to rise near Manaus, forming gentle hills. In Óbidos, the system evolves until it becomes a 17 m ravine surrounded by low hills. The lower Amazon may once have been a gulf in the Atlantic Ocean, whose waters eroded the hills near Óbidos.
Only 10% of the water carried by the river enters the powerful Óbidos current, very little of which originates from the northern slope of the valley. The Amazon drainage area to the west of Óbidos is about 5 million square kilometers and to the east 1 million square kilometers (approximately 20%).
In the lower course of the river, the north bank consists of a series of abrupt plateaus that extend for about 240 km from the opposite bank to the mouth of the Xingú River (in Spanish pronounced Shingu or Šingu) to Monte Alegre.
These structures are cut in the form of terraces. Monte Alegre reaches a height of several hundred meters. On the southern bank, over the Xingu River runs an almost uninterrupted line of low ravines that border the alluvial plain and extend almost to Santarém. The whole is a succession of large curves that finally turn towards the Southwest and merge with the hills that form the terraced margin of the Tapajós (or, better, Tapajós) river valley.
Course length
Traditionally, the Amazon is ranked second in total length, behind the Nile, although there has never been a general consensus on acceptable measurement points. The latest research adds some 740 km (kilometres) plus the channel, which would definitely place it in first place in the classification of the longest rivers on the planet.
By the most conservative measurements, the river is about 6,762 km long. However, a Peruvian-Brazilian expedition in 2007 has calculated 6,800 km. It presents sections of great variability in the channel. At the mouth, the distance from one shore to the other is about 330 km, measured from Cabo do Norte to Punto Patijoca and including the island of Marajó (pronounce: Marajó), the size of Denmark and the delta of the Pará river (final section of the Tocantins river), about 60 km wide. The distance from the mouths of the Amazon, formed by a kind of delta hidden by the action of the tides and marine currents, is approximately 100 km.
Currently, due to recent research reports, the Geographical Society of Lima, supported by entities of the international scientific community, put an end to the controversy over the origin of the Amazon River by determining that it rises in the Andes of southern Peru and is the longest in the world, exceeding the Nile River by more than 40 km.
Since its source in the Apacheta ravine, on the slopes of the Quehuisha snow-capped mountain, in the department of Arequipa, at 5,170 m a.s.l. no. m., until its mouth in the Atlantic after crossing Peru, Colombia and Brazil, reaches a length of 7062 km. The Amazon Basin encompasses nine South American countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname. This makes it 391 km longer than the Nile, in Africa, which extends for 6671 km, according to the expert Zaniel Novoa, from the Lima Geographic Society, and the Polish journalist and explorer Jacek Palkiewicz, who in 1996 led a multinational expedition towards the source of the Amazon. This measurement was established, which after 12 years was validated by important entities of the international scientific community. These include the Geographical Society of London, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Brazilian Institute for Space Research.
Slope
Except for its western end, the great majority of the course of this river presents an extremely low slope. For example, from Iquitos to its mouth in the Atlantic Ocean it drops to only 106 m s. no. m. and in that same stretch the river runs 3646 km.
Pororoca
Following the coast, slightly north of North Cape for 160 km, is a belt of semi-submerged islands and shallow mud banks. From this particular geography, whose depth does not exceed 7 m, the phenomenon of the pororoca is born, a tidal wave that advances with a roar of increasing intensity, at about 15 to 25 km/h, forming a wall of water from 1.5 to 4 m high. This dynamic is the reason for the aforementioned absence of delta: the ocean quickly drags, during ebb or low tide, the vast volume of accumulated mud, partially preventing the formation of intermediate islands.
Underground river under the Amazon River
It has been proposed that the Amazon River constitutes only the river system of the Amazon Basin, while the wider but much slower Hamza River would constitute the groundwater flow.
Flow rate
The Amazon carries more water than the Mississippi, Nile and Yangtze combined; its drainage area or basin is also the largest in the world.
The volume of water carried into the Atlantic Ocean is enormous: with an annual average of 230,000 m³/s (cubic meters per second), it reaches up to 300,000 m³/s in the rainy season. Indeed, the Amazon is responsible for a fifth of all the fresh water incorporated into the Earth's oceans. Furthermore, this water is perfectly drinkable offshore from the mouth, up to a distance from which the coast is no longer visible. The salinity of the Atlantic Ocean is notably lower in a radius of several thousand kilometers around that point to the north of its mouth: it should be remembered that in this area the sea currents bring the salty water towards the mouth and not the other way around.
Extension of the basin and its pluvial feedback
The area or drainage basin of the river is approximately 7,050,000 km², 40% of that of South America. Its sources extend from 5° North latitude to 15° South latitude. Tour the largest hot and humid jungle (a rainforest) on the planet, Amazonia or Amazon jungle. The Amazon rainforest (until the start of the current global warming) has been characterized by its almost constant convective rains, that is: the great volume of water that the solar heat evaporates from the surface of the Amazon basin, rises to high altitude precisely by thermal currents (vertical currents of hot air) until, upon reaching higher, cooler areas of the atmosphere, it condenses into drops and these almost immediately transform, over the same basin, into copious rains, which forms a natural water feedback loop.
Alluvial dynamics
Seasonal rains give rise to extensive flooding along the course of the river and its tributaries. The average depth at the peak of the rainy season is about 40 m and the average width is about 40 km. This begins in November and goes until June, to then decrease at the end of October. The rise of the Negro River is partially asynchronous: the rainy season does not begin in this valley until February or March. By June it is at its culminating point, and the descent of the waters begins in line with the Amazon. The Madeira river has a lag of two months, beginning to rise in September and beginning to withdraw in April.
The abundance of water in the Amazon system is due to the fact that a large part of the territory is located in the intertropical convergence zone, where the rainfall is maximum. The region is also in the area of wind exchange where moisture from the Atlantic Ocean is pushed westward and eventually forced up over the Andes. This rise cools the air masses, creating intense rain that falls over a huge area, a process without parallel worldwide.
The soft alluvial plain (called vargem) that makes up most of the territory through which the river flows, is covered with up to 15 m of water. The level in Iquitos is 6 m, in Teffe, 15 m, in Óbidos, 11 m and in Pará 4 m above the minimum river level that characterizes the dry season.
The Amazon system and its tributaries
The Amazon river system has more than 1,000 important tributary rivers, with more than 25 branches exceeding 1,000 km in length. It is usually considered that the Amazon River rises nominally near Nauta in Peru, at the confluence of the Marañón and Ucayali rivers, although upon reaching the triple border, upon entering Brazilian territory, it has a section known as the Solimões River, which it reaches the confluence with the Negro River, in Manaus. Downstream it regains the name of the Amazon River. Therefore, to facilitate the location of the tributaries, the fluvial system of the Amazon River has been divided into five sections: Ucayali, Marañón, Amazonas, Solimões, Amazonas. In addition, the split branch of the Pará river has been added to collect the Tocantins river basin, which is not strictly speaking a tributary of the Amazon, although it is added on some occasions. In the table the tributaries are indicated with a (d) to those located to the south, that is, downstream on the right bank, and with an (i) those located to the north, that is, downstream on the left bank of the river.
History
Pre-Columbian human presence
The banks of the Amazon and its tributaries have a long history of human settlement. Contrary to popular belief, sedentary societies existed in the Amazon rainforest. Many of these populations lived along the white rivers, where they had means of transportation, fishing, and fertile soils which they created, such as the famous "black soil" of great fertility in floodplains that they used for agriculture. During the first century after the arrival of the Europeans, the native settlements were rapidly decimated due to the viruses that they previously and unknowingly brought along with their animals.
Michael Heckenberger's investigations of the Kuikoro information have yielded information on archaeological sites that he has interpreted as walled towns of up to 50,000, with roads, farmland and terra preta creation and other technological advances that would have made possible urban life in the jungle.
Early European explorations
The first European to sail near the Amazon River estuary was Américo Vespucio in 1499. Later, the Spaniards Vicente Yáñez Pinzón and Diego de Lope explored the islands that are part of the huge estuary.
Orellana Expedition (1541-1542)
The first descent of the Amazon from the Andes by Europeans was made by Francisco de Orellana in 1541.
Francisco de Orellana left Guayaquil on February 4, 1541; he arrives in Quito and reorganizes his caravan. Orellana and his men had several battles with the warlike tribes that came his way, thus suffering several setbacks.
As time passed, day by day the members of the expedition were dying, supplies were running out, until they had nothing to eat. It was already December and most of the expedition members realized that the expedition would not reach the place they were looking for, so they began to riot, but the caravan persevered.
Orellana continued downriver. After seven months and a journey of 4,800 km, in which he sailed down the Napo River, the Trinidad River (Jurua River?), the Negro River (named by Orellana) and the Amazon discovered on February 12, 1542, it reached its mouth (August 26, 1542), and from there it went along the coast of Nueva Cádiz in Cubagua (present-day Venezuela). The Victoria, carrying Orellana and Carvajal, skirted the island of Trinidad to the south and was stranded in the Gulf of Paria for seven days, finally reaching Cubagua on September 11, 1542.
It was on this voyage that the Amazon got its name. They say that the expedition was attacked by fierce warrior women on June 24, 1542, similar to the Amazons of Greek mythology.
However, the chronicles of Father Gaspar de Carvajal, chronicler of Orellana, make it very clear that the indigenous people who fought them were led by white-skinned women:
“... they [the attackers] are subject and tributary to the amazons, and knowing our coming, they are going to ask for help and came up to ten or twelve, that they saw us, that they were fighting before all the Indians as captains, and they fought so eagerly that the Indians were not daring to turn their backs, and to whom they returned, before us they slew them, and this is so much. These women are very white and tall and have very long hair and walk naked in leather, covered their shames, with their bows and arrows in their hands, making as much war as ten Indians..."[chuckles]required]
About the interrogation of the Indians that the Spanish had captured, Father Carvajal details with the precision of a court clerk:
“The captain [Orellana] asked [a cacique] what women were those: the Indian said that they were women who resided the land in seven days of the coast, and because they were Mr. Couynco subject to them, they had come to keep the coast. The captain asked if those women were married: the Indian said no. [...] The captain asked if these women were many: the Indian said yes, and that he knew by name seventy towns... and that in some of them he had been." "The captain asked him if these women were born; the Indian said yes. The captain said that how, not being married, nor man resided among them, they were worsened: he said that these indians participate with inds in times, and that when they come they gather a lot of copies of war people and they will give war to a great lord who resides and has his land next to the destas of these womenAnd by force they bring them into their land... and that after they are pregnant, they send them back to their land without doing any other evil; and then, when the time comes, that if they bear a son they kill him or send him to their fathers, and if a daughter, they raise it with great solemnity and impose it on the things of war."[chuckles]required]
Texeira Expedition (1638-1639)
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The first ascent of the river by a European was in 1638 by Pedro Teixeira, a Portuguese, who reversed the Orellana route and reached Quito through the Napo River. He returned in 1639 with the Jesuit priests Cristóbal de Acuña y Artieda, delegates of the viceroy of Peru to accompany Teixeira.
The description of the warrior women in the relationship of Father Carvajal is reaffirmed by Father Acuña, who repeated the same path nearly a century later. He describes the Amazons in several pages and is based on the testimony of the Tupinambá Indians:
"With his saying also of these tupinambás, we confirm the long news that throughout that river we brought from the beloved amazons... The foundations that exist to secure the province of amazons in this are so many and so strong that it would be to lack human faith not to give them credit».... "...in that one of the main things that are assured was to be inhabited by a province of women warriors, who sweated alone without men, with whom no more than certain times had cohabitation, lived in their villages, cultivating their lands, and reaching with the work of their hands everything necessary for their livelihood."[chuckles]required]
Human and economic geography
The main characteristic of South America is the great imbalance in its geographical distribution. While the vast majority is concentrated on the coast, huge inland regions remain virtually uninhabited. Another characteristic of the South American subcontinent is its high rate of urban population: three out of four Latin Americans live in a city.[citation needed] The Peruvian, Colombian and Brazilian Amazon jungle, does not escape this reality; Most of the inhabitants of the Amazon region are concentrated in the cities at the foot of the Amazon River: Iquitos, Leticia, Manaus and Belém do Pará. Most of the inhabitants are settlers and their descendants, of white, mestizo and indigenous origin.
The main economic activities that occur in the Amazon River and in its region are the export of rubber and wood to the whole world. Fishing is also essential in the Amazon territory, there are several fish exports to the entire region, in general the Pirarocu. Agriculture and export of food, such as cassava, banana and corn and typical fruits of the region such as Copoazú, Carambola, Arazá, Asaí among others; They are part of the wide variety of foods produced in this region.
Communications
Ports
The main ports on the Amazon River are located in the cities of Iquitos in Peru, Leticia in Colombia and Manaus in Brazil. Also, Belem do Pará (Brazil), a city located to the south of the island of Marajó, could be considered as a river post of the Amazon, although, with greater property, it would be on the right bank of the Tocantins River after joining the southern arm of the Amazon that surrounds to said island.
Transamazon Highway
Slightly to the south of the Amazon, the Trans-Amazon highway runs like a long riverbed of dust and mud, the result of one of the most daring development ventures ever undertaken in the region. The highway, called BR-230, imitates the course of the Amazon River as it runs parallel to it. It is, according to official numbers, 5,000 km long.
Important cities and municipalities crossed by the Amazon River
Iquitos, Peru.- Caballococha, Peru.
- Santa Rosa del Yavarí, Peru.
Puerto Nariño, Colombia.- Leticia, Colombia.
Tabatinga, Brazil.- Manaus, Brazil.
- Belem do Pará, Brazil.
- Macapá, Brazil.
Amazon
To the east of the Andes lies the Amazon jungle. It is the largest jungle in the world and has enormous ecological value, its biomass is capable of absorbing immense amounts of carbon dioxide and expelling it at the climax, under decomposition processes. Due to its vital importance for the global climate, among other aspects, its conservation has become an issue of extreme urgency in recent years.
This equatorial forest owes its origin to the region's extremely humid and hot climate. The Amazon and its many tributaries flow slowly through the area, due to the extremely flat gradient: Manaus, 1,600 km from the Atlantic, is only 44 m s. no. m.
The biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest is extraordinary: the region is home to at least 2.5 million species of insects, tens of thousands of plants, and some 2,000 species of birds and mammals—a fifth of all bird species in the world. world are here. The diversity of plant species is the greatest on earth: some experts estimate that 1 km² can contain up to 75,000 different types of trees and some 150,000 species of plants. That same square kilometer houses an average of 90,000 tons of plant biomass.
Saver of the planet
The Amazon is considered the lungs of the world as it absorbs millions of tons of carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere. By reducing the global amount of this gas that affects the planet, it helps to curb climate change.
The Amazon rainforest makes up one tenth of all the forests on the planet.[citation needed] Part of the air that humanity breathes is purified in the Amazon.[citation needed] This air purification is carried out by plants through the process of photosynthesis.
A large amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) is derived from the decomposition of organic, vegetable and animal matter, a part comes out as a gas and another is converted into carbonic acid with rainwater, which gives rise to the high soil acidity in jungles and savannahs.[citation needed]
Flora and fauna
All the flora and fauna of the American humid intertropical forest is present in the Amazon.
There are countless species of plants, thousands of species of birds, countless amphibians and millions of insects still unclassified.
The fauna is very varied, from the smallest insects to large mammals such as jaguars, pumas, tapirs, and several species of deer. There are also reptiles such as turtles, alligators, stifles and snakes. There are birds and fish of all species, feathers and scales. In the lagoons along the Amazon, the Victoria regia plant flourishes, a species of water lily whose circular leaves reach more than a meter in diameter and sometimes up to 5 m, which has given rise to the myth that one of these blades can support a person, which is false.
The immense equatorial jungle hides an abundant fauna, still pending a complete classification. In the Amazon there are 4,000 species of butterflies, more than 3,000 freshwater fish, 1,700 birds, and 20% of the primate species on the planet. Under its extraordinary foliage, different habitats and the greatest generic diversity of the animal kingdom coexist. The biological richness is explained because for millions of years the Amazon ecosystem has remained unchanged.
Their contribution to species of fish and aquatic plants is so extensive that listing them all is not an easy task. For aquarium fans, it is the source that provides the largest number of fish species that populate shops and aquariums around the world.
It is also home to a large number of amphibians of all kinds, such as frogs, toads, newts, salamanders, and as-yet-unknown amphibians.
After visiting it on one of his expeditions, the famous oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau went so far as to affirm that "there are more species of fish in the Amazon than in the Atlantic Ocean."
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