The Amazon Rainforest: The World's Largest Rainforest
By Rhett A. Butler [Last update Apr 4, 2024]
The Amazon River Basin is home to the largest rainforest on Earth. The basin -- roughly the size of the forty-eight contiguous United States -- covers some 40 percent of the South American continent and includes parts of eight South American countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, and Suriname, as well as French Guiana, a department of France.
Reflecting environmental conditions as well as past human influence, the Amazon is made up of a mosaic of ecosystems and vegetation types including rainforests, seasonal forests, deciduous forests, flooded forests, and savannas.
The basin is drained by the Amazon River, the world's largest river in terms of discharge, and the second longest river in the world after the Nile. The river is made up of over 1,100 tributaries, 17 of which are longer than 1000 miles, and two of which (the Negro and the Madeira) are larger, in terms of volume, than the Congo river.
The river system is the lifeline of the forest and its history plays an important part in the development of its rainforests.
Country | Tree cover extent 2020 | Primary forest extent 2020 | Tree cover loss since 2000 | Tree cover loss 2010-19 | Primary forest loss 2010-19 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bolivia | 44,854,868 | 28,815,724 | 10.0% | 3,335,988 | 1,630,465 |
Brazil | 373,904,915 | 310,498,565 | 10.2% | 22,238,014 | 12,940,179 |
Colombia | 51,027,994 | 43,336,799 | 4.1% | 1,229,310 | 774,500 |
Ecuador | 10,929,034 | 9,093,550 | 3.5% | 272,369 | 106,585 |
French Guiana | 8,114,787 | 7,805,457 | 0.9% | 43,026 | 30,305 |
Guyana | 18,908,103 | 17,168,399 | 1.1% | 143,957 | 92,979 |
Peru | 76,035,841 | 67,149,825 | 4.0% | 2,097,146 | 1,372,976 |
Suriname | 13,856,308 | 12,648,491 | 1.3% | 141,422 | 100,382 |
Venezuela | 36,247,586 | 32,441,439 | 1.6% | 375,760 | 249,075 |
TOTAL | 633,879,436 | 528,958,249 | 7.9% | 29,876,992 | 17,297,446 |
WHERE THE AMAZON RANKS AMONG GLOBAL RAINFORESTS
The Amazon is the world's biggest rainforest, larger than the next two largest rainforests — in the Congo Basin and Indonesia — combined.
As of 2020, the Amazon has 526 million hectares of primary forest, which accounts for nearly 84% of the region's 629 million hectares of total tree cover. By comparison, the Congo Basin has around 168 million hectares of primary forest and 288 million hectares of tree cover, while the combined tropical areas of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, and Australia have 120 million hectares of primary forest and 216 million hectares of tree cover.
THE HISTORY OF THE AMAZON RAINFOREST
At one time Amazon River flowed westward, perhaps as part of a proto-Congo river system from the interior of present day Africa when the continents were joined as part of Gondwana. Fifteen million years ago, the Andes were formed by the collision of the South American plate with the Nazca plate. The rise of the Andes and the linkage of the Brazilian and Guyana bedrock shields, blocked the river and caused the Amazon to become a vast inland sea. Gradually this inland sea became a massive swampy, freshwater lake and the marine inhabitants adapted to life in freshwater. For example, over 20 species of stingray, most closely related to those found in the Pacific Ocean, can be found today in the freshwaters of the Amazon.
About ten million years ago, waters worked through the sandstone to the west and the Amazon began to flow eastward. At this time the Amazon rainforest was born. During the Ice Age, sea levels dropped and the great Amazon lake rapidly drained and became a river. Three million years later, the ocean level receded enough to expose the Central American isthmus and allow mass migration of mammal species between the Americas.
The Ice Ages caused tropical rainforest around the world to retreat. Although debated, it is believed that much of the Amazon reverted to savanna and montane forest (see Ice Ages and Glaciation). Savanna divided patches of rainforest into "islands" and separated existing species for periods long enough to allow genetic differentiation (a similar rainforest retreat took place in Africa. Delta core samples suggest that even the mighty Congo watershed was void of rainforest at this time). When the ice ages ended, the forest was again joined and the species that were once one had diverged significantly enough to be constitute designation as separate species, adding to the tremendous diversity of the region. About 6000 years ago, sea levels rose about 130 meters, once again causing the river to be inundated like a long, giant freshwater lake.
Note: Human populations have shaped the biodiversity of the Amazon. See Amazon people for more.
The world's largest rainforests [more] How large is the Amazon rainforest? The extent of the Amazon depends on the definition. The the Amazon River drains about 6.915 million sq km (2.722 sq mi), or roughly 40 percent of South America, but generally areas outside the basin are included when people speak about "the Amazon." The biogeographic Amazon ranges from 7.76-8.24 million sq km (3-3.2 million sq mi), of which just over 80 percent is forested. For comparison, the land area of the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii) is 9,629,091 square kilometers (3,717,811 sq km). Nearly two-thirds of the Amazon lies in Brazil. |
THE AMAZON RIVER TODAY
Today the Amazon River is the most voluminous river on Earth, carrying more than five times the volume of the Congo or twelve times that of the Mississippi, draining an area nearly the size of the forty-eight contiguous United States. During the high water season, the river's mouth may be 300 miles wide and every day up to 18 billion cubic meters (635 billion cubic feet) of water flow into the Atlantic. That discharge, equivalent to 209,000 cubic meters of water per second (7.3 million cubic feet/sec), could fill over 7.2 million Olympic swimming pools per day or supply New York City's freshwater needs for nine years.
The force of the current -- from sheer water volume alone -- causes Amazon River water to continue flowing 125 miles out to sea before mixing with Atlantic salt water. Early sailors could drink freshwater out of the ocean before sighting the South American continent.
The river current carries tons of suspended sediment all the way from the Andes and gives the river a characteristic muddy whitewater appearance. It is calculated that 106 million cubic feet of suspended sediment are swept into the ocean each day. The result from the silt deposited at the mouth of the Amazon is Majaro island, a river island about the size of Switzerland.
The Amazon's influence on the movement of moisture extends beyond the water that flows down the Amazon river. The trees of the Amazon rainforest pump vast quantities of water vapor into the atmosphere every day via transpiration. While much of this water falls locally as rain, some of this moisture is carried by airflows across other parts of the continent, including the agricultural heartland of South America to the south. This movement has been likened to "flying rivers". By one estimate, 70% of Brazil's gross national product comes from areas that receive rainfall generated by the Amazon rainforest.
THE AMAZON RAINFOREST
While the Amazon Basin is home to the world's largest tropical rainforest, the region consists of myriad other ecosystems ranging from natural savanna to swamps. Even the rainforest itself is highly variable, tree diversity and structure varying depending on soil type, history, drainage, elevation, and other factors. This is discussed at greater length in the Amazon rainforest ecology section.
AMAZON BIODIVERSITY
The Amazon is home to more species of plants and animals than any other terrestrial ecosystem on the planet -- perhaps 30 percent of the world's species are found there. The following numbers represent a sampling of its astounding levels of biodiversity:
- 40,000 plant species
- 16,000 tree species
- 3,000 fish species
- 1,300 birds
- 430+ mammals
- 1,000+ amphibians
- 400+ reptiles
THE CHANGING AMAZON RAINFOREST
The Amazon has a long history of human settlement, but in recent decades the pace of change has accelerated due to an increase in human population, the introduction of mechanized agriculture, and integration of the Amazon region into the global economy. Vast quantities of commodities produced in the Amazon — cattle beef and leather, timber, soy, oil and gas, and minerals, to name a few — are exported today to China, Europe, the U.S., Russia, and other countries. This shift has had substantial impacts on the Amazon.
This transition from a remote backwater to a cog in the global economy has resulted in large-scale deforestation and forest degradation in the Amazon — more than 1.4 million hectares of forest have been cleared since the 1970s. An even larger area has been affected by selective logging and forest fires.
Conversion for cattle grazing is the biggest single direct driver of deforestation. In Brazil, more than 60 percent of cleared land ends up as pasture, most of which has low productivity, supporting less than one head per hectare. Across much of the Amazon, the primary objective for cattle ranching is to establish land claims, rather than produce beef or leather. But market-oriented cattle production has nonetheless expanded rapidly during the past decade.
Industrial agricultural production, especially soy farms, has also been an important driver of deforestation since the early 1990s. However since 2006 the Brazil soy industry has had a moratorium on new forest clearing for soy. The moratorium was a direct result of a Greenpeace campaign.
Mining, subsistence agriculture, dams, urban expansion, agricultural fires, and timber plantations also result in significant forest loss in the Amazon. Logging is the primary driver of forest disturbance and studies have shown that logged-over forests — even when selectively harvested — have a much higher likelihood of eventual deforestation. Logging roads grant access to farmers and ranchers to previous inaccessible forest areas.
Deforestation isn't the only reason the Amazon is changing. Global climate change is having major impacts on the Amazon rainforest. Higher temperatures in the tropical Atlantic reduce rainfall across large extents of the Amazon, causing drought and increasing the susceptibility of the rainforest to fire. Computer models suggest that if current rates of warming continue, much of the Amazon could transition from rainforest to savanna, especially in the southern parts of the region. Such a shift could have dramatic economic and ecological impacts, including affecting rainfall that currently feeds regions that generate 70 percent of South America's GDP and triggering enormous carbon emissions from forest die-off. These emissions could further worsen climate change.
PROTECTING THE AMAZON RAINFOREST
While destruction of the Amazon rainforest is ongoing, the overall rate of deforestation rate in the region dropped between the mid-2000s and mid-2010s, mostly due to to the sharp decline in forest clearing in Brazil. However deforestation has been steadily rising in the region in more recent years.
Brazil's decline in its deforestation rate between 2004 and 2012 was attributed to several factors, some of which it controls, some of which it doesn't. Between 2000 and 2010 Brazil established the world's largest network of protected areas, the majority of which are located in the Amazon region. In 2004, the government implemented a deforestation reduction program which included improved law enforcement, satellite monitoring, and the provision of financial incentives for respecting environmental laws. Independent public prosecutors offices played a particularly important role in pursing illegal activities in the Brazilian Amazon. The private sector also got involved, especially after 2006 when major crushers established a moratorium on new deforestation for soy. That soy moratorium was followed by the "Cattle Agreement", which major slaughterhouses and beef processors committed to source cattle only from areas where environmental laws were being respected.
However these conservation initiatives started to break down in the Brazilian Amazon in the mid-2010s. Major cattle producers circumvented the rules through livestock laundering, while financial incentives for conserving forests failed to materialize at the expected scale needed to change landowners' behavior. The Temer and Bolsonaro Administrations dismantled environmental regulations, reduced environmental law enforcement, stripped conservation areas and indigenous territories of protections, and encouraged a wide range of industries (mining, logging, agribusiness) to expand extraction and conversion in the Amazon. In 2019, deforestation in the Brazilian started accelerating rapidly.
THE LATEST AMAZON RAINFOREST NEWS
Surge in legal land clearing pushes up Indonesia deforestation rate in 2024 (Feb 7 2025)
- Indonesia’s deforestation increased in 2024 to its highest level since 2021, with forest area four times the size of Jakarta lost; 97% of this occurred within legal concessions, highlighting a shift from illegal to legal deforestation.
- More than half of the forest loss affected critical habitats for threatened species like orangutans, tigers and elephants, particularly in Borneo and Sumatra.
- Key industries driving deforestation include palm oil, pulpwood, and nickel mining, with significant deforestation in Kalimantan, Sumatra and Papua; a new pulp mill in Kalimantan in particular may be driving aggressive land clearing.
- Despite an existing moratorium on new forest-clearance permits, there’s no protection for forests within existing concessions, allowing continued deforestation, and spurring calls for stronger policies to safeguard remaining natural forests.
In Nepal’s Chitwan, elephant’s shooting, death raises eyebrows (Feb 7 2025)
- A wild elephant in Chitwan National Park succumbed to a bullet wound Jan. 5, 2025, after allegedly charging at a patrol team and throwing a ranger off his mount.
- The radio-collared elephant had been lingering around human settlements, damaging properties and alarming locals and hotel operators, leading to increased patrols and discussions on managing the issue.
- Local officials had pressured the national park to take action, but authorities say the shooting was an act of self-defense.
- Critics argue that since the elephant was radio-collared, its movements could have been tracked, and better nonlethal measures could have been taken.
Tourists are back at this Instaworthy Philippine town, but can its sewage system keep up? (Feb 7 2025)
- The town of El Nido on the Philippine island of Palawan, known for its stunning limestone cliffs and azure waters, has become a popular tourist destination due to heavy social media promotion.
- But tourism has caused severe coastal contamination, with consistently high fecal coliform levels in the sea off El Nido, despite efforts like a new sewage treatment plant.
- Policies like tourist caps and subsidies for sewage connections have been introduced, but the system’s pipeline network remains insufficient, with only 3.3% of households in the town center connected to the system.
- Experts blame poor planning, overpromotion on social media, and prioritization of economic gains over environmental health, and urge stronger waste management, regulatory enforcement, and social media campaigns promoting responsible tourism.
A dramatic rise in microplastics found in human brains, study finds (Feb 7 2025)
A new study has found a dramatic increase in levels of microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) in human brains in recent years. MNPs have previously been detected in human lungs, intestine, bone marrow and placenta. In the new study, researchers took one tissue sample from the brain, kidney and liver of 80 people autopsied in 2016 […]
Oaxaca Indigenous leader’s killing leaves land defenders’ safety in doubt (Feb 6 2025)
- Arnoldo Nicolás Romero, a commissioner in Oaxaca’s San Juan Guichicovi municipality, was found shot dead on Jan. 21, hidden behind bushes in a private ranch not far from his community.
- Since the country began to develop the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a large railroad project that runs across several Indigenous territories, including Romero’s, communities have reported dispossession, increased criminalization and violence.
- After Romero’s death, the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus (UCIZONI) released a statement that condemned his killing and demanded that authorities “promptly” initiate an investigation into his death.
- No arrests have been made or suspects identified.
How illicit mining fuels violence in eastern DRC: Interview with Jean-Pierre Okenda (Feb 6 2025)
- • In late January, the rebel group M23 captured Goma, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral-rich North Kivu province, in a major escalation of decades-long violence in the region.
- The ongoing conflict in the eastern DRC is being fueled by its mineral wealth, particularly coltan and the “Three T’s” (tin, tungsten, tantalum), much of which is presently being illicitly transported into Rwanda, according to DRC resource expert Jean-Pierre Okenda.
- The supply chain for these minerals lacks transparency, particularly since M23 seized key mining areas like Rubaya.
- While China is the dominant buyer of coltan from Rwanda, Okenda and other civil society activists in the DRC have called on the EU to cancel an agreement to source minerals from the country.
January 2025 was warmest on record as climate change ‘overwhelms’ La Niña’s cooling (Feb 6 2025)
January 2025 was the warmest January on record, surpassing the previous record set by January 2024, according to satellite data from the EU’s Copernicus program. The findings were unexpected as ongoing La Niña conditions in the Pacific typically cool down global temperatures. The global average surface air temperature for the month reached 1.75° Celsius (3.15° […]
Kenya revives poisoning campaign to curb invasive Indian house crows (Feb 6 2025)
- Indian house crows, introduced to East Africa in 1891, have become a major pest in Kenya, threatening native birds, spreading disease, damaging crops, and disrupting tourism.
- Kenya has revived a poisoning campaign using Starlicide, a U.S.-developed bird control poison, after a 20-year ban on its import; conservationists report increased small bird populations in treated areas.
- Experts support the poisoning as necessary, but critics argue for long-term solutions like regional cooperation and improved waste management to limit food sources.
- Conservationists warn the crows could spread further, including to Nairobi, and stress the need for a coordinated approach to control their rapid population growth.
Vietnam and China partner on wildlife-friendly traditional medicine practices (Feb 6 2025)
Vietnam and China, the two largest markets for traditional medicine (TM) that uses wild plants and animals, announced a new partnership in January to adopt practices that protect wildlife while preserving the countries’ cultural heritage. The first-of-its-kind agreement involved leading TM associations from Vietnam and China — the Vietnam Oriental Traditional Medicine Association (VOTMA) and […]
EU legislators urge IMF to protect Madagascar forests against road projects (Feb 6 2025)
Thirty-five members of the European Parliament are calling on the International Monetary Fund to renegotiate its funding to Madagascar that could support two highway projects expected to cut across the nation’s vital forests. The IMF in June 2024 announced $321 million to Madagascar through its Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF). It aims to aid the […]
Indonesia targets 2.3m hectares of protected forests for food & biofuel crop production (Feb 6 2025)
- Indonesia has identified 2.3 million hectares (5.7 million acres) of protected forest that could be converted into “food and energy estates,” which could result in the country’s largest-ever deforestation project.
- This is part of a plan to convert a total of 20 million hectares (50 million acres) of forest for food and biofuel crop production.
- Some lawmakers and NGOs have voiced opposition, urging the government to reconsider; the forestry minister has defended the plan, saying the forests are already degraded and this is an effort to rehabilitate them.
Disease surges in Indonesia community on frontline of world energy transition (Feb 6 2025)
- Residential areas next to a major nickel processing site on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island recorded exponential increases in diagnoses of respiratory infections between 2020 and 2023.
- During that same period, the value of nickel exports from Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of the metal, increased from around $800 million to $6.8 billion.
- Interviews by Mongabay with residents of one village in the area indicate health conditions there have deteriorated rapidly.
PICTURES OF THE AMAZON RAINFOREST
Blackwater lake and whitewater river in the Amazon
Victoria water lilies
Flowering tree in the Amazon rainforest canopy
Waura shaman
Oxbow lake in the Amazon
Cock-of-the-rock
Blue poison dart frog
Leaf katydid
Jaguar in the Colombian Amazon
Hoatzin
Creek in the Colombian Amazon
Passion flower in the Colombian Amazon
Woolly monkey
Javari River
Daybreak over the Amazon
Amazonian wax-tailed fulgorid
Amazon rainforest canopy in Brazil
Discus
Rivers in the Amazon rainforest
Squirrel monkey in the Amazon
Leaf-cutter ant in the Amazon
Giant monkey frog
Amazon rainforest canopy in Peru
Orange planthopper in Peru
Oxbow lake in the Amazon
Indigenous man with bird eggs
Indigenous Tikuna man in the Amazon rainforest
Javari river in the Amazon
Harpy eagle
Mantid in Suriname
Amazon leaf toad
Amazon bat
Angelfish
Frequently asked questions about the Amazon, answeredWhere is the Amazon rainforest?
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